Books to look out for in 2026 – fiction
Maggie O’Farrell, Yann Martel and Julian Barnes are among the authors publishing new novels this year
The beginning of the books calendar is usually dominated by debuts, but January 2026 sees releases from some of the year’s biggest authors. Known for his surreally bittersweet short stories, George Saunders has written only one novel so far – but that one won the Booker prize. The follow-up to 2017’s Lincoln in the Bardo, Vigil (Bloomsbury) focuses on an unquiet spirit called Jill who helps others pass over from life to whatever comes next. She is called to the deathbed of an oil tycoon who is rapidly running out of time to face up to his ecological crimes, in a rallying cry for human connection and environmental action. Ali Smith’s Glyph (Hamish Hamilton) is a companion to 2024’s Gliff, and promises to tell a story initially hidden in that previous novel. Expect fables, siblings, phantoms and horses in a typically playful shout of resistance against war, genocide and the increasingly hostile social discourse. And in Departure(s) (Jonathan Cape), Julian Barnes announces his own – this blend of memoir and fiction, exploring memory, illness, mortality and love across the decades, will be his last book. “Your presence has delighted me,” he assures the reader. “Indeed, I would be nothing without you.”
The Hamnet adaptation hits UK cinemas in January, but Maggie O’Farrell’s next novel isn’t out until June. Land (Tinder), a multigenerational saga which opens in 19th-century Ireland in the wake of the famine, is inspired by her own family history and centres on a man tasked with mapping the country for the Ordnance Survey. There’ll be much anticipation, too, for The Things We Never Say from Elizabeth Strout (Viking, May). The ultra-prolific Strout is adored for her interconnected novels, but this story of a man with a secret is a standalone, introducing characters we’ve never met before. In John of John (Picador, May) Douglas Stuart, author of much-loved Booker winner Shuggie Bain, portrays a young gay man returning home from art school to the lonely croft on the Hebridean island where he grew up. And September sees a new novel from Irish writer Sebastian Barry: The Newer World (Faber) follows Costa winner Days Without End and A Thousand Moons in transporting the reader to late 19th-century America in the aftermath of the Civil War.