The Most Anticipated Stories for Your Book Club in 2026

Zorah Sharaf could do no wrong. Zorah Sharaf brought shame upon her family. What’s the truth? Depends on who you ask … Like a literary game of ping-pong, Good People compels the reader to reconsider what might have happened even on the previous page. Told through a kaleidoscope of perspectives, it is a riveting, provocative, and haunting story of family — sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers, and the communities that claim us as family in difficult times.

From New York Times bestselling author of This Time Tomorrow, an irresistible story about what happens when your teenage fantasy comes true after you’re already an adult. In a smart and incisive book packed with laugh-out-loud reflections on fame, aging, marriage, and middle age, Emma Straub delivers a richly textured story that shows us real passion is never truly lost, that what we love makes us who we are, and that deep meaning can sometimes be found in a sea of screaming fans.

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of I’m Glad My Mom Died comes a sad, funny, thrilling novel about sex, consumerism, class, desire, loneliness, the internet, rage, intimacy, power, and the (oftentimes misguided) lengths we’ll go to in order to get what we want.

From the iconic crime writer who “inspires cultic devotion in readers” (The New Yorker) and has been called “incandescent” by Stephen King, “absolutely mesmerizing” by Gillian Flynn, and “unputdownable” (People), comes the third and final book in the million-copy-bestselling Cal Hooper trilogy.

A magnificent new novel from the bestselling, award-winning author of An American Marriage — Tayari Jones has written an unforgettable novel that sparkles with wit and intelligence and deep feeling about two lifelong friends whose worlds converge after many years apart in the face of a devastating tragedy.

Pulitzer Prize-winning, #1 New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth Strout’s new novel tells the story of a chance incident that sparks a powerful realization in a beloved teacher’s life — a poignant meditation on loneliness, friendship, parenthood, and the importance of truth in a capsizing world.

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of First Lie Wins comes a tense, feverish thriller about two women’s lives that are forever intertwined when a murder threatens to expose them both.

In this propulsive debut, a Buffalo Bills cheerleader will stop at nothing to solve the disappearance of her best friend and teammate, navigating the dark underbelly of a hardscrabble city, the grime and glamour of professional cheerleading, and her own tangled family history.

The Longe siblings are really botching their parents’ American Dream. “A warm, smart, hilarious, delicious, riveting” (Curtis Sittenfeld) debut about the uncomfortable, unbreakable ties of family as four adult siblings come home to confront the state of their own lives and each other.

Lucie comes from a long line of witches, with powers passed down from mother to daughter. Many of them have hidden or repressed their gifts to appease disgusted or fearful men. But against the wishes of her controlling husband, Lucie initiates her twins into their family’s peculiar womanhood. In a few short months, Maud and Lise’s powers quickly become more potent than their mother’s, opening them to liberation and euphoria beyond what Lucie and her foremothers ever considered …

In this rowdy, frank reflection on illness, fame, sex, and everything in between, the remarkable mind behind the hit series Girls and the bestselling author of Not That Kind of Girl asks whether fulfilling her creative ambitions has been worth the pain.

The sexual assault that stunned the world. A courageous woman’s rallying call for shame to “change sides.” For the very first time, Gisèle Pelicot tells her story. Part memoir, part act of defiance, A Hymn to Life is a moving story of survival, testimony, and courage, and an unforgettable portrait of a woman who broke her silence, reclaimed her voice, and forced a reckoning.

Joy won’t cure you, but it will carry you. Bestselling author and Duke University professor Kate Bowler reveals the surprising magic of joy — and how we can access it even when happiness feels out of reach. This is not a book about fixing your life. It is about how we can all find more — feel more — by making room for small, extraordinary moments.

From FBI: Most Wanted’s Dylan McDermott and former FBI Special Agent Christopher Whitcomb, a revealing investigation into the disappearance of the Springfield Three, a cold case that has bewildered police officers, the FBI, and avid true crime followers for three decades.

Nobel Laureate and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Beloved, Toni Morrison, investigates Black characters in the American literary canon and the way they shaped the nation’s collective unconscious. To read these lectures, collected here for the first time, is to encounter Morrison, not just the writer but also the teacher, in the most profound and subversive way yet.

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of From Strength to Strength, the definitive account of how the modern world makes meaning so hard to find — and a plan to discover your life’s deepest purpose.

You know my name, but you do not know me. Your historians call me seductress, but I was ever in love’s thrall. Your playwrights speak of witchcraft, but my talents came from the gods themselves. Your poets sing of my bloodlust, but I was always protecting my children. How willfully they refuse to concede that a woman could be powerful, strategic, and divinely blessed to rule. Death will silence me no longer. This is not the story of how I died. But how I lived … Cleopatra tells her own story in this evocative and sensuous historical epic from the bestselling and award-winning author of Faebound and The Final Strife.

From the bestselling, prize-winning author of Say Nothing and Empire of Pain, a spellbinding account of a family devastated by the sudden death of their nineteen-year-old son, only to discover that he had created a secret life which drew him into the dangerous criminal underworld that lies beneath London’s glittering surface.

A brilliant, sweeping, tour de force moving between the U.S. and modern India, following the illicit liaisons, real estate dramas, political ambitions, and mortal betrayals of one prominent Delhi family — from the author of the National Book Award finalist The Association of Small Bombs.

A stunning, fierce collection from a master of the short story and one of the most important writers of our time. Precise, surprising, and provocative, anchored by profound insight into human nature, Brawler reveals the repeated, sometimes heartbreaking turning points between love and fear, compassion and violence, reason and instinct, altruism and what it takes to survive.

The New York Times bestselling author of Where’d You Go, Bernadette returns to form in her most exuberant and life-affirming novel yet with the story of one woman’s cheerful determination to live a life of the mind only to have the heart force its way in.

When you lose your way in life, the Elsewhere Express just might find you. Step on board the train that may take you to your life’s purpose in this wistful, Ghibli-esque fantasy from the bestselling author of Water Moon.

A sweeping novel about a correspondent trapped behind enemy lines during the Korean War, and the women who help her find her way home, from the national bestselling author of Daughters of Shandong. Moving and triumphant, The Young Will Remember sheds light on a “Forgotten War,” the resilience of love within our darkest histories, and the indefatigable determination of mothers to protect their children.