Since the theme of The Eye this month is healthcare, herein lies a literary path for positive mental health! This is turning out to be a banner year for lovers of the novel. Many of us thought 2025 was a bit bereft of books by creative minds that produce beautiful stories. Now it appears they were being saved for 2026.
Fire up your Kindles and be sure your library card is up to date! Here is a handful of bright gems hailing from around the globe. There will be more to follow in upcoming months, with June appearing to be the biggest month for publication.
Land by Maggie O’Farrell
For me, this is the most exciting selection of the year. If this is your first foray into O’Farrell’s novels, you have many satisfying hours ahead. I’ve been hooked on her books for the past 20 years, ever since I first read The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox in 2006.
O’Farrell may be best known for her recent best-selling novel Hamnet, which has been made into a blockbuster movie and nominated for several Academy Awards. O’Farrell was also one of the screenwriters.
Regardless of the film’s success, I found the book much more emotionally satisfying (as happens most of the time for me). Two hours in the theater simply can’t compare to the hours spent in the silent contemplation of the reading process.
Land, due out in June, takes place in Ireland before and after the dreaded 1842-1852 Great Famine, also known as the Irish Potato Famine. It is a story of survival in a land of a million deaths. Another million fled the country. Publication June 2, 2026.
Contrapposto by Dave Eggers
It’s been a while since we’ve had news of a new Dave Eggers novel. He rose to fame in the literary world with A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, and has since repeatedly proved himself a formidable writer, with a substantial litany of the finest novels of our time including What Is the What, You Shall Know Our Velocity, and The Circle. Eggers has also been published in The New Yorker and Esquire magazines.
Eggers is so much more than a writer. He is also the founder of several literary and philanthropic ventures, including the literary journal Timothy McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, the literacy project 826 Valencia, and the human rights non-profit Voice of Witness. Additionally, he founded ScholarMatch, a program that connects donors with students needing funds for college tuition.
In this latest novel, about art and its world, we follow the two principal characters, Cricket and Olympia, for 65 years. Publisher Penguin describes it as “a wild and beautiful examination of the rules and market forces of the art world.” But it’s also about the power of friendship.
Eggers is a classically trained artist whose work has been exhibited throughout the world. This novel has been percolating in his mind for the past 20 years. Publication date: June 9. 2026.
John of John by Douglas Stuart
At the start of the Covid epidemic in 2020, Douglas Stuart’s debut novel Shuggie Bain seized our attention, as did his fairytale personal story.
Shuggie is a young boy in 1980s Glasgow, desperately trying to save his alcoholic mother while dealing with his own identity. The knowledge of the author’s personal struggle and ultimate success gave us joy and hope during difficult pandemic times.
In 2022 Stuart published his second novel, Young Mungo, that also received critical acclaim.
Now, Stuart’s third novel, John of John, promises more excellent craftsmanship in a gripping story of a young man returning home.
Award-winning author Colm Toibin raves about this newest from Stuart, saying “it has the emotional reach and empathy of his earlier books, but this book is special; it has an urgency, an immediacy, a brilliant sense of place, the drama of a fierce emotion repressed, hidden, and volcanically exposed.”
Ann Patchett, another venerated writer, also is enraptured: “Reading John of John is like moving to the Isle of Harris and settling into the family farm. The novel is so immersive, so all-encompassing, that I felt as if I were living in it. Douglas Stuart has written something brilliant and exceptional.”
I needn’t read further previews to know that I’ll be the first in line on publication day May 15, 2026.
The News from Dublin by Colm Toibin
Speaking of Colm Toibin, he graces us with a new series of short stories this year. These 11 selections take you across continents and eras. The Miami Herald calls Toibin an “achingly beautiful writer…with infinite compassion.”
If you’re among the many readers familiar with Brooklyn and its sequel Long Island, you may enjoy a change of pace in Toibin’s non-fiction. Travelers and European history fans may enjoy Homage to Barcelona, a book that celebrates one of the great cities of the world, from the vibrant architecture and expansion to the lives of Gaudi, Miró, Picasso, Casals, and Dalí.
Many of you may, like me, be interested in the separation of Catalan, as well a glimpse into Franco and the Civil War.
Toibin’s selection of both fiction and nonfiction will complete your library.
Now I Surrender by Alvaro Enrigue
The luminous re-creator of Montezuma and the Spanish Conquest in his novel You Dreamed of Empires took both sides of US/Mexican border by surprise. It was lauded by the most prestigious reviewers. The Washington Post called it “An alternate history of Mexican conquest, with a Tarantino-ready twist.”
Riding on this success, Enrigue takes on the American/Mexican Wild West in Now I Surrender. It’s an expansive novel of past and present using myth and history to tell the story through imagined characters such as Geronimo and the Apaches.
Publication date: March 3, available in Spanish and English.
Cool Machine by Colson Whitehead
Fans, including yours truly, of Whitehead’s Harlem Shuffle and Crook Manifesto are enthusiastically awaiting this third and final novel of the trilogy.
Returning are furniture dealer Ray Carney and his old friend and partner in crime, Pepper, who is a bit of a sociopath. It has now been 20 years since the death of Ray’s cousin Freddie. Ray is feeling a responsibility for Freddie’s son and needs to weigh the risks of rescuing him from the violent forces of the city versus maintaining the safety and security of his own family.
Most readers are familiar with Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize (for fiction) winning The Underground Railroad. The novel also won the National Book Award. Many readers feel this trilogy deserves equal praise.
Whistler by Ann Patchett
“It’s Friday and if you haven’t read this it’s new to you,” says Ann Patchett, introducing her Friday chats on Facebook. Every week she offers several minutes out of her busy literary schedule to discuss the books she’s reading.
You may know Patchett as the owner of the famous Parnassus Books in Nashville, Tennessee, with a branch at the Nashville Airport. In addition, she keeps an online magazine. At a site called Musing, you’ll find Ann Patchett’s blog, staff-picked reading lists, exclusive author interviews, shop dog diaries, and more. No matter where you live you can subscribe.
We know Patchett as a reliable storyteller. She has written extraordinary novels loved by a wide range of readers. My personal favorite is Bel Canto, and I’m not alone in my assessment: the New York Times Book Review named it one of the most important books of the 21st century. It also won the PEN/Faulkner Prize and the Orange Prize. “The Shining Path meets the opera star” could be the subtitle.
Now to her new book, Whistler. It concerns a subject we all ponder from time to time: the decisions we’ve made and the ones that have been made for us. Two main characters reunite to formulate and develop the plot and philosophical rendering. Pre-publication reviews are raves. Due out on June 2, 2026.
With so many wondrous novels arriving this year, we dedicate this and future columns to keeping you in the loop.