Amazon top 20 of 2026

Amazon editors have released their top 20 best books of 2026 so far!  Find your next read here:

20. Lady Tremaine by Rachel Hochhauser

As if Bridgerton met Circe, and exhilarating to its core, Lady Tremaine reimagines the myth of the evil stepmother at the heart of Cinderella, the world’s most famous fairy tale. It is a battle cry for a mother’s love for her daughters, and a celebration of women everywhere who make their own fortunes.

19. Homebound by Portia Elan

In a dazzling ode to human inventiveness and desire for meaning, four lives are entangled across time by one unfinished story, saved to a floppy disk in the 1980s and destined to ripple across the centuries.

18. The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett

The multimillion-copy-selling author of The Help returns with a bold, big-hearted novel about a group of unbreakable women, fighting for what’s rightfully theirs—and the power of friendship to change everything.

17. Mad Mabel by Sally Hepworth

Meet Elsie Mabel Fitzpatrick: eighty-one years old, gloriously grumpy, fiercely independent, and never without a hot cup of tea―or a cutting remark. She minds her own business in her quiet Melbourne suburb, until a neighbor turns up dead and the whispers start flying. Is she a cantankerous old lady with a shady past? A cold-blooded killer with arthritis? Or just someone who’s finally ready to tell her side of the story?

16. 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 back home to the Isle of Harris in the Outer Hebrides to find that little has changed except for him. John of John is a singular novel about duty, passion, and the transformative power of the truth. It is a magnificent literary work that cements Douglas Stuart's reputation as one of our greatest novelists working today.

15. Into the Blue by Emma Brodie

In the summer of 2000, AJ Graves dreams of writing for Saturday Night Live; instead, she’s stuck working in a video rental store, with slim odds of escaping her small Massachusetts town. Then in walks Noah Drew, the enigmatic and intense scion of the Drew acting dynasty, and her life changes forever. Despite wildly different upbringings, the two forge a deep, cosmic bond, first as friends, then as acting partners—until one day, Noah disappears without a word.  Seven years later, in New York City, AJ is shocked to find herself cast in the same intergalactic TV production as Noah, by then a well-known Hollywood heartthrob. As their on-screen characters grow closer every day, the lines between reality and acting begin to blur.

14. Five by Ilona Bannister

Have you ever tried to pass the time by imagining the lives of the strangers standing next to you? Ilona Bannister’s Five introduces readers to five seemingly random people waiting for a train. But these are not just any five people. From the beginning we know that one of them is going to die soon. Very soon. In five minutes the next train to London will arrive, killing one of them. But before this happens you will learn their stories. Only you know. And you, our complicit reader, will not be able to resist deciding who deserves to walk away, and who deserves only five more minutes to live.

13. A Far-Flung Life by M. L. Stedman

From the author of the acclaimed bestseller TheLight Between Oceans comes a breathtaking and epic novel set in the vast outback of Australia—about tragedy, family secrets, and the enduring power of love.

12. Famesick by Lena Dunham

In this rowdy, frank reflection on illness, fame, sex, and everything in between, the remarkable mind behind the hit series Girls and the bestselling author of Not That Kind of Girl asks whether fulfilling her creative ambitions has been worth the pain.

11. Transcription by Ben Lerner

The narrator of Ben Lerner’s new novel has traveled to Providence, Rhode Island, where he is to conduct what will be the final published interview with Thomas, his ninety-year-old mentor and the father of his college friend Max. Thomas is a giant in the arts who seems to hail from the future and the past simultaneously and who reenchants the air when he speaks. But the narrator drops his smartphone in the hotel sink. He arrives at Thomas’s house with no recording device, a fact he is mysteriously unable to confess. What unfolds from this dreamlike circumstance is the unforgettable story of the triangle formed by Thomas, Max, and the narrator, and an exploration of fathers and sons, male friendship and rivalry, and the challenges of parenting in a burning world.

10. Crux by Gabriel Tallent

In this story of intense friendship and grit, two down-and-out teens escape their lives and chase a different future through rock-climbing -- from the New York Times bestselling author of My Absolute Darling.

9. Nothing Tastes as Good by Luke Dumas

The nationally bestselling author of The Paleontologist and A History of Fear returns with a spine-tingling new thriller about a weight loss treatment with terrifying side effects.

8. Cherry Baby by Rainbow Rowell

#1 New York Times bestselling author Rainbow Rowell returns with a breathtakingly honest novel about a woman who lost everything — and isn't sure she wants it back.

7. American Men by Jordan Ritter Conn

Men wield outsized power across all major institutions. But they are falling behind across all measures of well-being and success. They include loving husbands and absent fathers, corporate strivers and displaced workers, the objects and instruments of incredible violence. They are half the population. And yet when mentioned as a bloc, it’s often to ask the question: What’s wrong with them? American Men is a book that burrows deep into the lives of four men, exploring how each of them construct their relationship to masculinity, and how they navigate that relationship over time.

6. 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 the lives of those of his family, will never be the same again. 

5. Night Objects by Eli Raphael (not yet in the library system, but it is on order)

This suspenseful novel transports readers to the windswept coast of Washington State and a boarding school steeped in privilege and deadly secrets—a remarkable story of grief, power, and the dangerous price of belonging.

4. Strangers: A Memoir of a Marriage by Belle Burden

In March 2020, Belle Burden was safe and secure with her family at their house on Martha’s Vineyard, navigating the early days of the pandemic together—building fires in the late afternoons, drinking whisky sours, making roast chicken. Then, with no warning or explanation, her husband of twenty years announced that he was leaving her. Overnight, her caring, steady partner became a man she hardly recognized. He exited his life with her like an actor shrugging off a costume. In Strangers, Burden revisits her marriage, searching for clues that her husband was not who she always thought he was.

3. Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke

 A traditional American woman, a “tradwife” influencer, suddenly awakens in the brutal reality of 1855—where she must unravel whether this living nightmare is an elaborate hoax, a twisted reality show, or something far more sinister in this sensational debut novel.

2. London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and aFamily’s Search for Truth by Patrick Radden Keefe

From the bestselling, prizewinning author of Say Nothing and Empire of Pain, a spellbinding account of a family devastated by the sudden death of their nineteen-year-old son, only to discover that he had created a secret life which drew him into the dangerous criminal underworld that lies beneath London’s glittering surface.

1. Kin by Tayari Jones

A magnificent new novel from the bestselling, award-winning author of An American Marriage—Tayari Jones has written an unforgettable novel that sparkles with wit and intelligence and deep feeling about two lifelong friends whose worlds converge after many years apart in the face of a devastating tragedy.