14 Books to Add to Your TBR List: Fall 2026
WD’s Editor-in-Chief, Amy Jones, shares 14 books you’ll want to add to your fall 2026 TBR list.
I’m about to say something controversial: I don’t really like fall. I know, I know, it’s everyone’s favorite season because we have fewer 90+ degree days, and it’s sweater weather, and everything is pumpkin spice (including things that really, really shouldn’t be). But for me, fall means shorter, colder days and less sunlight. And, I prefer leaves to be on the trees rather than on the ground where they make me itch and sneeze.
But, there is one thing I actually do love about fall: It’s the time of AMAZING book releases. When I started working at Borders Books (R.I.P.) in 2005, I quickly learned that many of the biggest books of the year come out in the fall, and that saved the season for me.
This year is no different. I requested more galleys and advance reader copies (ARCs) than ever before because this year’s fall release scheduled is packed with authors whose previous work I’ve loved along with some absolutely stunning debuts.
Here are 14 new and upcoming books to add to your Fall 2026 TBR list, organized by release date.
[WD uses affiliate links; descriptions from publisher websites.]
Before You Were Anne by Emiko Jean
(Suspense, Simon & Schuster, Sept. 1, 2026)
After a woman is killed and her daughter vanishes, detective Chelsey Calhoun uncovers a legacy of violence and survival that spans from Japan to Seattle in this propulsive novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Return of Ellie Black.
A murdered woman. A missing daughter. A truth buried across two continents.
Married, pregnant, and thriving in her career, Detective Chelsey Calhoun’s life finally feels whole, until an explosive new case shatters everything. A mother is dead. Her sixteen-year-old daughter, Naomi, has disappeared. And the search will awaken questions about Chelsey’s own origins—questions she’s spent a lifetime afraid to ask.
The victim called herself Anne Walker. But she was born Rika Takahashi, and her journey from a remote Japanese farm to suburban Seattle conceals decades of deception. Across Tokyo’s shadowed underworld, an isolated Idaho town, and years of carefully constructed lies, Rika reinvented herself at every turn. But she was always running—from someone, or something.
Now, Chelsey must find Naomi before she becomes the next victim. But the deeper she delves into Rika’s hidden life, the more she discovers: some secrets are worth killing for. And the most dangerous truths may be the ones closest to home.
Told in three interwoven voices, Before You Were Anne is a gripping suspense novel about the lies that bind families and the sins that echo across generations.
Exit Party by Emily St. John Mandel
(Literary, Knopf, Sept. 15, 2026)
The award-winning, bestselling author of Station Eleven and Sea of Tranquility returns with a breathtaking novel of doubles, shadow worlds, and fractured timelines as a man disappears from a glittering Los Angeles party, and a woman—a gunrunner, an art collector, an operative of the State—searches for answers.
Los Angeles, 2031: The first spring after the collapse of the United States, peacekeeping troops withdraw from the city, the Jacaranda trees blossom, and the curfew is finally lifted. Ari Waker and her roommate pass the gauntlet of bomb-sniffing dogs, the shanty towns, and the Red Cross tents as they walk across Silverlake to a party. The mood is ecstatic inside the apartment, people drink and dance, a woman wears a silver dress, pleated like tinfoil. And then: A shift. A bewildered twin, an uncanny doppelganger stumbles through the crowd and out into the night, and Kareem, the party’s host, vanishes into thin air.
As Ari Waker unravels the mystery of this inexplicable night, Emily St. John Mandel unfurls a story that takes us from a future America splintered by civil war to the seaside cliffs of Greece where weapons dealers hide in an elegant resort, and from the domed city of Paris to a colony on the moon. An unforgettable literary feat, Exit Party is a novel about the price of safety, the perils of the surveillance state, a requiem for a world not unlike our own, and a breathtaking story of resilience in the face of cataclysmic change.
Fallow by Sarah Anderson
(Satire, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Sept. 15, 2026)
Slyly funny and disarmingly tender, Fallow is the story of a young woman who signs up to be the world’s first in-house corporate surrogate, then finds herself caught up in a social experiment of another kind.
Natalie knows one truth: there is no such thing as a good job.
As the clock ticks away at the call center where she logs complaints of workplace harassment, she tries to ignore the increasing pain in her jaw. She has no dental insurance. She has no skills or ambitions. She has student loans. And, minute by minute, she hears the many ways workers are not just not getting by, but actually getting hustled.
Then, at the blood bank where she sells her plasma, a mysterious flyer leads her to The Company. Natalie turns out to be the perfect candidate for their pilot program, pitched as an opportunity to help women access greater gender equity. She will be their in-house surrogate, delivering seven babies in ten years and enabling their executives to have motherhood without maternity leave. Finally, she will be adequately—generously—compensated.
For years, her every need is met: stacks of healthy meals in the refrigerator of a luxury condo, fitness coaches and nutritionists, around-the-clock health care. Between deliveries, she takes time off—a fallow period, with no obligations or expectations. For the first time in her life, she is good at her job; for the first time, she feels free.
But just as she’s about to fulfill the terms of her contract, a staffing decision upends everything. Natalie is pulled into an entirely different kind of social experiment, one that raises new questions about her future, her freedom, her purpose, what she can expect from the world, and what she can offer to it.
Woundingly funny and genuinely moving, Sarah Anderson’s Fallow is a tender, alarmingly real vision of a woman balancing on the knife-edge of capitalism as she comes to realize who she wants to be.
American Hagwon by Min Jin Lee
(Literary, Cardinal, Sept. 29. 2026)
In schools and churches, hotel rooms and nail salons, law firms and fried-fish shops; in cramped, dingy apartments and luxury, gated communities, the men, women, and children in American Hagwon struggle to find satisfaction and meaning in a world that seems to grow less forgiving with each passing year. Once comfortably middle class in Korea, John and Helen Koh and their three children—Bo, DH, and Mido—find their lives upended, first by a shocking betrayal by John's oldest friend, then by the 1997 Asian financial crisis.
Desperately striving to regain their footing, they leave Seoul for Sydney and eventually settle in Southern California—where new vistas of opportunity open up for the children as their parents, strangers in a strange land, must adjust to a new life in which their experience and education mean little, and they set their sights on whatever it takes to provide for their children's futures. The Kohs, their friends, relatives, and even their foes move in and out of each other's lives as they navigate new courses across the years, always nursing the almost all-consuming faith that education will lead the next generation to success and security.
In American Hagwon, Min Jin Lee has crafted an unforgettable, panoramic novel where the smallest of gestures can have enormous repercussions, where the bonds of family and of memory twist and fray but rarely break, and where willful self-sacrifice—for the benefit of loved ones and even strangers—is a kind of prayer.
* Keep an eye out for the Nov/Dec 2026 issue of Writer’s Digest featuring Min Jin Lee talking about what inspired and how she wrote American Hagwon.
The Best Short Stories 2026 edited by Tommy Orange
(Short Stories, Vintage, Sept. 29, 2026)
The prestigious annual anthology features prize-winning stories by an international array of talented writers, including Weike Wang, Colm Tóibín, Louise Erdrich, Samanta Schweblin, Jenny Xie, Kevin Wilson, Brandon Taylor, and Catherine Lacey.
Continuing a century-long tradition of cutting-edge literary excellence, this year’s edition contains twenty prizewinning stories chosen from the thousands published in magazines over the previous year. Guest editor Tommy Orange has brought his own refreshing perspective to the prize, selecting stories by an engaging mix of celebrated names and emerging voices. The winning stories are accompanied by an introduction by Orange, observations from the winning writers on what inspired them, and an extensive resource list of magazines that publish short fiction.
THE WINNING STORIES
“Five Bridges,” Colm Tóibín
“Flowers and Their Meanings,” Marie-Helene Bertino
“American Realism,” Brandon Taylor
“The Hare,” Ismael Ramos, translated from the Galician by Jacob Rogers
“Where Are You and Where Is My Money,” Ucheoma Onwutuebe
“Love of My Days,” Louise Erdrich
“Stick Season,” Jenny Xie
“She-Bear,” Evgenia Nekrasova, translated from the Russian by Marianna Suleymanova
“This Time and the Next,” Noel Quiñones
“Pretend,” Mary Williams
“Case Study,” Weike Wang
“Inês,” João Pedro Vala
“Tender,” Sarah LaBrie
“Earshot,” Guka Han, translated from the French by Katie Shireen Assef
“The Masterclass,” William Pei Shih
“Welcome to the Club,” Samanta Schweblin, translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell
“Waiting, a Quintet,” Kimberly Blaeser
“Muscle to Muscle, Toe to Toe,” Kim Samek
“All Stories,” Kevin Wilson
“The Ghost Coat,” Catherine Lacey
Ply by Hernan Diaz
(Dystopian, Riverhead Books, Sept. 29, 2026)
The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Trust turns to the future with a novel that examines the place of technology in the American imagination.
Centuries from now, at the dawn of a historical epoch filled with both uncertainty and promise, an orphan is adrift in a city on the brink of a great transformation. The state has been dismantled, and humans are reinventing social bonds and learning new ways to coexist with nature. Following a childhood defined by loss, survival, and found family, the orphan grows up to become a “pincher,” someone who steals electricity from the grid to sell it on the black market. It’s a high-risk life, one that brings her into a rich art and music scene where she powers underground concerts. It also leads her to a colossal scientific invention that could change the very fabric of reality.
After rewriting America’s past with his two previous novels, Hernan Diaz defies expectations with his third and gives us a breathtaking glimpse into the future. A major achievement from a major contemporary writer, Ply questions the place of technology in the American experiment with a plot that grabs both heart and mind. It is a novel of ideas built from a story of people. Combining Dickensian odyssey, family drama, and scientific thriller, Ply poignantly charts the tenuous boundaries of selfhood and the distance that inevitably stands between us and those we love.
The Ferryman’s Daughter by Yasmin Angoe
(Thriller, Thomas & Mercer, Oct. 1, 2026)
The daughter of an infamous murderer gets caught up in a copycat's sick game in this thriller about legacy, self-determination, and corrosive secrecy from the bestselling author of Not What She Seems.
Forensic science teacher Sanaa Karrem buried her past as deep as she could. When her serial killer father, known as "the Ferryman," disappeared eighteen years ago, she tried to disappear with him. She changed her name, built a new life. And for a while, it all felt like a distant nightmare.
But when bodies turn up with pennies on their eyes, Sanaa recognizes her father's signature. The nightmare becomes real again. Soon, Sanaa starts receiving threatening messages and increasingly disturbing "gifts." The killer is toying with her, and she can't tell anyone--not even her own fiancé, Detective Marcus Morelli, lead investigator on the case.
As the body count rises, Sanaa leans on her expertise as a former medical examiner to close in on the killer. What she finds is a horrific manifestation of her father's legacy, hitting shockingly close to home. But what disturbs her most is how much that legacy still lingers within her...
Partita by Barbara Kingsolver
(Literary, Harper, Oct. 6, 2026)
The story of a brief, passionate, life-changing love affair, wrapped up in what might be the greatest romance of all: our eternal human longing for art and beauty.
Livia Cable has made her peace with her marriage and modest livelihood in the farm country where she grew up, until a shocking phone call from an old lover shakes her to the core. Decades earlier, this man knew her as Livia Bohusz, a music conservatory student estranged from her home and family, uncertain of anything except her passion for music and promise as an extraordinary pianist. His request, now, to see her again stirs up ghosts she’s kept at bay for a lifetime.
Shifting between past and present, Livia’s decision to meet or reject the reunion means confronting step by step, in memories framed as musical dances, the experiences of childhood loss, abandonment, self-immolating passion, and perilous attachment to a man who broke her belief in love and ruptured the course of her life.
With razor-sharp acuity and deep affection, Pulitzer Prize winner Barbara Kingsolver’s unforgettable new novel reflects on class barriers, the risks of ambition, and the timeless, life-changing power of art.
The Tulip Poplars by Silas House
(Historical, Algonquin, Oct. 13, 2026)
Amos and Tom fall in love while working in the tobacco fields during the hot summers of the early 1900s, yet Tom cannot shake his strict religious upbringing nor the responsibilities of his family's farm. His longtime friend Maeve also pines for a man she can't have, lest she endanger his already tenuous life in a town and world shaped by racial lines. How do you live a life that feels untrue, and at what point do you risk everything?
The Tulip Poplars is a gorgeous and moving novel spanning most of the 20th century, centering on four people trying to find happiness in a world that demands conventional choices. House tells a deeply intimate story of faith and doubt, race and class, sexual desire and the longing to be good when you've been taught that you are evil for loving who you love. Based on the story of an ancestor, House's new novel takes us from NYC to Southern cities to Appalachia and will leave you with a bigger heart.
Another Name for Red by Amber Blaeser-Wardzala
(Contemporary, Pantheon, Oct. 13, 2026)
The debut novel by one of the bestselling Never Whistle at Night’s most memorable contributors, in which, after a young Anishinaabe woman vanishes, her sister tries to pick up the pieces of her broken family, even as her investigations put her at risk of suffering a similar fate.
Middle Sister is haunted by everyone in her community who has disappeared—as well as those who remain. Her ex-best friend and ex-boyfriend are walking relics of the girl she used to be, while her family—her activist mother, checked-out father, and attention-starved younger siblings—are reminders of the elder sister she can never live up to. Then there’s John Smith, the infamous white man with red cowboy boots living on stolen reservation land, whose obsessive attentions are as repellant as they are compelling. But most of all, there are the thousands of unacknowledged missing and murdered Indigenous women, including Older Sister, whose year-long absence from the reservation has torn her remaining family apart.
With local authorities proving useless, Middle Sister decides to start an investigation of her own, beginning with the mysterious “Eric”—a white man from a neighboring town who Older Sister claimed to love, and who she swore loved her. Attempting to hunt down the correct white Eric in the haystack of Minnesota forces Middle Sister to seek help from the community from which she’s grown alienated, starting with her coworker, Casanova; a stray rez dog; and Nookomis, her grandmother who’s foreseen her own death. Yet John still lurks in the growing wintry shadows, offering a sort of surrender that Middle Sister can’t help being drawn to. In the end, she must choose: either let the guilt consume her or forgive herself and fight.
Dead Batteries by Kate Maupin
(Dystopian, Crown, Oct. 27, 2026)
A single mom and her neurodivergent son battle for survival and stability in a post-apocalyptic world, one that is arguably no less harsh to them then the pre-pandemic one, in this gripping, one-of-a-kind debut.
Ever since May’s husband decided parenthood wasn’t for him and left, it’s just been May and her autistic son with high support needs, Davis, against the world. A rather unwelcoming one that never had much patience or understanding.
Then 99.9% of the population was wiped out by a virus in just a few weeks, and that world ended. May has kept herself and Davis alive only through the self-imposed isolation she got so good at in the Before. They have their routines, their cozy nest in an abandoned library, and most importantly, the old battery-powered Game Boy that offers Davis familiarity and comfort in a world that’s difficult to understand.
One day May runs into a stranger while out scavenging for the precious batteries that keep Davis's Game Boy alive. This stranger calls himself Bird, he has intel—and a proposition. Supposedly there’s an entire haven of survivors nearby. Bird wants in, and he needs May and Davis to play along as wife and child in order to guarantee himself a spot. Besides, wouldn’t May want to be part of a community again?
Not particularly—but the survivors have batteries. So she reluctantly agrees. And while May knows better than to trust the man who ripped her and Davis out of their routines, she can’t help but open up to him. But when Bird’s true motivations come to light, her old life collides with the new in terrifyingly dark ways, forcing May to question how far she would go to protect her son. How long can she and Davis last until the batteries run out?
Venus, Vanishing by Rebecca Birrell
(Historical Fiction, Holt, Oct. 27, 2026)
Portrait of a Lady on Fire meets The Safekeep in this gripping debut that reckons with art forgery, desire, suspicion, and resistance.
In raucous 1928 Berlin, Hannah Sherman has deviated from the traditional arc of a woman’s life. An artist and a runaway, she revels in the city’s underground art scene and her newfound freedom. Working as a tailor while studying art in every spare moment, Hannah comes to know women and their bodies, first with measuring tape and silk, and later through sensuous layers of paint.
Hannah feels like she can finally call herself an artist when an intoxicating, wealthy female collector commissions an elaborate series of nude portraits. But after Hannah finishes the acclaimed Venus paintings, she discovers that her work has been tampered with and exhibited under a man’s name. When lines between artist and muse are crossed in a heady but perilous affair, Hannah transforms her work into an act of revenge, finding herself caught up in a devastating game of betrayal.
Laced with queer desire and life-threatening secrets, Venus, Vanishing pulses with the hedonism and danger of 1930s Berlin as history comes to Hannah’s door, offering a heart-pounding story of Jewish survival, creativity, and resistance.
Sunflower Season by Danica Nava
(Romance, Berkely, Nov. 3, 2026)
Fed up and burnt-out, a woman leaves the city to take on the challenge of owning a sunflower farm but finds that her biggest trial is facing her first love in this charming second-chance romance by USA Today bestselling author Danica Nava.
Drained by her high-pressure tech job, June Walker finds an escape in homesteading videos and the fantasy of a quieter life. When she finally hits her breaking point, she does the only reasonable thing: She quits her job and buys a crumbling sunflower farm in rural Oklahoma, where she grew up.
June thought her biggest challenge in restoring Sunshine Farm would be the rotting fences but soon comes to the crushing realization that “positive vibes” are not a business plan. Nothing, however, tests her resolve quite like running into her first love, the boy she left behind after her world imploded when she was seventeen. She’s back for a fresh start, not to unpack old heartbreaks.
Noah Abbott never left Love County. Between his family, his job with the local fire brigade, and a town that knows him inside and out, he has everything he needs—except answers. So when June Walker returns as the new owner of Sunshine Farm, Noah is determined to find out why the girl who once meant everything to him vanished without a word.
As old wounds crack open and attraction flares back to life, June and Noah are forced to reckon with their past and decide whether first love is a memory best left buried or the one thing worth replanting.
The Squatters by Saba Brelvi
(Contemporary, The Dial Press, Nov. 10, 2026)
Two families collide in this provocative debut about motherhood, migration, and the distance between who we are and who we want to be.
How far are you willing to go to help someone in need?
Surrey is a quiet, affluent area just outside of London, replete with tree-lined streets, great schools, and friendly neighbors. But among them, Dalia Waheed has never quite felt like she belongs. Though she and her husband embody second-generation immigrant success, Dalia can’t shake the sense that she is destined for something other than her carefully constructed suburban life.
While volunteering at a local nonprofit called Refugee Resettlement, Dalia meets the very pregnant Hajira and her husband, who have fled their home country to seek asylum in the U.K. In Hajira, Dalia feels a kinship she can’t quite explain. So, when Hajira asks for help finding an alternative to their squalid government housing, Dalia knows she will not ignore her plea. Helping a soon-to-be mother find a place to live is the least she can do.
What begins as a simple act of kindness spirals into something far more treacherous than Dalia could have ever imagined. Suddenly, she finds herself in a political firestorm that threatens to engulf everything she holds close: friendships, community ties—even her marriage. With the pressure mounting on all sides and the situation teetering closer to real danger, Dalia is forced to confront a terrifying question: how much is she willing to risk—for her ideals, her family, and for a woman who has already lost everything?
Gripping and unflinching, The Squatters lays bare the fractures of belonging, the costs of conviction, and the tensions that simmer beneath even the most idyllic communities.
About Amy Jones
Amy Jones is the Editor-in-Chief of Writer’s Digest and was the managing content director for WD Books. She is the editor of the Novel and Short Story Writer's Market and Children's Writer's and Illustrator's Market. Prior to joining the WD team, Amy was the managing editor for North Light Books and IMPACT Books. Like most WD staffers, Amy is a voracious reader and has a particular interest in literary fiction, historical fiction, steamy romance, and page-turning mysteries. When she’s not reading, Amy can be found daydreaming about Italy or volunteering at her local no-kill cat shelter. Find Amy on Twitter @AmyMJones_5.
