Tag: book list

book list, News, Recommendations

The Debut Horror Novels of 2026 You Can’t Miss

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The Debut Horror Novels of 2026 You Can’t Miss

Horror is having a moment. Maybe it always has been, but now it’s creeping into the literary mainstream. Genres have bled into one another, and writers are doing incredibly exciting things.

Horror isn’t just Stephen King anymore. It’s not even just Stephen Graham Jones. Horror is slasher, haunted house, gothic, monsters, body, and atmosphere. Writers in the horror genre are doing things better than ever. They’re expanding what the genre is.

Here are 20 debuts from 2026 you should read if you’re a horror fan. Some are classic horror, and some are a little more subtle, where people will scream, “that’s not horror!” on their social media. But it is horror. That’s the beauty of the genre.

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book list, Recommendations

Five Books That Are “Good for Her” – Recommended by Mathilda Zeller

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Five Books That Are “Good for Her” – Recommended by Mathilda Zeller

Do you ever have a particular vibe you just love in art and media, and then realize that there’s a common throughline for why you love these particular songs, stories, artworks?

If, like me, you enjoyed Cinderella as a child, and Knives Out as an adult, if Stephen King’s Carrie and Roald Dahl’s Mathilda struck a cord with you, and if Artemisia Gentileschi’s painting Judith Slaying Holofernes speaks to your soul, it might just be that you enjoy stories that are Good for Her.

What began with a gif from a television show (a woman responding to news about a mother driving herself and young children into a lake with “good for her!”) and a Tweet (@cinematogxphy’s post about the Good for her Cinematic Universe) has become a shorthand way to describe a certain storytelling form.

There is a lot of discourse about what defines a Good for Her story, but the definition I most appreciate suggests that this kind of narrative:

  1. Features a female/ femme protagonist who
  2. Lives in a systemically unjust society (usually patriarchal), and
  3. Is personally harmed by the outrageous injustices of that society, and
  4. Overcomes this harm/ injustice by playing not by the rules of society, but by her own rules.
  5. There must be a major catharsis for both the audience and the heroine, and
  6. The heroine cannot feel sorry for winning. She also cannot feel sorry for how she’s won.
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book list

Five Novels Written by Women Featuring Feminine Rage, recommended by Isabelle Spotts

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Five Novels Written by Women Featuring Feminine Rage, recommended by Isabelle Spotts

Feminine rage is a hot term as of late. While it may seem like a timely publishing trend, there’s nothing new or trendy about the concept—except perhaps the prevalence of novels continuing to explore the topic, for which I am very grateful. The brutality of the female experience—the undoing and eventual reclamation of women who have been figuratively crushed under societal pressures, or who face literal harm simply for existing and then respond in kind—is as evergreen as the struggles themselves. My debut novel, Saint Delilah, has a strong dose of female rage. It’s a good for her revenge story that follows a young woman who was tragically murdered by a man who believed a girl like her would never be missed. Delilah returns as a ghost to reclaim what is rightfully hers—an afterlife—and the story does not shy away from the very real danger of being a woman subject to the male gaze. Here are five novels that tell the stories of women who refuse to back down, who go a little rightfully crazy, and who find themselves enraged.

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book list, Recommendations

Seven Books That Play With Form Recommended by Louise Wallace

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Seven Books That Play With Form Recommended by Louise Wallace

There’s a line in Lyn Hejinian’s poetics essay ‘The Rejection of Closure’ – form is not a fixture but an activity – and I love the idea of form being something that writers do, with purpose and intent. Maybe that comes from my background in poetry, but I seek out books that foreground that approach – texts where authors collide forms, pulling the strengths of various mediums together to generate something richer than what might have been possible for them in a single genre alone. Form can turn vastness into plenitude, Hejinian says, and books that are playful in this way can change the pacing on a dime, subvert a reader’s expectations or draw in other voices. The reading experience opens out. It feels luxurious, abundant.

When I write, I think about how the arrangement of words on the page might assist in conveying a particular sensation or feeling. These seven books have shown me new ways of shaping language to great effect. Some on this list are old favourites, inspirational touchstones, while others are newer discoveries – recent releases I’m still thinking about. 

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book list, Recommendations

Ten Debut Multiple POV Novels Recommended by Rachel León

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Ten Debut Multiple POV Novels Recommended by Rachel León

I love the depth multiple POV novels offer. Multiple perspectives allow us to see characters from different angles, complicating our idea of who they really are. While I appreciate a voicey first-person narrator, and know they’re a popular trend (I don’t have stats to back this up, but I’m sure a high percentage of contemporary novels are written in first-person), multiple POVs can widen the scope of the narrative, allowing the reader to know information one character has that another doesn’t, which adds delicious story tension. And multiple perspectives can bring extra richness, texture, and nuance to stories.

I’ll make another claim I can’t back up with hard data: multiple POV novels can be more difficult to query and sell. That was the case for my debut, How We See the Gray, which includes nine (yes, nine) perspectives. So for the querying writers out there—or just anyone hungry for beautiful, nuanced stories—I put together a list of some of my favorite multiple POV novels from the past few years… and they all happen to be debuts! 

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