The Must-Read Books Of 2026 Is Here!

The beginning of a year often brings the same old question: What do we want to read now? Beyond new year resolutions and professional targets, reading remains, I hope at least, one of the few intentions that quietly endures for everyone. Readers, whether seasoned or just beginning, all start in the same place – curating, prioritising, and wish-listing the books that might shape the months ahead.

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This year, the focus to pick books that goes beyond pure escapism has been a critical factor. Sure, as most stories do, we are okay to be transported elsewhere, but when the book finishes and you return, there should be something to sit with. Questions, unease, a lingering sense of recognition or even deep appreciation for what was written and how it was told. Food for thought in the era of brain-rot? Yes, please!

Drawn from across genres, voices, and sensibilities, here’s a list of twenty books that reflects that mood. No two titles below are alike, yet each will grip you in a way that you’d find it impossible to put the book down. If like me, you are also wondering what to read this year or are simply curious about what others would be turning to, treat this as your checklist for the must-read books of 2026.

Half His Age By Jennette McCurdy

I’m Glad My Mom Died’s international sensation Jennette McCurdy is debuting in fiction with Half His Age – a rather sharp and unsettling portrait of desire and power and what it can do. With McCurdy’s signature style humour and emotional precision, the book follows a seventeen-year-old fixated on her much older creative writing teacher. Weaving through obsession, loneliness, class, and the need to be seen in a world shaped by consumption and the internet.

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The Complex By Karan Mahajan

Both a sweeping family saga and a highly political novel, The Complex is Karan Mahajan at his very best. Expansive yet controlled, the novel moves between India and the US, and in this oscillation, capture power, ambition, and inheritance within one influential Indian family.

Cherry Baby By Rainbow Rowell

Carry On author, Rainbow Rowell turns her attention to reinvention, visibility, and the quiet devastation of being written out of your own life. Cherry Baby is raw and unflinching while tackling issues with fame, success, and especially body image as well as tender in how Rowell approaches her character’s arc and the central conflict.

We Dance Upon DemonsBy Vaishnavi Patel

New York Times bestselling author Vaishnavi Patel returns with galvanizing stand-alone contemporary fantasy following a burnt-out reproductive health care worker as she fights back against escalating attacks on her clinic and the malevolent forces in hot pursuit of her newly acquired power.

Pixie By Jill Dawson

The cover of Jill Dawson’s Pixie may seem familiar, echoing the iconic Rider–Waite–Smith tarot deck by Pamela Colman Smith, whose life inspires the novel. Sprawling between Jamaica, London, and New York at the turn of the twentieth century, the novel takes you on a journey about an outsider artist navigating grief, ambition, and erasure.

Mestra By Madeline Miller

No1 New York Times Bestselling author Madeline Miller returns with a luminous short story that reclaims the forgotten myth of Mestra. Gifted with transformation and trapped by a father’s curse, Mestra’s love is tested to its limits. A powerful meditation on sacrifice, autonomy, and the cost of devotion.

The Open Era By Edward Schmit

Schmit’s debut romance follows Austin Hardy, a professional tennis player who becomes the first openly gay man at a Grand Slam. With media pressure building and anxiety crawling back up to the surface, Hardy forms an unexpected bond with rival Diego Cruz. Set during the US Open, the novel explores anxiety, attraction, and what it costs to choose love in the public eye. Heated Rivalry fans? This one is for you. Be Prepared!

How To Live Like A Stoic By Tom Hodgkinson

Offering an accessible introduction to Stoic philosophy through humour and everyday examples, Tom Hodgkinson revisits thinkers like Seneca and Marcus Aurelius to show the present generation how Stoic ideas can help with work, relationships, and stress. It is thoughtful, playful, and surprisingly practical and useful for modern life.

Gooday Nagar By Maithreyi Karnoor

Set in the imagined city of Gooday Nagar, this collection reimagines contemporary India as a modern-day Malgudi with a surreal edge. From thieving monkeys and armless ghosts to Covid-disrupted lives and post-apocalyptic cake worlds, the stories blend absurdity with sharp social insight.

He’s Not the Devil By Tobi Coventry 

This dark and unsettling novel begins with an ordinary flat share that slowly turns strange and twisted. Simon’s new flatmate Massimo moves in and disturbing sounds, smells, and dreams follow. As desire and fear blur, Simon confronts parts of himself he has long kept buried. This debut is eerie but also funny and uncomfortably relatable.

Whistler By Ann Patchett

Whistler is a story about two adults looking back over the choices they made, and the choices that were made for them. It’s a story about bravery, memory, the often small yet consequential moments that define our lives, and the endless stream of loss that in time comes for us all. Ann Patchett returns with her with a moving, luminous novel that reminds us of the sweetness and impermanence of life. A must-read!

Sophie, Standing There By Meg Mason

In this much anticipated novel, Meg Mason captures the heartache and dark humour of our relationships in all their complexity, giving us a story about the power of connection and an ode to the inexplicable nature of the human heart. If you loved Sorrow and Bliss, you’d like to check this one out for Mason is able to once again conjure a story that would speak to everyone, everywhere.

Ahn Love By Frances Park

A lyrical family saga sparked by memory, Ahn Love sails between grief and desire, tracing a teenage awakening, fractured loyalties, and a doomed romance aboard a 1969 Pacific cruise ship.

John Of John By Douglas Stuart

From the Booker Prize-winning and New York Times bestselling author of Shuggie Bain and Young Mungo comes this defying new book, John of John, a singular novel about duty, passion, and the transformative power of the truth. It is a magnificent literary work that cements Douglas Stuart’s reputation as one of our greatest working novelists.

The Future Saints By Ashley Winstead 

For fans of Daisy Jones and the Six and In Five Years, the international bestselling author Ashley Winstead offers her latest The Future Saints – a powerful and transportive novel about a music executive desperately trying to bring a rock band back from the brink and a love story unlike any other that you’ve read.

The Simp By Roshan Sethi

Indian-origin Roshan Sethi, a physician and critically acclaimed film director of A Nice Indian Boy, comes this epic tale of rise and fall of Raj Ladlani: a queer Indian man whose big acting dreams are scuppered when he takes a job as an assistant for a nightmare power couple. This debut is funny, bold, and strikingly heartfelt.

Ghost Stories By Siri Hustvedt's

Ghost Stories is Siri Hustvedt's tender memoir of the forty-three years she spent with her husband, writer, poet and filmmaker Paul Auster: from their first encounter in 1980s New York, to his death in 2024. The book also contains Paul Auster's last ever piece of writing - the first thirty-five pages of what he hoped would be a small book of letters to Siri's and his grandson, Miles Auster Hustvedt Ostrander, born on 1st January 2024.

Good People By Patmeena Sabit

This is an incredibly propulsive and provocative debut novel about the dark underside of gossip: the way it can shape and distort the truth until you’re not sure what is real or what you believe. Told through the chorus of voices surrounding the Sharafs, Good People is an unforgettable story of community, family and identity.

The Summer Boy By Phillipe Besson 

On an island off the coast of France, six teenagers come together for a summer of desire and discovery until one of them vanishes forever, leaving the rest with an enduring mystery from the internationally acclaimed French author of the bestselling book Lie with Me. Expect to have your heart broken once again!

Belgrave Road By Manish Chauhan

Love Marriage meets Rye Lane, this is a tender, slow-burn love story about two immigrants in England whose lives run parallel but never quite meet. Bound by duty, marriage, and survival, Mira and Tahliil find rare connection in stolen moments at work. As longing deepens, the novel asks whether love can be an act of freedom—or another risk in an already fragile world.

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