January can be a bleak month. Holiday festivities are behind us, and already we may be finding those New Year’s resolutions a bit difficult to keep. Dry January really isn’t much fun. What can a weary soul look forward to during these dark, dull days?
Spring books! That’s the cheering subject of our Jan. 15 issue, celebrating 100 highly anticipated titles coming in early 2026. These fresh works of fiction, nonfiction, children’s, and young adult literature were selected by our editors as the most promising of the season—books that give us hope for the future. Here are just a few that have me looking forward:
Crux by Gabriel Tallent (Riverhead, Jan. 20): Some of my favorite fiction makes me care about a subject in which I have no innate interest. That’s the promise of this sophomore novel by the author of My Absolute Darling, about two marginalized teenagers in a Mojave Desert town united by their passion for rock climbing—a dangerous sport that could take their lives or fulfill their ambitions. Our starred review calls it a “sharp novel about youth in conflict with dreams, nature, and reality.”
On Morrison by Namwali Serpell (Hogarth, Feb. 17): Writers and critics have grappled with the work of Toni Morrison for decades—and will for decades to come. Yet few could do so as entrancingly as Serpell, an acclaimed novelist (The Old Drift) and professor of English at Harvard. Here she illuminates the challenges and the profundity of novels such as Beloved and “Recitatif,” Morrison’s only published story, in a book our starred review calls an “impressive, nuanced work of scholarship.”
In the Days of My Youth I Was Told What It Means To Be a Man: A Memoir by Tom Junod (Doubleday, March 10): Over the years, I’ve loved Junod’s award-winning stories for magazines such as GQ and Esquire. Here he tackles the subject that he says made him a writer: His larger-than-life, philandering father, whose questionable example—and bullying edicts—dominated his youth. Our starred review calls it an “enthralling family memoir and an unromantic commentary on manhood.”
Whidbey by T Kira Madden (Mariner Books, March 10): The title of this novel by the author of the memoir Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls refers to an island in Washington state’s Puget Sound. That’s where the protagonist, Birdie Chang, has fled to escape tabloid stories about the man who molested her when she was 9, after another of his victims writes a book about her experience. Our starred review calls it a “searingly original novel that examines the impact of sexual trauma on the human psyche.”
The Complex by Karan Mahajan (Viking, March 10): From the author of The Association of Small Bombs, a National Book Award finalist 10 years ago, comes this Indian family saga set in a New Delhi apartment complex where the offspring of a politician live and spar with one another—especially in the wake of a sexual assault whose reverberations carry down the years. Our starred review calls it a “masterly novel, seemingly influenced by Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, by a talented and self-assured writer.”
Tom Beer is the editor-in-chief.
