If your 2026 resolution is to read more, you’ve come to the right place. The best new book releases from the past year leave you spoilt for choice, from romance books and historical fiction to cosy crime capers and fantasy novels.
So far, Jennette McCurdy’s Half His Age – the follow-up to the author’s bestselling memoir – is the provocative story of an age-gap affair. Meanwhile, Roxy Dunn’s second novel, Wants & Needs, is a page-turning exploration of polyamory. This month, Madeline Cash’s Lost Lambs is a darkly comedic story about three sisters and their obsession with a corrupt billionaire (writer Lena Dunham has called the author “a voice like no other”), while Madeleine Dunnigan’s debut, Jean, is a queer coming-of-age story set in a boy’s boarding school in the 1970s. When it comes to non-fiction, Belle Burden's memoir Strangers is an internationally bestselling eulogy of her marriage and its breakdown, following her husbands affair.
Later in the year, Douglas Stuart’s third book, John of John, is sure to be a defining title in 2026, while Hamnet author Maggie O’Farrell is releasing her 10th novel, Land, in June. Meg Mason – who penned the 2020 international bestseller Sorrow & Bliss – is back with a new novel, Sophie, Standing There; while Eden McKenzie-Goddard’s Windrush novel Smallie is already getting early critical acclaim, and Caro Claire Burke’s Yesteryear is sure to be seen everywhere in May.
If you’ve yet to catch up with the past year’s reading material, there was acclaimed fiction from esteemed authors, including Salman Rushdie’s short story collection The Eleventh Hour, Lily King’s tear-jerker decade-spanning romance Heart The Lover, Ian McEwan’s unsettling dystopian fiction What We Can Know, and David Szalay’s Booker-winning novel Flesh.
As for debuts, Florence Knapp’s The Names is a searing family drama that’s still topping book charts, Alison Espach's novel The Wedding People is a funny spin on the romcom genre, and Garrett Carr’s The Boy From the Sea is a tender story set in an Irish fishing village. Bold and thought-provoking in different ways, Vincent Delecroix’s Small Boat and Anne Tyler’s Three Days in June are both short reads that can occupy a rainy afternoon.
I, along with the other bookworms on the IndyBest team, have read dozens of new releases over the past year, to bring you the best books to dive into this winter. Keep scrolling for all the details.
The best new books to read are:
- Best overall – The Names by Florence Knapp, published by Phoenix: £8.49, Amazon.co.uk
- Best daring debut – Half My Age by Jennette McCurdy, published by Fourth Estate: £13.99, Amazon.co.uk
- Best historical fiction – 'The Shock of The Light' by Lori Inglis Hall, published by The Borough Press: £13, Amazon.co.uk
- Best family saga – 'Lost Lambs' by Madeline Cash, published by Doubleday: £16, Amazon.co.uk
Read more: I’ve already read some of 2026’s biggest book releases – these are the four to look out for
'The Names' by Florence Knapp, published by Phoenix
Best: Overall
Release date: 6 May 2025
Genre: Literary fiction
Florence Knapp’s debut novel revolves around nominative determinism – how someone’s name can set the trajectory of their life.
Set after the Great Storm in 1987, it begins with Cora setting out with her nine-year-old daughter to name her newborn baby boy. Her controlling and abusive husband wants him to be named Gordon, after himself. Her daughter has affectionately nicknamed him Bear, and Cora wants to name him Julian, believing this name will set him free of influence from his father.
The chapters are divided into three sections – Gordon, Bear and Julian – with each following the ramifications of his naming and the boy’s life as it unfolds over the decades. The novel is utterly original, profound and moving in its exploration of how tiny decisions can change the path of your life. Moments of tragedy will make you weep, but the family story of love and resilience is beautiful. It’s a surprising page-turner, too – I read this novel in two sittings.
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Buy now £8.49, Amazon.co.uk
Half My Age by Jennette McCurdy, published by Fourth Estate
Best: Daring debut
Release date: 20 January 2026
Genre: Literary fiction
If you enjoyed former child star-turned-bestselling author Jennette McCurdy’s memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died, her debut novel is equally thought-provoking and shocking. Half His Age follows Waldo, a disillusioned 17-year-old high school student. Living with her single mum, who bounces from man to man and struggles to hold down a job, Waldo works in Victoria's Secret between school hours to sustain her online shopping addiction. Disillusioned with dating and disgusted by the boys in her year, Waldo becomes infatuated with her new creative writing teacher, Mr Korgy. A willing participant in Waldo’s misplaced desire, Mr Korgy is unhappy in his own way, mourning for the successful author career that never happened.
The uncomfortable age-gap relationship is gross yet gripping, while the author’s tone is darkly comic and witty. The pacing is excellent – I read it in just two sittings – and the themes of power, grooming, class, desire and loneliness are deftly explored. Just like McCurdy took ownership of her own “creepy” age-gap relationship and abusive mother, the author makes a salient point by giving Waldo such agency over the relationship and, eventually, how it ends. It’s not a groundbreaking novel, but it’s definitely a conversation starter and an important look at power dynamics.
Read my full review of Jennette McCurdy’s Half His Age
Buy now £8.49, Amazon.co.uk
'Lost Lambs' by Madeline Cash, published by Doubleday
Best: Family saga
Release date: 5 February 2026
Genre: Satire
Garnering early praise from Lena Dunham and Megan Nolan, Madeline Cash’s novel Lost Lambs is among 2026’s buzziest debuts. Combining a comic and wry tone with quirky characters that would be right at home in a Wes Anderson movie, it lives up to the hype. The slightly surrealist story follows the three Flynn daughters as they navigate the fallout of their parents opening up their marriage. The eldest, Abigail, is dating an older ex-solider nicknamed “war crimes Wes”; the middle-child, Louise, is accidentally entangled with a terrorist online; and the youngest, Harper, has been sent to a kids’ reform camp for sleuthing on the town’s corrupt citizens (and her own family).
But it’s a domestic comedy with darkness at its heart. Paul Alabaster, the elusive and evil local billionaire, is as corrupt as his critics say. And, thanks to Harper never knowing when to quit, the Flynn’s become embroiled in a corporate conspiracy caper. Exploring everything from grooming and religion to the online world and tech-bro culture, Cash’s novel is a wild ride – but, at its core, it’s about a family coming together against all odds. If you devoured Paul Murray’s family saga, The Bee Sting, you’ll love this similarly wacky and wonderful tale.
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Buy now £16, Amazon.co.uk
'Wants & Needs' by Roxy Dunn, published by Fig Tree
Best: Unconventional romance
Release date: 29 January 2026
Genre: Romance
Roxy Dunn’s follow-up to her debut, As Young As This (one of my favourite novels of 2024), Wants & Needs is released later this month. An unconventional love story with comedic chops, the novel follows thirty-something Misty, who is recently single, on crutches after recovering from knee surgery and living back at home with her mother.
Reluctantly thrown back into the dating world, she’s forced to navigate the world of apps, where she’s soon drawn to the older, handsome, charismatic and intelligent Christopher. The catch? He’s married with a child and in an open relationship. Faced with undeniable chemistry, she decides to explore the ‘ethical non-monogamy' that Christopher is offering. Funny, witty and fact-paced, I tore through it on a Sunday afternoon. You can pre-order it now.
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Buy now £13, Amazon.co.uk
'The Shock of The Light' by Lori Inglis Hall, published by The Borough Press
Best: War novel
Release date: 12 February 2026
Genre: Historical fiction
Lori Inglis Hall’s debut, The Shock of The Light, explores the emotional impact of World War Two on two siblings. It’s an emotional sucker punch of a novel. The story traces the idyllic upbringing of twins Tessa and Theo and their respective studies in Paris and Cambridge, before the outbreak of war changed their lives forever. Theo enlists in the RAF and is posted to North Africa before heading to France. Feeling frustrated at secretarial desk work in London, Tessa joins the SOE (Special Operations Executive) and is parachuted into occupied France.
Hall expertly weaves the personal tragedies and lives of the siblings with wartime history, from Theo’s D-Day mission and PTSD to Tessa’s experience as a woman behind enemy lines. As the afterword reveals, real-life betrayals, accounts of agents and horrors of wartime occupation influenced the book. The novel is particularly illuminating on female SOE agents – just 39 of the 407 SOE agents in France were women, and many of their stories haven’t been told. The novel takes us right up to the 21st century, where the reverberations of the Second World War are still playing out. It’s a devastating and masterfully told novel.
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Buy now £15.39, Amazon.co.uk
'Jean' by Madeleine Dunnigan, published by Daunt Books
Best: Coming-of-age story
Release date: 12 February 2026
Genre: Coming-of-age
Madeleine Dunnigan’s debut, Jean, is a searingly beautiful but brutal coming-of-age story. Set in the late seventies at a Sussex boarding school for troubled boys, 17-year-old Jean is in his final year with Marxist dreams of venturing to China. The son of a single mother who fled pre-war Europe, Jewish and on a scholarship, he’s an outsider and silent observer of his privileged classmates. Taking place over one hot English summer, Jean becomes increasingly entangled in an intense and intimate relationship with fellow boarder Tom.
Navigating adolescent love, desire and loss, the story flashes back to his upbringing in London’s hazy late sixties counter-culture. Looming large in the background is Jean’s fraught relationship with his mother, who is herself an outsider, and his penchant toward violence, which landed him in the school for delinquents. The story of an ostracised child at boarding school is familiar, but Dunnigan’s story of a teenager figuring out both his future and his past is immersive and compelling.
Buy now £9.49, Amazon.co.uk
'A Private Man' by Stephanie Sy-Quia, published by Orion
Best: Slow burn romance
Release date: 19 February 2026
Genre: Romance/literary fiction
Stephanie Sy-Quia’s beautiful debut novel is inspired by her own grandparents’ unique love story, unfolding between 1950s Rome, 1960s England and 21st-century France. The tender story follows David, a handsome and charming young priest, newly ordained and returning to England, sworn to lifelong celibacy. Margaret, meanwhile, is reeling from the end of an affair and has found faith later in life. With her feminist views and progressive outlook, she’s drawn to a forward-thinking Catholic school in Rome. Mid-century Rome and the post-war period are evocatively imagined in Sy-Quia’s writing, from Margaret’s liberating time studying and teaching as a theology teacher, to David’s Oxford years being interrupted by the Second World War.
Their lives soon become entangled at a Catholic college in a small English parish, where a meeting of minds turns into something more dangerous. In flash forwards to the present, Margaret is living with dementia, and her grandson is unearthing the long-buried story of his grandparents' forbidden love. A story of slow-burn romance, but also of hard-won friendship, the novel explores faith, duty and love. I couldn’t put it down.
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Buy now £15.63, Amazon.co.uk
'Heart The Lover' by Lily King, published Canongate Books
Best: Literary romance
Release date: 16 October 2025
Genre: Literary romance
Released in summer 2025, Lily King’s Heart the Lover has enjoyed slow burn success – particularly on TikTok. Though technically a sequel to the American writer’s 2020 novel Writers & Lover’s, the new book easily stands on its own.
A literary love story for those who don’t usually read romances, it begins with our unnamed narrater at college where she experiences first love, heartbreak, passion and intimate friendship in the orbit of fellow students Sam and Yash. But this isn’t your average campus story. Decades later, the protagonist is married with two young children, having achieved her dream of being a successful author. But when an old lover comes calling, she’s sent spiralling back into the past.
Saying anything else would ruin the pure delight of reading the novel – but be prepared to cry. A meditation on the passing off time, coming-of-age and mortality, the literary references throughout give it extra appeal for book lovers. I’ve since read Writers & Lover’s which is just as excellent.
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Buy now £9.99, Amazon.co.uk
'Flesh' by David Szalay, published by Jonathan Cape
Best: Portrait of masculinity
Release date: 3 March 2025
Genre: Literary fiction
David Szalay’s portrait of masculinity, money, sex and chance, Flesh, has just been longlisted for the Booker Prize 2025. It didn’t disappoint on reading, with the engrossing novel following Istvan from an apartment complex in Hungary to the upper echelons of London high society. We first meet the protagonist (a man of few words, we begin to find out) when he’s 15 years old, living with his mother in a quiet town in Hungary. He’s shy and isolated and becomes embroiled in a clandestine relationship with a lonely married woman next door, which soon sends his life spiralling out of control.
Fast forward decades later, and he’s served in the army and is suffering from PTSD. A series of chance encounters later, and he’s living among the super-rich, but his past has proven that everything could come crashing down in a split second. The moving and propulsive whole-life story is sparsely written with not a hint of the florid language often seen in prize-nominated tomes. It’s the kind of readable yet surprisingly profound story to get anyone out of a reading rut.
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Buy now £14.75, Amazon.co.uk
'What We Can Know' by Ian McEwan, published by Jonathan Cape
Best: Dystopian fiction
Release date: 18 September 2025
Genre: Dystopian literary fiction
Ian McEwan’s latest novel takes place 100 years in the future, following ecological disasters and nuclear war fall out. Britain is unrecognisable as a series of archipelagoes, upon which sits the University of The South Downs. A scholar at the college, Tom Metcalfe, is an expert on early twenty first century literature and is captivated by the freedom and frivolity of the past. But his particular fascination – and obsession – is a lost poem read aloud in 2014 by a fictional acclaimed writer, leading to a century of speculation about its message.
When he uncovers a clue as to the whereabouts of the illusive poem, he unearths a brutal crime. Set partly in 2119 with flashbacks to 2014, the novel is less about a dystopian vision of the future, but more about the 21st century poet and his wife’s tumultuous love. The futuristic backdrop leaves plenty of food for thought, but the domestic noir surrounding the poem of the past keeps you gripped.
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Buy now £11, Amazon.co.uk
'The Phoenix Pencil Company' by Allison King, published by Fourth Estate
Best: Magical realist novel
Release date: 31 July 2025
Genre: Magical realism/literary fiction
A Reece Witherspoon Book Club pick, Allison King’s debut is a century-spanning story, from wartime China to present-day America. The thread of magical realism throughout nods to Gabriel García Márquez, but the novel is also enlightening on 20th-century Chinese and Taiwanese history.
It flits between the narratives of Monica and her grandma, Yun, who has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Monica is working on a new coding system at her university that connects strangers online, which she uses to find her grandma’s long-lost cousin, Meng. Successfully tracking her down in Shanghai, the elderly cousins begin a correspondence.
The story unravels through their secretive past living and working in their family's pencil factory in Shanghai during the Second World War under the Japanese occupation. King deftly paints a picture of the political tensions at the time and of the post-war immigrant experience in America. But at its heart, the Phoenix Pencil Company is an intimate story of familial love and connection throughout the generations. The magical elements also reveal themselves as a powerful plot device, so cast any realist cynicism aside. I did find the novel is a little slow at first, but rest assured, you’ll be gripped after the first few chapters.
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Buy now £14.19, Amazon.co.uk
'Strangers' by Belle Burden, published by Ebury Press
Best: marital memoir
Release date: 15 January 2026
Genre: Memoir
The Covid pandemic was a catalyst for many things, including pushing relationships to their logical conclusions, with couples moving in together and getting engaged having known one another for just a few months. Or, in the case of Belle Burden’s husband, leaving his wife of 22 years and their three children to lock down with a younger woman.
Almost too aware of her privilege, Burden comes from a long line of moguls: her father the politician, her grandmother the socialite and one-time ‘swan’ of Truman Capote. Once you crack through the over-wrought osprey analogies, this ludicrously compelling memoir - at times salacious, then moving - goes to show that no amount of holiday homes on Martha’s Vineyard will protect your heart from a cheating deadbeat husband.
Reviewed by Samuel Mathewson
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Buy now £14.75, Amazon.co.uk
'Antarctica' by Claire Keegan, published by Faber & Faber
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Best: short story collection
Release date: 9th October 2025
Genre: Short stories
Claire Keegan’s raison d’etre is maddeningly short books that leave you gasping for a neatly bow-tied ending and an objective morality to tell you how to feel about the characters. There is a quiet dread that pervades her writing, which is so moreish because it’s not spoon fed to the reader. This new hardback re-edition is a selection of short stories originally published in the ‘90s, and revisits some of her defining writings in light of her recently surging literary success.
‘Antarctica’ is the stomach-dropping eponymous fable that reinforces stranger danger, ‘The Ginger Rogers Sermon’ is a mini family saga that unpicks the claustrophobia of close-knit communities, and ‘Sisters’ puts the magnifying glass on a tense reunion between two very different siblings.
Reviewed by Samuel Mathewson
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Buy now £10.79, Amazon.co.uk
What are the best new novels to read in 2026?
Florence Knapp’s debut novel,The Names, is arguably a future classic. It’s as devastating as it is life-affirming, which is a recipe for the perfect book to dive into. Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash lives up to the hype – it’s funny yet strangely moving, with some of the best characters you’ll read this year. Two works of historical fiction that are well worth adding to your book pile, The Shock of the Light is a shocking but illuminating read, while A Private Man is a quiet and gentle love story, set against the backdrop of religion and duty.
Why you can trust IndyBest reviews
Daisy Lester is a senior IndyBest writer at The Independent. She specialises in reviewing books, and has her finger on the pulse when it comes to new releases from both debut authors and acclaimed writers. Daisy knows what makes a gripping, moving or important story, whether it’s a romantic comedy or historical drama. She loves books of every genre, from satire to mystery and crime, so there will be a book for every taste in her roundups.
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