New releases to put on your radar in 2026

From romantasy to riveting celebrity life stories, here an expert predicts this year's bestsellers.

- By HANNAH STEPHENSON

READERS planning their book choices for the new year may be making a note of forthcoming titles from new authors and old favourites.

There will be volumes to mark the late Queen's centenary year, a fat collection of books focusing on the continuing interest in weight-loss jabs and, of course, the usual sprinkling of celebrity memoirs.

“In fiction, the ongoing surge of romantasy continues,” says Bea Carvalho, head of books at Waterstones. “Likewise, healing fiction - cosy, cute, meditative novels - particularly translated fiction from Korea and Japan, will be significant.”

Hollywood icon Liza Minnelli releases her memoir and there'll be a fourth volume of diaries, entitled Enough Said, from celebrated playwright Alan Bennett.

Here's a roundup of 2026's big reads.

FICTION

DEPARTURE(S)

By Julian Barnes (January 22)

“This one reads like it might be semi-autobiographical, a story of a writer at the late stage of his career,” says Bea of the Booker Prizewinning author's forthcoming story to be published three days after his 80th birthday. It examines the nature of love, memory and mortality and what it means to face the end of life.

VIGIL

By George Saunders (January 27)

His first novel since winning the Booker Prize for Lincoln In The Bardo, Bea explains: “Like all of his writing, it’s a very surreal, slightly otherworldly novella about a tycoon on his death bed being visited by a being from the other side.”

A FAR-FLUNG LIFE

By ML Stedman (March 5)

The author of the bestseller The Light Between Oceans, which was adapted into a film, brings us a multi-generational novel set in rural Australia about a family in a sheep-rearing farm in the decade following a tragic event. “It’s heart-wrenching and I think it’s going to be one of those books which has extremely wide appeal - literary but encapsulating all of life,” says Bea.

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