Our Most Anticipated Book Releases Of 2026 (Because It's Never Too Early To Get Excited)

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If you're anything like us, your TBR list has long since outgrown its physical constraints. Your bookshelf is full, and your bank account is ... trying its best. 2025 has already been a generous year for readers, delivering the best reads released in the first half of 2025 that are perfect for your book club, along with monthly celebrity book club picks, the best new beach reads for your summer TBR, and our most anticipated book releases of fall 2025. Together, they form a restless crowd of titles, all elbowing for prominence and waiting to be selected next.

But, as most devoted readers know, the calendar of forthcoming releases is as essential to reading lists as any classic on the shelf. There's always another wish list to assemble, and another literary year to map out. That brings us to 2026, which is noticeably beginning to take shape. Titles are starting to surface: long-awaited returns from authors we trust, as well as debut voices already generating buzz. So here, in no particular order but with great expectations, are the titles we're clearing space for.

"Dandelion is Dead" leads the charge in 2026's early offerings — a debut out in January by London-based writer Rosie Storey. And, if early praise is any indication, it's a literary entrance worth noting. The novel opens in the shadow of death. Poppy is seven months into mourning her older sister, Dandelion — a magnetic, unruly force who lived by impulse and dared others to do the same.

So, when Poppy stumbles upon her sister's old phone — still logged into a dating app and blinking with an unread message from a man named Jake — she finds herself typing back. Grief and curiosity blur; what could go wrong? After all, it's what Dandelion would have done. On what would have been Dandelion's 40th birthday, Poppy replies and arranges a date, posing, just for one night, as her sister. The man is real and the attraction is palpable. But the lie, unlike her sister, is alive.

Touted as a must-read for fans of Dolly Alderton and Coco Mellors, "Dandelion is Dead" has also drawn high praise from Reese's Book Club author Clare Leslie Hall, whose novel "Broken County" ranks among the club's most heartbreaking reads. "Breathtakingly original," she wrote, "A brilliant premise, smart, funny and heartbreaking in equal measure. I adored it."

There's a right order to read Abby Jimenez's iconic rom-com books. And if you just caught up, think again — she's gone and given us another must-read to pencil in. "The Night We Met" is the upcoming follow-up to "Say You'll Remember Me," one of the best April 2025 releases to pick for your book club. That novel introduced romance fans to Xavier Rush, the swoon-worthy veterinarian. But just as importantly, it offered a glimpse into his inner circle: pharmacist Chris and personal trainer Mike, both of whom are now getting stories of their own.

According to Jimenez, "The Night We Met" will center on Chris, who had no time for dating in "Say You'll Remember Me." That appears to be changing. The reigning chronicler of love (and also one of the authors to try if you love Emily Henry's books) told Us Weekly that the novel has "a very nuanced plot," and "it might be a little bit different from what I've given readers before." The novel has already found its way onto a growing number of Goodreads "want to read" lists, where one reader asked, reasonably enough, "Can I give this book five stars now or would that be a smidge too early?"

Cleopatra's name has endured for over two millennia, though much of what has lasted is myth shaped by outside forces. Classical art, literature, and cinema have often reduced her to a figure of seduction — most famously defined by her relationships with Julius Caesar and Marc Antony — leaving her political genius in the shadows. This led to her image folding in on itself through centuries of colonial projection through the male gaze.

But that legacy has never been static. In more recent history, Cleopatra has emerged as a figure of anti-colonial defiance under British rule in Egypt, and later as a symbol of Black pride and cultural power in post-Civil War America. Now, author Saara El-Arifi brings her voice to the conversation. "Cleopatra" begins when the young queen loses her father, only to inherit a throne at 19 and a kingdom on the brink of Roman interference. She is blessed by the goddess Isis, but even divine favor has its limits.

El-Arifi joins the wave of writers today reframing the ancient world through a modern feminist lens. She follows in the footsteps of Madeline Miller, Natalie Haynes, and Elodie Harper (whose "Boudicca's Daughter" was one of the 2025 new releases we hope gets picked for Reese's Book Club) — who explore similar questions of power, gender, and historical voice. This one commits to pushing those questions further once more.

Ashley Winstead's "The Future Saints" will likely resonate with bookworms drawn to the backstage pass intimacy of "Daisy Jones & The Six", the BookTok-fueled favorite by Taylor Jenkins Reid (and one of the picks from Reese's Book Club to make the screen). However, in this novel, the spotlight faded long ago. Winstead drops readers into the fractured world of a once-glorious band, barely holding it together, and cycling through increasingly forgettable venues peppered with half-listening crowds. The manager is gone, and, so, too, is their momentum, drifting through their grief in the aftermath of the death.

In comes Theo, a sharp-eyed record executive with a plan to salvage what's left. He thinks the answer lies in a new album, built around lead singer Hannah's evolving sound. The only problem is Hannah herself. Can she find her way out of darkness and relearn the sound of her own voice? Early reviews are promising, with one on Goodreads admitting they "cried like a baby through those last 50 pages."

For the true crime fans, the occult-minded, the morbidly curious, anyone who practices witchcraft, or simply those who want something slightly darker for their fiction, "Necrogenesis" by Ashia Monet is one to look out for. This forthcoming queer campus novel is set on a remote island off the coast of Edinburgh, where, in 1976, six necromancy students vanished inside a crumbling manor. The only evidence left suggested violence, but no clear explanation ever followed.

Nearly half a century later, a true crime devotee decides she's done with speculating. It's time to take matters into her own hands. But instead of combing through the archives, she resurrects one of the dead. "Mysterious, magical, melodramatic," is how author Monet described it on Instagram. In a Substack post, she framed it more expansively, as an exploration of "transforming something ugly and empty into something beautiful and meaningful," or, in her words, "making lemonade from the greyest, most rotten of lemons." Awaiting publication by Del Rey Books, "Necrogenesis" is slated for release in fall 2026 — just in time to kick off the academic year and the slow, familiar descent into Halloween season.

Every book on this list has been officially announced for release in 2026. They all fall under the commercial fiction umbrella, but we've made sure to include a range of genres, so there's something for a broad spectrum of readers. These books have already started generating significant buzz — throughout the industry, on social media, in online reading communities like Goodreads, and in the press. We've also focused on books written by women to reflect our audience, and the stories that tend to resonate most deeply with it.