A good book list is not a completist exercise. Nobody needs to read everything. What a good list does is help you find the two or three titles that are going to matter to you, whether that is the novel you will not put down for three days or the non-fiction book that shifts how you think about something. Here is a considered edit across fiction and non-fiction, weighted towards books that are earning their recommendations rather than simply their publicity.
Fiction
Tayari Jones, the author of An American Marriage, has published a new novel this year. Jones is one of the most emotionally precise writers working in contemporary American fiction, and her new book follows two lifelong friends whose worlds converge after years apart in the wake of a devastating event. The combination of intimate personal storytelling and quietly devastating social observation that distinguished her previous work is fully present here.
Emma Straub, whose novel This Time Tomorrow was one of the most warmly received books of recent years, returns with a story about what happens when a teenage fantasy materialises in adulthood. It is described as sharply funny and deeply felt, which is a combination Straub does better than most. For readers who found This Time Tomorrow absorbing, this is the obvious next read.
Liane Moriarty, whose Big Little Lies became one of the decade’s defining television adaptations, has published the first sequel to that novel this year. Ten years after the events of the original, the children of those central characters are now teenagers and the secrets of their parents are beginning to surface. It is a rare thing for a sequel to be as anticipated as this one, and early responses suggest it justifies the expectation.
For something with a stronger literary edge, Colm Toibin’s latest short story collection demonstrates again why he is regarded as one of the finest practitioners of the form working today. The stories move across continents and time periods but share a quality of quiet devastation, the way grief and love and family obligation accumulate over years and then crystallise in a single moment. Reading Toibin is demanding in the best way.
Non-fiction
Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, has published a memoir that is both a personal account of how the web came to be and a clear-eyed reckoning with what it has become. For anyone who thinks often about the relationship between technology and society, this is essential context told from the perspective of the person most responsible for the thing itself.
The New Perimenopause, by the author of The New Menopause, addresses the often-misdiagnosed and medically underserved perimenopause years that precede menopause itself. The book has been widely praised for giving women the kind of specific, clinically grounded information that most GPs do not provide in a standard appointment. It is practical rather than polemical, which makes it unusually useful.
Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams is the insider account of working as a policy official at Meta during the years when the company’s power became impossible to ignore. The author began as a true believer in the platform’s potential and the book charts her disillusionment in clear, sometimes devastating detail. Meta has disputed some of its allegations, which has if anything increased interest in what it says.
For something closer to biography and history, Artists, Siblings, Visionaries, shortlisted for the 2026 Women’s Prize for Non-fiction, examines the lives of Gwen and Augustus John. It is a richly researched account of two siblings with extraordinary but very different talents, navigating the expectations of their time in divergent and often painful ways. Ideal for readers who like their history with strong narrative drive and real emotional investment.
The comfort read
Every list needs a comfort read, and the case here is for Bonnie Garmus’s new novel. Garmus wrote Lessons in Chemistry, which became one of the most beloved books of recent years for its warmth, intelligence and very funny protagonist. Her new book, set at a prestigious and deeply dysfunctional New York poetry journal, has the same combination of sharp observation and genuine human warmth. If you loved Lessons in Chemistry, this is where to go next.
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