What a year 2026 is turning out to be for books! Last week we ran our Favorite Books of 2026 (So Far) list, and now that we’ve looked back at all the great books the year has already brought us, it’s time to look ahead to all the great ones to come.
Bisquick: An American Seance
By C. Russell Price
TriQuarterly
August 15, 2026
I had the chance to listen to C. Russell Price read from their latest poetry collection at our most recent Chicago Writers Showcase, and I was immediately sold. Funny, fierce, and endlessly provocative, Bisquick: An American Seance interrogates the fetishization of the Midwest cowboy aesthetic and brings us three unforgettable characters: an eco-anarchist, a ghost dream boyfriend known as Ghost Cowboy, and a blue ghost horse who just wants to dance named Bisquick. There’s no other poetry collection like Bisquick!
— Michael Welch, Editor-In-Chief
The Book of the Jaguar
By Victor Ladis Schultz
Fairwood Press LLC
August 25, 2026
I think I can speak for the entire CHIRB team to say we’re all very excited about Daily Editor Victor Ladis Schultz’s debut novel! He’s a meticulous, careful editor and a super nice and great person, yes, but he’s also a fantastic fiction writer. The blurb on the front of The Book of the Jaguar calls it “Latinx ‘weird fiction’ that might remind readers of the early Julio Cortázar.” Time to add it to your TBR!
— Rachel León, Managing Director
The Pit: A Story of Chicago
By Frank Norris
Belt Publishing
August 25, 2026
For some strange reason, every once in a while I pick a book I want and decide I will only buy it from a used bookstore. Call it my own personal odyssey to discover it by chance. For years, The Pit has been one of those books for me. So I’m absolutely thrilled I can finally stop searching and start reading once I grab Belt Publishing’s new reissue of the book. The Pit is a classic Chicago novel about a man who is obsessed with manipulating the market to control the nation’s wheat supply that details the city’s rise from backwater town to the metropolis of the Midwest.
— Michael Welch, Editor-In-Chief
The Disappearers
By Marlon James
Riverhead Books
September 1, 2026
At this point I’ve probably told every single friend and acquaintance I know that they need to read Marlon James’s A Brief History of Seven Killings. It’s one of my favorite books of all time and one of my most memorable reading experiences. So it goes as no surprise that his new book is one my most anticipated list. The Disappearers takes readers back to Jamaica, as it follows eight gay men who are attacked by a violent mob, killing one of them and traumatizing those who survive. Few authors write with as much fearlessness and ferocity as Marlon James.
— Michael Welch, Editor-In-Chief
Saving the Fire
By Itamar Vieira Junior
Verso Books
September 1, 2026
I love when a book that isn’t originally on my radar enthralls me, and I found myself so taken by the advance reader copy I received of Itamar Veira Junior’s new novel. Saving the Fire, which follows a family struggling to maintain control of their land and lives in a Brazilian village dominated by the local monastery, is a lyrical masterpiece. It’s an enthralling read that’s both intimate in its character study of this family and an epic rebuke of the country’s long colonial shadow.
— Michael Welch, Editor-In-Chief
Bonobo
By You-Jeong Jeong
Translated by Seon Jae An
Creature Publishing
September 1, 2026
The person who introduced me to this book described its author You-Jeong Jeong as South Korea’s Stephen King, and I have to say it’s an apt comparison! Bonobo follows a primatologist Jini, who lives with regret for failing to set free a baby bonobo headed to a black market. But years later, a car accident embeds her consciousness in the animal and leaves her human body in limbo. Bonobo is refreshingly daring in its strangeness, as it shifts seamlessly between the human and the non-human. I promise you’ll read this book and never forget it!
— Michael Welch, Editor-In-Chief
Postmuslim: A Testimony
By Youssef Rakha
Graywolf Press
September 15, 2026
One of my favorite novels last year was Youssef Rakha’s The Dissenters, and I’m excited to read his debut essay collection, which explores what it means to be Arab-Muslim in the twenty-first century.
— Rachel León, Managing Director
Children of the Wolf
By Abby Geni
Ballantine Books
September 15, 2026
I think I can speak for the entire team when I say that I’m a huge fan of Abby Geni’s work. Children of the Wolf follows beekeeper Liv, who is forced to grapple with her legacy of violence from her childhood when a dead body is discovered in her town. Geni’s latest will chill you to the bone.
— Michael Welch, Editor-In-Chief
Blood is Dripping Onto the Courtyard
By Elvira Navarro
Translated by Christina McSweeney
Two Lines Press
September 22, 2026
I find myself really drawn to short stories that slip into horror, so I have Elvira Navarro’s Blood is Dripping Onto the Courtyard on my radar. From a young couple’s washing machine filling with blood to a man who saves animals who have been hit on the highway turning his home into a peculiar zoo, Navarro’s collection is all about the nightmares that emerge when our reality slips away into surrealism. Sign me up!
— Michael Welch, Editor-In-Chief
Ply
By Hernan Diaz
Riverhead Books
September 29, 2026
Diaz’s previous novel Trust was such an awe-inducing feat of storytelling — as if he was saying to readers, “Look, THIS is what storytelling can be.” Diaz is back with a novel set far in the future — “a novel of ideas built from a story of people.” I’m getting Station Eleven vibes from this, and that is decidedly a good thing.
— Greg Zimmerman, Daily Editor
Istanbul Dreaming
By Denise Derya Brandt
She Writes Press
September 29, 2026
I heard Denise Derya Brandt read from her debut novel, Istanbul Dreaming, as part of Poets & Writer’s Get The Word Out fellows reading, and I’m ready to dive into this historical novel about a young woman seeking independence in Turkey, but finding forbidden love and needing to decide between the two.
— Rachel León, Managing Director
American Hagwon
By Min Jin Lee
Cardinal
September 29, 2026
There are so many gigantic names in literature with books coming out in 2026, but Min Jin Lee’s long-awaited follow-up to Pachinko has to be at the top of my list. Lee is a master when comes to capturing the grand sweep of time and the quiet (and not so quiet) drama of our interior and familial lives, and American Hagwon looks to be just that and more.
— Michael Welch, Editor-In-Chief
Fugitive Archives: My Family and the American Myth of Belonging
By Asale Angel-Ajani
Algonquin Books
October 6, 2026
Asale Angel-Ajani’s debut novel, A Country You Can Leave, was one of my favorite books of 2024, so I’m excited about her forthcoming nonfiction book that is described as the “story of one family’s grief, betrayal, and courage is a vital exploration of race and class, a map for survival and resistance, and a necessary reckoning–for only when we acknowledge the complex, messy truth of who we are as a country, can we shape a more just future.”
— Rachel León, Managing Director
How to Look Away: On American Cruelty and the Refusal to Disappear
by Daniel Peña
One World
October 6, 2026
Another nonfiction book by someone whose fiction I loved first is Daniel Peña’s How to Look Away: On American Cruelty and the Refusal to Disappear. I’ve been following Peña’s work for almost a decade (since he first published a short story in our sister publication, Arcturus), and have read some of the essays he’s published in the past several years. Braiding journalism, cultural criticism, and memoir, the essays in this book look at the extreme tolerance of human rights abuses against migrants from Latin America and elsewhere.
— Rachel León, Managing Director
The Occidental Book of the Dead
By T. Geronimo Johnson
William Morrow
October 6, 2026
T. Geronimo Johnson is one of our most daring fiction writers. His latest—a darkly funny literary crime novel about a Black cop in an Atlanta precinct—is nothing short of audacious in its wit and wicked satirical eye. Structurally strange in the best way and endlessly unrelenting in its criticism of a broken justice system, The Occidental Book of the Dead is high on the list of can’t-miss releases this year.
— Michael Welch, Editor-In-Chief
The House Built on Alligator Bones
By Sophia Huneycutt
Dutton
October 6, 2026
This debut novel sounds like such fun. After her mother’s death, a young woman inherits an alligator farming empire. I’ve seen different descriptions of The House Built on Alligator Bones, but I’m anticipating a smart literary novel that flirts with genres like thriller and horror. This novel grappling with family legacy looks like it’ll be the perfect companion to a cozy fall evening on the couch.
— Rachel León, Managing Director
There’s a Monster in the Lake
By Laura Fernández
Translated by Alexis Almeida
Graywolf Press
October 6, 2026
One thing about me: I’m obsessed with the Loch Ness Monster. There’s a Monster in the Lake is a meditative and lyrical exploration not only of the monster’s mythos, but also the tourism, worship, and generational stories that have emerged from the mystery Nessie spawned. Laura Fernández’s writing reminds me of David Foster Wallace’s nonfiction; she’s funny and probing at every turn, and at some point as you’re reading you’ll notice her insight digs deeper into an argument about how we weave lies into reality.
— Michael Welch, Editor-In-Chief
Another Name for Red
By Amber Blaeser-Wardzala
Pantheon
October 13, 2026
I’m eagerly anticipating this electric debut from Amber Blaeser-Wardzala, which follows a young woman on a desperate search to uncover the truth about her missing sister. I first discovered Baleser-Wardzala’s work when I read her fantastic short story in Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology, so I’m thrilled to see her novel make its way to shelves. Packed with mystery, tension, and the unbearable weight of the long history of missing and murdered Indigenous women, Another Name For Red is one of the best debuts of 2026.
— Michael Welch, Editor-In-Chief
On Another Planet They Can Save Me
By Lieke Marsman
Translated By Sophie Collins
Catapult
October 13, 2026
Written by the late Lieke Marsman after she received a terminal diagnosis of a rare type of bone cancer, On Another Planet They Can Save Me is an exploration of the secular worldview she once trusted and the deeper metaphysical questions she was left with. This landmark book is a spiritual shockwave, a lyrical elegy, and a monumental ode to life itself. What a remarkable gift On Another Planet They Can Save Me is for readers.
— Michael Welch, Editor-In-Chief
Our Arab: On Longing, Belonging, and Hope
By Zaina Arafat
Little Brown and Company
October 20, 2026
Fall of 2026 appears to be the season for brilliant fiction writers publishing brilliant nonfiction titles. Zaina Arafat’s debut novel, You Exist Too Much, was another personal favorite, and I’m looking forward to checking out her essay collection on the longing and hope of living in diaspora and what it means to be Palestinian today.
— Rachel León, Managing Director
Red Ants
By Kimberly Blaeser
Counterpoint
October 20, 2026
Red Ants is a dynamic collection of contemporary Anishinaabe stories that feel both timely and timeless. Here you’ll find everything from social protests, tree doctors, monsters, facial recognition software and more, creating a fascinating balance between magical realism, horror, and speculative fiction. I love short stories that feel more expansive than their word count, and each story in Kimberly Blaeser’s debut collection operates like their own galaxies of possibility.
— Michael Welch, Editor-In-Chief
The Brightness
By Chad Harbach
Little and Brown and Company
October 27, 2026
The way I audibly gasped when I first heard this was coming out. Fifteen years after Harbach’s incredible debut novel, The Art of Fielding, he’s back this fall with a doorstop (nearly 700 pages!) of a novel about two 20-something friends just trying to make their ways in the world.
— Greg Zimmerman, Daily Editor
Public Access Underworld
By Jane Schoenbrun
Hogarth
October 27, 2026
I’m a huge fan of Jane Schoenbrun’s filmography (I Saw the TV Glow, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, and Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma) so I’m excited and fascinated to see them try their hand at a novel. Few artists are able to capture the disconnection, longing, and eeriness of the early internet age and the holes it created in our society, and Public Access Underworld continues that trend. It’s like a creepypasta come to life, and I’m here for it.
— Michael Welch, Editor-In-Chief
Weirdly Tuned Antennae
By Radhika Singh
FC2
November 15, 2026
Radhika Singh’s debut novel just came out this past May, but readers can already enjoy her second novel this fall! (Though, funnily enough, Weirdly Tuned Antennae is actually Singh’s first novel, yet the two weren’t published in the order they were written.) I’ve heard this novel is a companion to Earthly Playing Field, and it too grapples with questions of longing, alienation, colonization, and migration.
— Rachel León, Managing Director
Don’t Stop Snowing
By Gabriel Bump
Algonquin Books
November 10, 2026
We’re Gabriel Bump fans here at CHIRB, so we were thrilled to get to run his cover reveal for his third novel, Don’t Stop Snowing. Bump writes with such poignancy and humor, and this novel deals with connection, inheritance, and the resiliency of love. He’s called it his best novel yet, and I for one can’t wait to dig in.
— Rachel León, Managing Director
