Bestseller
Best Books to Read in 2026
What our editors would tell a friend to put on the year's reading stack right now. A mix of new prize-winners, contemporary classics that are still doing their work, and the few BookTok titles that earned the noise. If you read these eight in 2026, you read well.
8 books on this list.
Jamesby Percival Everett
5.0“James by Percival Everett 2024 review. A retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of the enslaved man Jim, in his own voice. The most important American novel of 2024 and the right Everett entry point.”
Fourth Wingby Rebecca Yarros
4.0“Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros 2023 review. Violet Sorrengail, a fragile scribe, is forced into the brutal dragon-riding war college. The first book of the Empyrean series and the romantasy novel that defined the 2023-2024 BookTok moment.”
The Midnight Libraryby Matt Haig
4.0“A gorgeous concept executed with warmth and wit. The Midnight Library will make you think differently about the choices you have made - and the ones still ahead.”
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugoby Taylor Jenkins Reid
5.0“The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid 2017 review. An aging Hollywood icon agrees to tell the true story of her career and her seven marriages, but only to an unknown journalist. The TikTok-era literary fiction novel that defined contemporary Hollywood-memoir-fiction.”
Klara and the Sunby Kazuo Ishiguro
5.0“Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro 2021 review. Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, watches the children passing by the storefront and waits to be chosen. Late-career Ishiguro at his most patient and most strange.”
Pachinkoby Min Jin Lee
5.0“Pachinko by Min Jin Lee 2017 review. Four generations of a Korean family in twentieth-century Japan, beginning with Sunja's pregnancy by a married Korean gangster in 1933 Busan. The Apple TV+ adaptation source and one of the canonical contemporary Korean-American literary novels.”
Normal Peopleby Sally Rooney
5.0“Normal People by Sally Rooney 2018 review. Connell and Marianne grow up in the same small Sligo town, attend Trinity College Dublin together, and orbit each other across four years of intermittent intimacy. The literary-fiction novel that defined the Rooney moment.”
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Storeby James McBride
5.0“The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride 2023 review. A 1972 skeleton found at the bottom of a Pottstown, Pennsylvania well sends the novel back to a 1930s neighborhood where Black, Jewish, and immigrant families lived alongside each other. The most important American novel of 2023.”