With only two months of the year remaining, time is running out to successfully meet your reading goals.
Whether you set out read one or 100 books in 2026, there are so many options to choose from. There are tempting new releases such as book six in Sarah J. Maas’ A Court of Thorns and Roses series, or classics including Sense and Sensibility or Pride and Prejudice worth revisiting, with two new Jane Austen adaptations this year.
If you’re more interested in which titles people selling books are picking up, look no further than the Waterstones Book of the Year shortlist. Nominated by booksellers from across the country, the annual awards features a selection of 20 works published over the last 12 months.
Scottish author Douglas Stuart’s novel John of John is among those recognised, alongside two fellow Booker Prize nominees; The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout and May We Feed The King by Rebecca Perry.
Other fiction on the shortlist includes Land by Hamnet author Maggie O’Farrell, Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé’s new young adult mystery The Heirs and Yesteryear, Caro Claire Burke’s buzzy debut novel Yesteryear, which will soon be turned into a feature film starring Anne Hathaway.
There are also a number of non-fiction titles selected, such as Patrick Radden Keefe’s gripping London Falling and Ottolenghi’s latest cookbook Simple Too, as well as Sleeping Beauties, a book from Talking Heads frontman David Byrne which explores dormant ideas and how they can be revived.
If you’re looking to expand your TBR list, here the 2026 Waterstones Book of the Year shortlist in full - including what each book is about and where you can buy them.
1. John Of John by Douglas Stuart
“Out of money and with little to show for his art school education, John-Calum Macleod takes the ferry home to the island of Harris to find that not much has changed except for him. In the windswept croft where he grew up, Cal resumes his old life, caught between the two poles of his childhood: his father John, a sheep farmer, weaver, and pillar of their local Presbyterian church, and his Glaswegian grandmother Ella, who has kept a faltering peace with her son-in-law for decades. While Cal wonders if any lonely men might be found on the barren hillsides of home, John is dismayed by his son’s long hair and how he seems unwilling to be Saved. As the seasons pass, everything is poised to change as the threads holding together the fragile community become increasingly entangled.” | Pan Macmillan
2. Land by Maggie O’Farrell
“On a windswept peninsula stretching out into the Atlantic, Tomás and his reluctant son, Liam, are working for the great Ordnance Survey project to map the whole of Ireland. The year is 1865, and in a country not long since ravaged and emptied by the Great Hunger, the task is not an easy one. Tomás, however, is determined that his maps will be a record of the disaster. The British soldiers in charge are due to arrive any day, expecting the work to be completed, but Tomás is unexpectedly sent off course by an unsettling encounter in a copse. His life, and those of his family, will never be the same again. Liam is terrified by the sudden change in his taciturn father. What was it that caused such cracks to open in Tomás and how is Liam, aged only ten, going to finish the mapping, and get them both home?” | Headline
3. Sleeping Beauties by David Byrne
“A 'Sleeping Beauty' is a brilliant idea that is ahead of its time. So many breakthroughs in arts or science were like this, lost on their initial audience and only later revived and acknowledged to be genius. This book asks, why do some ideas fall asleep? And how do they wake up? We love to believe in a meritocracy of ideas - that genius is always recognised, innovation always seized upon and rewarded. Yet so many of the people we now recognise as the world's great creators initially got little traction for their work. It was only later, often much later, that their work comes roaring back to life and made a lasting impact. Discoveries as diverse as dark matter to continental drift, technologies from solar panels to the steam engine, artists from Brueghel to Vermeer to Melville all created 'sleeping beauties'. Ranging across many centuries and the full scope of human endeavour, Byrne explores their stories and gives us a lens for identifying future breakthroughs.” | Canongate
4. The Heirs by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé
“Everyone has heard of the Button heirs: the five genius children of infamous billionaire Leontes Button. Adopted and trained under the 'Button Method', they've had no choice but to be brilliant. But brilliance comes at a deadly price. Because at their father's tenth annual Prodigy Ball, Leontes Button is murdered. As long-buried secrets come to light, one thing is clear: everyone at the ball had reason to want him dead. After all, their father was especially good at making enemies." | Usborne