A decade ago, Eva zu Beck was lost. An Oxford University graduate, the native of Poland had left her husband, a successful lawyer, after cheating on him. Filled with guilt, she turned to alcohol—too much of it, too regularly—to numb the pain. And then she decided to hit the road. “As I would later come to learn, travel is not a magical healing potion,” she writes in her forthcoming book, The Wilder Way: A Memoir of Adventure, Freedom, and an Uncharted Life (Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster, June 2). “But the getaway had offered my soul a seed to nurture.” In just a handful of years, zu Beck has transformed her life, traveling to far-off places and sharing her experiences with millions of viewers on YouTube and as a National Geographic TV host. And now she has documented her personal odyssey—and eventful journeys—in her new book. It’s of one of many exciting debut titles coming out in 2026.
Mary Fariba Afsari’s parents also traveled far to make a new life for themselves—in their case moving to the United States from Iran. Afsari documents her family’s inspiring story and her career as an OB-GYN in Portland, Oregon, in Labor: One Woman’s Work (Avid Reader Press, April 7). “The frontlines of medicine have lent themselves to a long line of excellent memoirs,” says our review, “and they are now joined by Afsari’s gripping debut.”
In her first book, historian Rosa Campbell examines Shere Hite’s attempt to broaden our understanding of female sexuality; millions bought Hite’s landmark Hite Report in 1976, but few know her name today. Now, more will know it thanks to Campbell’s The Book That Taught the World To Orgasm and Then Disappeared: Shere Hite and the Hite Report (Melville House, April 14).
Another historian, Erin Maglaque, offers a sweeping overview of women’s experiences in her debut book, Presence: A Hidden History of the Female Body (Astra House, June 16). “A richly textured, revelatory history,” says our review; the book shows how, for one, “male intrusion into female areas of expertise increased.…Midwifery, from being a largely female domain, became professionalized by men.”
Happily, the sciences have become more representative of the world at large. Karmela Padavic-Callaghan is a shining case in point. As the author writes in their first book, Entangled States: A Life According to Quantum Physics (Beacon Press, May 19), “The quantum world was the first place where I knew queerness. Meeting its not-wave-not-particle denizens was the first time I ever saw something like a possibility of myself.” Our reviewer writes, “They leave us with the sense that if quantum physicists can build ‘tolerance for complexity and in-between-ness,’ maybe the rest of us can, too.”
The oceans alone are a testament to how much we are still learning about the world around us—as Jeffrey Marlow makes clear in his lively debut, The Dark Frontier: Unlocking the Secrets of the Deep Sea (Random House, April 7). Unfortunately, he writes, “the sad truth is that our reach has exceeded our grasp; we’ve irrevocably changed the deep sea before even getting to know it.”
John McMurtrie is the nonfiction editor.
