Here is a tentative and wildly aspirational list of books I’d love to read in 2026.
This year I am cutting down on my arc list and focusing more on what I’m calling my TBR Challenge, where I read the books I already own. I have embarassingly long lists of unread books both on my physical and digital shelves. Many of them are listed here.
Bold — Read
Link — Reviewed
I’ve switched to logging my reading journal through notion, which is not a public site, but you can still follow me on goodreads if you’d like some sense of what I’m reading 🙂
Romance
- Our Perfect Storm | Carley Fortune
- Dolly All the Time | Annabel Monaghan
- Same Time Next Summer | Annabel Monaghan
- The Shippers | Katherine Center
- In Her Own League | Liz Tomforde
- Fever Dream | Elsie Silver
- The Seven Year Slip | Ashley Poston
- All Rhodes Lead Here | Mariana Zapata (reread)
- Expiration Dates | Rebecca Serle
- Once and Again | Rebecca Serle
- The Art of Catching Feelings | Alicia Thompson
- Just for the Summer | Abby Jimenez
- Love and Other Words | Christina Lauren
- Between Us | Mhairi McFarlane
- The Favorites | Layne Fargo
- The Lost Husband | Katherine Center
- From Lukov with Love | Mariana Zapata
- Summer Reading | Jenn McKinlay
- Rewind it Back | Liz Tomforde
- Funny You Should Ask | Elissa Sussman
- Catch the Sun | Jennifer Hartmann
- You, With A View | Jessica Joyce
- Stranger Things Have Happened | Kasie West
- Wild About You | Jo Lovett
- The Last Page | Katie Holt
- Beneath Still Waters | Linny Mack
- Tropesick | Lauren Okie
- In Every Possible Way | Alicia Thompson
- Ideal Life | Evelyn Skye
- Counting the Days | Laura Chinn
- Return to Sender | Stephanie Parente
- Every Version of You | Natalie Messier
- Reasons to Be Loved By You | Hannah Brown
- Mistletoe All the Way | Lauren Blakely
- The Twelve Loves of Christmas | Anthology
- Doomsdate | Laura Piper Lee
- If Not You | Ellen O’Clover
- Experiments in Offline Dating | Kat Mackenzie
- Say You’ll Remember Me | Abby Jimenez
- Love Interest | Clare Gilmore
- Wild Card | Elsie Silver
- One Day in December | Josie Silver (reread)
- Meet Me Under the Mistletoe | Jenny Bayliss
- The Comeback | Lily Chu
- A Winter Wish | Emily Stone
- The City Baker’s Guide to Country Living | Louise Miller
- King of Greed | Ana Huang
- King of Sloth | Ana Huang
- King of Envy | Ana Huang
- King of Envy | Ana Huang
- Bourbon and Secrets | Victoria Wilder
- Maine Characters | Hannah Orenstein
- Something Wilder | Christina Lauren
- Romantic Comedy | Curtis Sittenfeld
- The Break-Up Pact | Emma Lord
- One Day | David Nicholls
- Mistakes We Never Made | Hannah Brown
- Pictures of You | Emma Grey
Sci-Fi/Fantasy
- Rites of the Starling | Devney Perry
- Chosen Son | Adrienne Young
- Starling House | Alix E. Harrow
- All We Have Is Time | Amy Tordoff
- The Once and Future Queen | Paula Lafferty
- Beast Business | Ilona Andrews
- This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me | Ilona Andrews
- The Shattered King | Charlie N. Holmberg
- Tigana | Guy Gavriel Kay
- The Relic of the Frostark | E.J. Venton
- The Priory of the Orange Tree | Samantha Shannon
- Jade City | Fonda Lee
- Red Rising | Pierce Brown
- Babel | R.F. Kuang
- This is How You Lose the Time War | Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone
- Every Exquisite Thing | Laura Steven
- Liar in the Hollow Court | Bethany Atazadeh
- Sublimation | Isabel J. Kim
- Daggermouth | H.M. Wolfe
- The Side Questers | J.J. Kochmanski
- Massif | Garth Nix
- Eyes of Steel | Lea Novels
- The Three-Body Problem | Cixin Liu
- The Lions of Al-Rassan | Guy Gavriel Kay
- A Song for Arbonne | Guy Gavriel Kay
- The Isle in the Silver Sea | Tasha Suri
- Magic Bites | Ilona Andrews
- Voyage of the Damned | Frances White
- Greenteeth | Molly O’Neill
- Contact | Carl Sagan
- The Windup Girl | Paolo Bacigalupi
- The Ten Thousand Doors of January | Alix E. Harrow
- The Game of Kings | Dorothy Dunnett
- Armageddon Summer | Yolen/Coville
Mystery/Thriller
- Gone Before Goodbye | Harlan Coben & Reese Witherspoon
- Handle With Care | Marybeth Mayhew Whalen
- The Gray Man | Mark Greaney
- Dark Matter | Blake Crouch
- This Story Might Save Your Life | Tiffany Crum
- Spies, Lies, and Alibis | Natalie Walters
- Night Objects | Eli Raphael
- It Could Have Been Her | Lisa Jewell
- That Night | Gilliam McAllister
- This Changes Everything | Lisa Scottoline
- Promise Me Never | Liv Constantine
- Please Enjoy Your Stay | Tara Goedjen
- The Five Year Lie | Sabrina Bowen
- What Happened to the Bennetts | Lisa Scottoline
- Just Another Missing Person | Gillian McAllister
- The Andromeda Strain | Michael Crichton
- First Lie Wins | Ashley Elston
- Twenty Years Later | Charlie Donlea
Literary/General Fiction
- The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise | Dan Gemeinhart
- Possession | A.S. Byatt
- The Good Mothers | Caitlin Weaver
- Dandelion Is Dead | Rosie Storey
- The Divorce Party | Laura Dave
- Start at the End | Emma Grey
- The Overstory | Richard Powers
- Damnation Spring | Ash Davidson
- Cleo McDougal Regrets Nothing | Allison Winn Scotch
- The Sideways Life of Denny Voss | Holly Kennedy
- Remarkably Bright Creatures | Shelby Van Pelt
- On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous | Ocean Vuong
- Britt-Marie Was Here | Fredrik Backman
- Brighter Than Before | Courtney Walsh
- The Last Run | Rachel Weaver
- Little Wonder | Sophie Chen Keller
- When Lemons Give You Life | Anna Johnston
- Solstice | Carol Gilligan
- Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt | Ben Reeves
- Man Overboard! | Kathleen Rooney
- Habits of the Sea | Shea Ernshaw
- The Weight of Angels | John Boyne
- Madeline McKnight Signs Off | Evan Brooke
- Paper Ghosts | Sarah Addison Allen
- Untamed Coast | Kevin C. Morris
- Every Story is A Love Story | Imbolo Mbue
- Demon Copperhead | Barbara Kingsolver
- Same As It Ever Was | Claire Lombardo
- Crossroads | Jonathan Franzen
- Out Stealing Horses | Per Petterson
- Life of Pi | Yann Martel
- Sandwich | Catherine Newman
- The Amazing Adventure of Kavalier & Clay | Michael Chabon
- Hello, Sunshine | Laura Dave
- So Old, So Young | Grant Ginder
- Spectacular Things | Beck Dorey-Stein
- The Wedding People | Alison Espach
- Atmosphere | Taylor Jenkins Reid
- The First Time I Saw Him | Laura Dave
- Firefly Lane | Kristin Hannah
Historical Fiction
- Here Be Dragons | Sharon Penman
- The Pillars of the Earth | Ken Follet
- A Song of War | Anthology
- Pollock’s Last Lover | Stephen P. Kiernan
- The Clan of the Cave Bear | Jean M. Auel
- Atalanta | Jennifer Saint
- The Bookseller of Inverness | S.G. MacLean
- Don’t Forget to Write | Sara Goodman Confino
- All the Light We Cannot See | Anthony Doerr
- Pachinko | Min Jin Lee
- A Beautiful Disguise | Roseanna M. White
- The Blind Assassin | Margaret Atwood (reread)
- We, the Drowned | Carsten Jensen
- Blood of Hercules | Jasmine Mas
- The Song of Achilles | Madeline Miller
- Clytemnestra | Costanza Casati
- The Buried Book | David Damrosch
Classics
- The Three Musketeers | Alexandre Dumas
- 1984 | George Orwell (reread)
- Death Comes for the Archbishop | Willa Cather
- The Iliad | Homer
- The Odyssey | Homer
- Meditations | Marcus Aurelius
- Absalom, Absalom! | William Faulkner
- North and South | Elizabath Gaskell
- The Brothers Karamazov | Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Watership Down | Richard Adams
Non-Fiction
- That’s A Great Question, I’d Love To Tell You | Elyse Myers
- Poems & Prayers | Matthew McConaughey
- Reading Like A Writer | Francine Prose
- Stolen Focus | Johann Hari
- Thinking, Fast and Slow | Daniel Kahneman
- The Signs | Tara Swart
- A World Appears | Michael Pollan
- The Artist’s Way | Julia Cameron
- Blasting Through Blocks | Julia Cameron
- Big Feelings, Big Joy | April Snow
- The Disappearance of Rituals: A Topology of the Present | Byung-Chul Han
- The Comfort Crisis | Michael Easter
- The Next Renaissance | Zack Kass
- Inventing the Renaissance | Ada Palmer
- The Book that Made Your World | Vishal Mangalwadi
- What’s Going Right | Paul Conti
- Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind | Shunryu Suzuki
- Dirt to Soil | Gabe Brown
- Togetherness | Rowan Hooper
- This is What Happens When Women Read | Julianna Glasse
- In My Darkest Hour | Dave Mustaine
- Better Good | Scott M. Curran