What will happen in the book world in 2026? Which genres will be popular? Which reading and publishing trends will continue or fall off? What do readers and book clubs need to know going into the new year? Let us be your crystal ball. Here are some predictions we have for 2026, including what will happen with historical fiction, BookTok, audiobooks, book bans, book club content, and more.

Genre melding and hybridity will expand. Genres are arguably mixing more than ever before, and literary fiction readers might notice more speculative elements showing up in books that are primarily character-driven. For example, Quan Barry’s recent The Unveiling, released in late 2025, is a horror novel that focuses heavily on character and may appeal to readers who don’t normally read horror or speculative fiction. This type of thing has been happening for a long time, of course, but will only increase as authors seek to imagine possible futures beyond our current climate crisis, and as more diversity in publishing paves the way for story formats and subjects that have historically been taken less seriously in the Western canon. Certain genres have expanded beyond their traditional publishing niches, too, with romance in particular becoming a hot commodity in recent years. You can easily find romantasy (a mix of romance and fantasy), historical romance, romance novels with complex themes woven into their structures, and even sub-genres as specific as sports romance. According to literary agent and BookTok influencer Alyssa Morris, we’re in “a golden age” of romance with expanded areas for every taste.

We’ll get more underrepresented history and new takes on old books. Marginalized perspectives in historical fiction and in retellings of classics are also nothing new, but they’re only increasing with time. Among January and February releases, we can look forward to Xiaolu Guo’s Call Me Ishmaelle, a new feminist retelling of Moby-Dick, Emma R. Alban’s Like in Love with You, a queer Regency romance, and Avery Irons’ Belonging to the Air, which features Black queer characters during the Great Migration.

Audiobook usage will keep going up. Audiobooks have been trending upwards for a while now, and this is a trend likely to continue. The Audio Publishers Association reports that as of 2025 more than half of Americans eighteen and older have listened to an audiobook, and interest in audiobooks has risen by 6% from 2024. Why the increase? It’s partly the convenience factor. While audiobooks have always made reading accessible to a wider audience, more people than ever are benefiting from the flexibility of listening to books while engaging in other activities, like driving, particularly as they become more readily available through listening platforms like Spotify. There are also simply more audiobooks now due to AI narration, but it’s worth pointing out that interest in listening to AI-narrated books is waning, having decreased by 7% between 2023 and 2025. Audiobooks in general, though, seem poised to keep growing in popularity.

Deluxe editions will also continue their upward trend. Another phenomenon that seems likely to continue is the rise of deluxe editions, or special limited editions, which often include features like sprayed edges, ribbon bookmarks, feathered pages, and other embellishments. Once mainly reserved for classics, fantasy, and YA books, deluxe editions have become more common in the genres of historical fiction and contemporary literature for adults. This seems to be happening at least partially in response to the increased presence of digital formats (e-books and audiobooks) as readers crave more elaborate details in the physical books they own.

Less official publisher content will be available online. With the rise of widespread online content for books, like study guides for students and reading guides for discussion groups, some publishers seem to gradually be offering less of their own official content for books, possibly because of budget cuts combined with a drop in perceived interest. So it might be a little harder in the coming year and beyond for book clubs to find discussion questions and related material on publishers’ pages. At BookBrowse, we’re filling that gap with our own original reading guides and Ask the Author interviews, and by working closely with publishers to bring you content that might not be publicly available on their own sites.

BookTok’s influence will level off outside of the romance genre. In recent years, BookTok has undeniably become an important marketing tool for publishers, but according to some, it’s passed its peak. This doesn’t mean that it won’t have a significant role to play in publishing in the future. In fact, Amazon’s Audible has just partnered with TikTok, a development that suggests the continued relevance of both BookTok and audiobooks to publishing. But we’ve begun to see BookTok’s limitations. It remains highly useful for certain genres, namely romance and romantasy, but is no longer the next new shiny thing, and was probably never going to take over book marketing as a whole. 

Book-banning culture will continue to be normalized, but we’ll see increased resistance to bans. The number of book bans actually dropped during the 2024-2025 school year compared to 2023-2024, but PEN America and others have pointed out that this is a small part of a larger disturbing trend. Challenges and bans are now an everyday part of the American cultural landscape, accessibility of books is still affected by bans from previous years, and books may be removed from school and library shelves in anticipation of challenges without officially being banned. However, the reduction in the number of bans may be indicative of stronger resistance, including the passage of “freedom to read” acts in several states and organization against bans at the local level. Keep up with news about book bans in our community forum, and see how you can get involved with our guide to fighting book bans.

What debut authors will you discover in 2024? You may be excited about the latest work from writers you already adore, but this could very well be the year you find a new slew of first-time favorites. The march of excellent debut books has already begun, and there are many soon-to-be-established literary stars worth watching, both those who have been published recently and those with releases in the coming months. Keep an eye on who’s emerging and who’s waiting in the wings with our list of some of the most promising, intriguing, provocative debut authors working today.

 

Liliana Colanzi, You Glow in the Dark (February 6)

Liliana Colanzi, who teaches Latin American literature at Cornell University, has already published three books of short stories in Bolivia. A translation by Chris Andrews of her collection You Glow in the Dark, which won the Ribera del Duero International Short Story Prize, is her English-language debut. Colanzi’s stories offer a unique blend of speculative elements, creating “an arresting portrait of corruption, industrialization, the power of nature, and supernatural forces” (Publishers Weekly). She is also the founder of Dum Dum publishing house, an independent press in Bolivia specializing in mixed-genre literature.

 

Tracy Sierra, Nightwatching (February 6)

Colorado attorney Tracy Sierra’s debut novel, which follows a mother and her children being threatened by an intruder, is a domestic thriller that Kirkus describes as “[f]iercely feminist and viscerally terrifying.” Publishers Weekly compliments the book for its suspense and atmosphere as well as its deeper social commentary: “As grippingly suspenseful as the plot is, Sierra’s first outing boasts other strengths just as noteworthy, from its transportingly eerie setting to its indelible main character, a petite, prototypical ‘good girl’ pushed to the brink by years of being underestimated, patronized, and disbelieved by men with power.” If you think you might be interested in reading Nightwatching with a book group, note that Sierra’s website currently suggests she may be available for virtual book club visits (requests can be made through a contact form).

 

Phillip B. Williams, Ours (February 20)

Phillip B. Williams is the author of two award-winning books of poetry, Thief in the Interior and Mutiny. His first novel, Ours, presents a multigenerational, historical, fantastical plot in which a powerful woman named Saint has wreaked destruction on plantations in the 19th-century South, freeing slaves and establishing for them a safe community, named Ours, that is protected by magic. Oprah Daily predicts that “[f]ans of The Underground Railroad, The Water Dancer, and Let Us Descend will devour this lyrical and surreal saga.” Kirkus calls it a “multilayered, enrapturing chronicle of freedom that interrogates the nature of freedom itself.”

 

Deborah Jackson Taffa, Whiskey Tender (February 27)

Deborah Jackson Taffa, director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts, debuts with the memoir Whiskey Tender, in which she explores her childhood and coming of age in the context of her relationships with family from both the Quechan Nation and Laguna Pueblo tribe, as well as her experience of being expected to assimilate into mainstream American culture. Author Tommy Orange comments, “Whiskey Tender is unexpected and propulsive, indeed tender, but also bold, and beautifully told, like a drink you didn’t know you were thirsty for. This book, never anything less than mesmerizing, is full of family stories and vital Native history.”

 

Jessica Zhan Mei Yu, But the Girl (March 3)

Jessica Zhan Mei Yu teaches creative writing at the University of Melbourne. Her debut novel But the Girl follows a Malaysian Australian graduate student referred to as Girl as she contends with the pressures she feels as the child of migrants, her fraught relationship with the work of Sylvia Plath, and her attempts to write a “postcolonial novel” during a residency in Scotland. Author Sharlene Teo writes of But the Girl, “A unique and meaningful novel: refreshingly unsentimental, written with a directness that is both self-effacing and wry. The voice sometimes recalls Lucia Berlin, JD Salinger or Lorrie Moore but it’s entirely her own.”

 

Alexandra Tanner, Worry (March 26)

Alexandra Tanner is a graduate of the MFA program at The New School and has received fellowships from MacDowell and The Center for Fiction. Worry, her first novel, tells a comic story of the sibling tensions and woes that unfold when younger sister Poppy, who has struggled with depression and a lack of direction, moves into older sister Jules’ Brooklyn apartment. Kirkus calls the novel an “unremittingly jaundiced depiction of modern young adulthood” that “hits rare extremes of both funny and sad.” Lit Hub describes Tanner as “an author to watch: she’s both funny and serious, snarky and sweet, and gives us that rare, realistic window into recognizable life.”

 

Marissa Higgins, A Good Happy Girl (April 2)

Marissa Higgins is a journalist who has covered progressive politics as well as environmental and LGBTQ+ issues for various publications. Her debut novel, A Good Happy Girl, which has been compared favorably to the work of Melissa Broder and Sally Rooney, tells a tale of childhood trauma and adult coping through Helen, a Boston attorney who forms an intense sexual and emotional relationship with Catherine and Katrina, a married couple. Helen’s family history of neglect haunts and informs the storyline. Author Michelle Hart writes, “Higgins’s heroine makes for a compellingly prickly protagonist, an uncertain someone who the reader nonetheless wants so much to hug. This keen-edged gem of a novel limns the sometimes erotic, often quixotic quest to transcend oneself while trying to retain one’s own personhood.”

 

Allen Bratton, Henry Henry (April 16)

Allen Bratton wrote his graduate thesis on medieval English kingship, and may have put his knowledge of that topic to use in his debut Henry Henry, which reads as a modern take on Shakespeare’s Henry IV. The novel, set in contemporary London, focuses on a privileged young man named Hal, the tension between him and his father, Henry, and Hal’s relationship with another man named Henry. Kirkus praises the book’s complexity, stating, “At times witty and at others harrowing, Bratton’s book memorably explores the unexpected depths of its protagonist. This novel revisits classic literature but never feels beholden to it.”

 

Alina Grabowski, Women and Children First (May 7)

Alina Grabowski’s writing has previously appeared in Story, Joyland, The Adroit Journal and other publications. Her debut novel Women and Children First tells the story of a coastal Massachusetts community as it is shaken by the tragic, mysterious death of a high school student. The plot unfolds from a multiplicity of viewpoints, featuring the perspectives of ten different women. Publishers Weekly calls the book “magnetic” and comments, “The ennui of small-town life is perfectly captured in the slice-of-life vignettes, which coalesce into a riveting set of Rashomon-style retellings. Grabowski shows immense promise.”