The Must-Read Books of 2026
- Jul 29
- 13 min read
Craving the books everyone’s been talking about this year? Our list of captivating page-turning books is just what you need!
Finding Shankara
SALIS MANIA CHOICE AWARDS 2026 NOMINEE
In the vast landscape of Indian philosophy, few figures loom as large or remain as enigmatic as Adi Shankaracharya. The 8th-century philosopher-monk reshaped a subcontinent, yet his life often sits obscured behind myth. In Finding Shankara, Divya Narain Upadhyaya brings this giant vividly back to life, delivering a narrative that feels startlingly modern.
Part dramatized biography, part spiritual detective story, the book breathes life into ancient India. What truly sets this work apart is its dual narrative: Upadhyaya seamlessly weaves Shankaracharya’s journey with his own personal quest to find him.
Impeccably researched yet effortlessly readable, Upadhyaya illuminates forgotten history while holding up an existential mirror to our present. Finding Shankara isn’t just a rich biography; it’s an evocative invitation to begin your own search.
Ungodly Rich
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
Old gods, new rules. New York Times bestselling author Katharine McGee boldly reimagines the Greek gods as a family of billionaires—with all the messy drama that entails.
“A modern twist on Greek mythology that blends the opulence of Crazy Rich Asians with the scandal of Gossip Girl.”—Woman’s World
When Julia Dodds meets Harry Adams, love hits her like a lightning bolt. He’s adventurous, charismatic, and impossibly handsome. Little does Julia know that her boyfriend has left out a few key details. His name isn’t Harry: it’s Ares, as in the ancient god of war. His mother is Hera, and his father is Zeus.
Soon, Julia is caught up in a world of wealth and privilege as she joins Harry at a lavish family reunion. Except these billionaires don’t just have wealth—they have divine powers. And the moment she steps onto their private island, Julia becomes their latest target.
It’s no secret that the Gods love to meddle, and when it comes to Julia, Harry’s immortal relatives each have their own agenda. Harry’s mother, Hera, will do anything to protect her own. Harry’s sister-in-law Aphrodite has a deeply personal reason for hating Julia, and tasks Hermes, keeper of family secrets, with digging up dirt. Meanwhile, Hades has spent years trying to upend Zeus’s power—and now he finally sees an opportunity to strike.
Set against a globe-trotting backdrop that sweeps from New York’s exclusive private clubs to the wilds of New Zealand to the gated estates of the British aristocracy, Ungodly Rich is a story of love, revenge, secrets, sex, and the most ancient motivator of all: family.
“The cliff-hanger ending is begging for a sequel.”—People
Fishbone Cinderella
A mother and daughter must break their family’s curse through trials of war and immigration, love, loss, and redemption in this riveting multi-generational saga with a shimmer of magic, from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Forgery of Fate.
★“Lim dazzles in her dark and deftly woven adult debut. . . . Blending the historically grounded and complex mother-daughter narratives of Amy Tan with the rich fantasy of Yangsze Choo, this stunning tale will delight. . . . This is a gem.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
1940s Hong Kong
When Japanese soldiers invade her hometown, Ha Yut Ying makes an unlikely escape—by turning invisible. But her miraculous survival is only the beginning. After the war is over, she’s sent to Hong Kong to live with her distant father and glamorous stepmother, who end her dreams of becoming a singer and turn her into the family’s servant. As the years pass, Yut Ying learns the hard truths of betrayal and ambition, of forbidden love and devastating loss, and discovers that sometimes the only way to endure is to disappear.
1960s San Francisco
Marigold has always had a knack for uncovering secrets, but nothing prepares her for the day she accidentally witnesses her mother vanish before her eyes. The moment fractures their bond, leaving questions that shadow her entire childhood. But when her mother’s condition suddenly deteriorates, Marigold is convinced she’s the only person who can save her. To do so, she must journey into the secrets her mother never shared and uncover the tragic, fairytale-tinged history their family has fought to forget.
A story of mothers and daughters, the scars they inherit and the magic that binds them, Fishbone Cinderella is a tender and enchanting exploration of what it means, at last, to be seen.
★ “[Elizabeth Lim’s] heart-wrenching and magical first adult novel is a multi-generational story that adapts a foundational fairy tale and creates a story of mothers, daughters, and a past that haunts their futures.”—Library Journal (starred review)
An Observer’s Guide to Reality
By Darsh Jain
SALIS MANIA CHOICE AWARDS 2026 NOMINEE
In this ambitious and remarkably accessible synthesis, Darsh Jain offers a panoramic tour of the cosmos. He weaves together quantum physics, thermodynamics and evolutionary biology to explain how the universe functions and our place within it. Writing with quiet authority, Jain frames reality as an intricate symphony of particle charges and physical laws where cause and effect are paramount over divine intervention.
He observes that much of what we perceive is an evolutionary fiction curated by a nervous system designed for survival rather than objective truth. However, this mechanistic view is not devoid of warmth; Jain brings poetic resonance to the material, comparing our brief glimpses of cosmic order to observing ocean waves.
For readers of science and philosophy, his message is both timeless and urgent: shedding inherited dogmas, artificial borders and ancient hatreds reveals a world grounded in love, science and reason. It is an elegant and enduring guide for the curious observer.
The Night Hunter
By Natalie Moss
“A twisty, compulsive read - I couldn’t put it down.”
—Sarah Pearse, New York Times bestselling author of The Sanatorium
In a remote corner of the South African bush, two sisters reunite to bury a family secret once and for all, but when they’re stranded among the wild animals, they find a predator far more dangerous waiting for them in the shadows. . . .
When their conservationist mother passes, Danielle and her estranged sister Grace must return to their isolated family house nestled within a wild-game reserve. While Grace, their mother’s favorite, clings to nostalgia, only Danielle carries the knowledge of her final request: “Find the storehouse . . . Burn everything inside.”
To ease the pain of their homecoming—and the tension between them—each sister invites two friends on the two-day journey into the bush. What starts as a safari adventure, turns into a nightmare when one of them is murdered the first morning at the campsite. In the chaos that follows, they crash their vehicle, stranding them, with no way to call for help.
Now, with dwindling supplies and only one rifle, Danielle must lead them on foot across miles of merciless savannah. They have days of walking ahead…if they survive that long. As the group navigates land where every rustle could mean death, a truth emerges: someone is sabotaging their escape.
Breathtaking and tense, The Night Hunter maps the treacherous terrain of family duty and loyalty as the two sisters confront what they’ve spent years trying to forget.
The Stubborn Wolf
SALIS MANIA CHOICE AWARDS 2026 NOMINEE
Srivalli Gottumukkala’s The Stubborn Wolf opens with the cinematic urgency of a seasoned thriller. From its first pages, the novel constructs a remarkably lived-in, authentic world anchored by fiercely “flesh-and-blood” characters whose visceral motivations instantly grip the reader. When Gottumukkala leans into her narrative strength, most strikingly in a quiet, devastating reflection on the emotional walls built after betrayal, the prose hits with profound social resonance, offering delicate, butterfly-inducing romantic moments.
However, the momentum occasionally falters. Mid-book passages sag under narrative overload, prioritising dialogue over dynamic action, while later stretches rush through days and nights, glossing over details that require a pinch more spice to truly savour. Nevertheless, despite brief moments where the narrative loses its footing in the storm, Gottumukkala’s powerful plot and deeply empathetic world-building remind us precisely why we fall in love with reading in the first place.
The Parisian Heist
By Jo Piazza
From the bestselling author of The Sicilian Inheritance and Everyone Is Lying to You comes a propulsive dual-timeline mystery drenched in art-world intrigue and brimming with family secrets, betrayal, and the intoxicating lure of power.
Emma, a struggling American artist in Paris, thought she had left her dreams behind when she took a job cleaning for the city’s wealthy elite. Then she meets Stella Swanson, the widow of one of the most notorious art dealers in the business. The Swansons move in a world where billionaires, oligarchs, and heads of state pay fortunes for masterpieces. Drawn in by their dazzling wealth and the pull of a dangerously charming grandson, Emma becomes both a player and a pawn in a family battle to protect their empire and conceal its crimes.
In the late 1800s, the young widow Jo van Gogh inherits hundreds of paintings from her brother-in-law Vincent that the art world deems worthless. Determined to prove their genius, and to secure a future for herself and her young son, she becomes consumed by Vincent’s legacy. As her devotion deepens, a vanished painting and a thwarted love affair leave her unsure who she can trust and how much of herself she’s willing to lose in the process.
From glittering auction houses to the idyllic canals of Amsterdam and the grand museums of Paris, the lives of these two women converge as Emma uncovers the Swanson family’s darkest secrets and agrees to mastermind a daring heist inside the Musée d’Orsay. The stakes have never been higher, and these women refuse to be written out of history, no matter the cost.
Love You More
By Emily Giffin
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
A woman is newly engaged to a man she adores when she receives a call from her first love with news that shatters her carefully ordered world, in this emotionally powerful novel from the author of All We Ever Wanted, The Lies That Bind, and The Summer Pact.
"Remember Sweet Home Alabama? Giffin has given us a modern Midwestern update of that classic story.”—The New York Times Book Review
Billie has built the perfect life. Her medical practice in New York City is thriving, and she’s finally found the right partner in Dean after years spent trying to move on from her high-school sweetheart, Mick. Their young love had been intense and true, but distance and ambition pulled them apart when she left Wisconsin for medical school.
Then one morning, just after she’s accepted Dean’s romantic marriage proposal, Billie’s phone rings. It’s Mick—calling for the first time in nearly a decade. His news is urgent and in a moment, everything changes.
As Billie boards a plane back to Wisconsin, her past comes rushing in—her hometown friendships, the love she and Mick shared, and the choices that shaped them all. What awaits her is a reckoning with what she’s lost, what she’s built, and what she still wants.
Gripping and deeply moving, Love You More is a story about the plot twists life throws at us—and how love, in all its forms, has the power to change everything.
Good night, Baba
By Sayan Dutta
SALIS MANIA CHOICE AWARDS 2026 NOMINEE
To watch a child grow up is to witness a masterclass in velocity, a blurring of milestones that leaves parents breathless. In Good night, Baba, Sayan Dutta captures this dizzying transition not through the distance of a retrospective memoir, but through urgent, real-time dispatches penned from the frontlines of fatherhood. What emerges is a moving, deeply original journal, a father’s intimate reckoning with the realization that the ultimate currency of parenting is not authority, but an enduring, transformative patience.
Dutta avoids the familiar traps of parental self-congratulation, treating the act of showing up, day in and day out, as a rigorous practice in self-refinement. It is a book that feels like a warm hug to any father in the trenches, making a compelling case for the profound value of becoming a better man and living entirely in the moment. Good night, Baba remains an unforgettable testament to slowing down.
The Life Impossible
By Matt Haig
New York Times Bestseller
“An odyssey of action and awe.” —The New York Times
“A wry and tender love-letter to the best of being human.” —Benedict Cumberbatch
The remarkable next novel from Matt Haig, the author of #1 New York Times bestseller The Midnight Library, with more than nine million copies sold worldwide
“What looks like magic is simply a part of life we don’t understand yet…”
When retired math teacher Grace Winters is left a run-down house on a Mediterranean island by a long-lost friend, curiosity gets the better of her. She arrives in Ibiza with a one-way ticket, no guidebook and no plan.
Among the rugged hills and golden beaches of the island, Grace searches for answers about her friend’s life, and how it ended. What she uncovers is stranger than she could have dreamed. But to dive into this impossible truth, Grace must first come to terms with her past.
Filled with wonder and wild adventure, thisis a story of hope and the life-changing power of a new beginning.
The Impossible Fortune
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
The unmissable new mystery in the Thursday Murder Club series from bestselling author Richard Osman, now streaming on Netflix
Who's got time to think about murder when there's a wedding to plan?
It’s been a quiet year for the Thursday Murder Club. Joyce is busy with table plans and first dances. Elizabeth is grieving. Ron is dealing with family troubles, and Ibrahim is still providing therapy to his favorite criminal.
But when Elizabeth meets Nick, a wedding guest asking for her help, she finds the thrill of the chase is ignited once again. And when Nick disappears without a trace, his cagey business partner becomes the gang’s next stop. It seems the duo have something valuable—something worth killing for.
Joyce’s daughter, Joanna, jumps into the fray to help the gang as they seek answers: Has someone kidnapped Nick? And what’s this uncrackable code they keep hearing about? Plunged back into action once more, can the four friends solve the puzzle and a murder in time?
The House of Dragonflies
By Smitha Menon Kizhuveetil
SALIS MANIA CHOICE AWARDS WINNER
The House of Dragonflies by Smitha Menon Kizhuveetil is a novel that unfolds with quiet assurance, drawing the reader into its world through atmosphere rather than event. From the outset, the writing establishes a lush, watchful setting whose stillness carries emotional weight, allowing the landscape to shape the tone of the story as much as the characters who inhabit it.
The novel’s non-linear structure moves across time and generations with an intuitive ease, mirroring the way memory itself works as fragmented, recursive, and deeply personal. Rather than offering immediate clarity, the narrative invites the reader to sit with uncertainty, gradually revealing connections through reflection and emotional resonance. This layered approach gives the novel its distinctive rhythm and depth.
At the heart of the story is an exploration of loneliness, motherhood, friendship, and mental unrest, themes that are handled with restraint and sensitivity. The interior lives of the characters take precedence, and the novel’s emotional power lies in its attentiveness to small moments and unspoken tensions. Healing, when it appears, is subtle and hard-won, emerging through understanding rather than resolution.
Kizhuveetil weaves elements of local folklore, dreams, faith, and inherited belief into the narrative with a light touch. These aspects lend the novel a quiet speculative quality, enhancing its emotional atmosphere without overwhelming its realism. The boundaries between the imagined and the remembered remain deliberately porous, reflecting the characters’ inner landscapes.
Written in an introspective, literary style, The House of Dragonflies unfolds at a measured pace, privileging mood and reflection over plot-driven urgency. Readers expecting a fast-moving mystery may find the novel demanding, but those drawn to nuanced, atmospheric fiction will appreciate its thoughtful construction and emotional depth.
Elegant and contemplative, The House of Dragonflies is a novel that lingers, offering a richly textured meditation on memory, inheritance, and the enduring impact of lives lived quietly.
Hidden Potential
By Adam Grant
New York Times Bestseller
“This brilliant book will shatter your assumptions about what it takes to improve and succeed. I wish I could go back in time and gift it to my younger self. It would’ve helped me find a more joyful path to progress.”
—Serena Williams, 23-time Grand Slam singles tennis champion
The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Think Again illuminates how we can elevate ourselves and others to unexpected heights.
We live in a world that’s obsessed with talent. We celebrate gifted students in school, natural athletes in sports, and child prodigies in music. But admiring people who start out with innate advantages leads us to overlook the distance we ourselves can travel. We underestimate the range of skills that we can learn and how good we can become. We can all improve at improving. And when opportunity doesn’t knock, there are ways to build a door.
Hidden Potential offers a new framework for raising aspirations and exceeding expectations. Adam Grant weaves together groundbreaking evidence, surprising insights, and vivid storytelling that takes us from the classroom to the boardroom, the playground to the Olympics, and underground to outer space. He shows that progress depends less on how hard you work than how well you learn. Growth is not about the genius you possess—it’s about the character you develop. Grant explores how to build the character skills and motivational structures to realize our own potential, and how to design systems that create opportunities for those who have been underrated and overlooked.
Many writers have chronicled the habits of superstars who accomplish great things. This book reveals how anyone can rise to achieve greater things. The true measure of your potential is not the height of the peak you’ve reached, but how far you’ve climbed to get there.
We Solve Murders
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
“Madcap fun, with an entertaining new cast of characters and Osman’s trademark wit. Delightful!” —Shari Lapena
From the #1 bestselling author of The Thursday Murder Club Series
A brand new mystery. An iconic new detective duo. And a thrilling new murder to solve . . .
Steve Wheeler is enjoying retired life. He still does the odd bit of investigation work, but he prefers his familiar routines: the pub quiz, his favorite bench, his cat waiting for him at home. His days of adventure are over. Adrenaline is daughter-in-law Amy’s job now.
Amy Wheeler thinks adrenaline is good for the soul. Working in private security, every day is dangerous. She’s currently on a remote island protecting mega-bestselling author Rosie D’Antonio, until a dead body and a bag of money mean trouble in paradise. So she sends an SOS to the only person she trusts . . .
As a thrilling race around the world begins, can Amy and Steve outrun and outsmart a killer?
Solving murders. It’s a family business.
Unforgettable Classic Stories: A Timeless Anthology
By Deepti Menon
SALIS MANIA CHOICE AWARDS WINNER
In Unforgettable Classic Stories Deepti Menon Invites Us Back Into the Rooms We Thought We Already Knew
In an age of infinite scrolls and shrinking attention spans, Deepti Menon’s Unforgettable Classic Stories performs a quietly radical act: it asks us to sit still with the classics, not as relics to be revered from a distance but as living rooms we can re enter through an unexpected door.
Menon adapts ten of her favourite short stories from the greats including Schnitzler, Dickens, Chekhov, Pushkin, O. Henry, Harland, Maupassant and others, retelling them in a voice that is distinctly her own. The result is not imitation so much as conversation. Her versions offer the reader something akin to a tasting menu of world literature: familiar flavours, new textures, a sense of discovering what you have somehow missed.
For me, the gateway story was Arthur Schnitzler’s “The Dead Are Silent,” which Menon approaches with a restraint that heightens its uncanny stillness. That encounter alone feels worth the price of entry.
The anthology moves with ease from Rip Van Winkle’s myth laden slumber to Dickens’s fog thick London, from the emotional tremors of Chekhov and Pushkin to the tender ironies of O. Henry. Menon’s selections form not a canon but a curated voyage, one that circles Baker Street before sweeping us toward the atmospheric worlds of W. W. Jacobs and Guy de Maupassant.
Unforgettable Classic Stories offers a gentle provocation to the modern reader. It does not simplify the classics, it reanimates them. And in doing so, Menon makes a subtle case for returning to the greats not out of obligation but out of wonder.
