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.
9. Pick Your Bottles: 100 Wines to Change the Way You Drink by Dan Keeling
“If you’ve ever stood in a wine shop staring at rows of unfamiliar names… If you’ve bought a bottle for its label and hoped for the best… If you’ve suspected there are extraordinary wines out there but can’t quite find them… You’re right. There are. Pick Your Bottles is Noble Rot co-founder Dan Keeling’s guide to discovering them – the wines he loves to recommend. His secret is simple: the most exciting wines come from real people in real places – not brands. Whether you’re after something intriguing for friends or an easy-going bottle for a Sunday lunch that drifts into the afternoon, Dan will help you choose wines that are delicious, distinctive, and better value than you might expect. Love rosé? He’ll take you beyond Whispering Angel to bottles with real character and none of the cliché. Across sparkling, whites, reds, and oranges, you’ll sidestep predictable labels in favour of lesser-known treasures that won’t punish your wallet. This is a friend’s recommendations to help you pick better bottles.” | Quadrille
10. Stations by Louise Kennedy
“In 1982, Róisín and Red meet as teenagers in their hometown in Ireland. Red’s reputation for trouble might precede him, but Róisín finds in him an intelligent and funny – if unlikely – friend. When a brush with the law pushes Red into a corner, he finds himself presented with an opportunity to escape their town and his family for good, and start a new life in England. Two years later, their lives have unfolded in wildly different directions. Róisín enrols in college, still living at home with her mother, while Red has disappeared into a vacant flat in London, squatting with four other people and a maladjusted greyhound. When Róisín unexpectedly arrives in London to spend Christmas with her estranged father, she finds herself swept up once more into Red’s storm – with consequences that will echo through both of their lives in the years to come.” | Bloomsbury
11. The Adventures Of Portly The Otter by MG Leonard (illustrated by Polly Dunbar)
“There is a time in a young otter’s life when they must be introduced to their river. For Portly, today was that day …From award-winning author MG Leonard, ten exquisite tales starring the young otter Portly from The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame. Told across four seasons in one year, Portly learns to swim, battles a large trout, gets tied to some fireworks by Toad, rescues a human girl, outwits the weasels and stoats of the Wild Wood, meets a young otter journeying to the sea, and sleeps between the cloven feet of the god Pan - a scene familiar to readers of the original book.” | Farshore
12. The Book of Birds: A Field Guide to Wonder and Loss by Robert Macfarlane (illustrated by Jackie Morris)
“The Book of Birds is a compendium of forty-nine bird species, from Avocet to Yellowhammer, all of which are presently declining or endangered in Britain. Inspired by the classic bird-books with which the authors grew up, this is a field guide with a difference. It asks not ‘What is that bird?’, but ‘Who is that bird?’ It shows its readers how to identify birds, but also how to identify with them. With lyrical precision and playfulness, Robert Macfarlane evokes each bird’s habits and habitats –– their patterns of flight and of song, how they hunt and gather, how they nest and raise their young, the stories and myths which attend them, the threats which shadow them, and how their wild lives intersect with our own. And on every page we encounter Jackie Morris’s exhilarating artwork, painted in watercolour and gold and animated by an extraordinary attention to detail and sense of life. Set among this dazzling flock of species are seven sections celebrating the 'Seven Wonders' that together make up the everyday miracle of 'Bird': Nest, Egg, Beak, Song, Feather, Flight and Migration.” | Hamish Hamilton