Call me Ishmaelle by Xiaolu Guo

I saw this book on so many book prize speculation lists, but it didn’t make the longlist. Is this the female equivalent to Percival Everetts “James”?

Ishmaelle, a young woman from England’s coast joins the crew of a whaling ship named the Nimrod. It’s a retelling of Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick”. By adding in new characters while adhering to the original story, I’m thinking maybe it’s finally time to read Moby Dick and then follow it up with Call me Ishmaelle. Or just skip moby dick and read this one.

Expected release: January 6, 2026

Pages: 192 (at least her page count is more sober than Melville’s 720 pages!) Genre: Fiction, retelling.

This is where the serpent lives by Daniyal Mueenuddin

A debut novel from already acclaimed Daniyal Mueenuddin, whose debut short story collection won the Story Prize and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Book Prize, the National Book Award, and the Pulitzer Prize.

Moving from Pakistan’s sophisticated cities to its most rural farmlands, This Is Where the Serpent Lives captures the extraordinary proximity of extreme wealth to extreme poverty in a land where fate is determined by class and social station.

Expected release: January 13, 2026

Pages: 288 Genre: Fiction, Pakistan

Scavengers by Kathleen Boland

A mother – daughter scavanger hunt for buried treasure – all aboard! An eccentric mother and the responsible daughter (Lorelei and Rory anyone?) armed with a map and a plan, they might find more than they expected.

Expected release: January 13, 2026

Pages: 304 Genre: Fiction, contemporary, family

The School of night by Karl Ove Knausgaard

The fourth book of The Morning star series is finally translated to English from it’s original Norwegian.

It’s 1985, and the young and ambitious Kristian Hadeland is moving from Norway to London to study photography. He throws himself headfirst into the bustling art scene and finds himself at a crossroads—ultimately deciding to pay any price for success in his early career, willing to sacrifice everything and to stop at nothing. He should be careful though, the past has a way of catching up with you sooner or later.

Expected release: January 13, 2026

Pages: 512 Genre: Fiction, Contemporary, Norway, Magical realism

Half his age by Jenette McCurdy

Following up her bestseller memoir “I’m glad my mom died” with a fiction book, where she might draw inspiration from some personal experience?

Waldo is a 17- year old girl desperate to be with her creative writing teacher who’s married with kids. She doesn’t know why but there are just so many things they have in common. And he sees her, when she feels like nobody else does.

Expected release: January 20, 2026

Pages: 288 Genre: Fiction, contemporary, romance.

The future saints by Ashley Winstead

Record executive Theo goes to watch the band “The Future Saints” after their manager has died. He’s instructed to coax a good album out of them or let them go. He’s instantly pulled to the lead singer Hannah, but Hannah often goes off script, for better or worse. The bands big break is waiting for them – if they can survive it.

Expected release: January 20, 2026

Pages: 352 Genre: Romance, fiction, contemporary.

Is this a cry for help? by Emily Austin

Emily Austin is the queen of dark and quirky, and her newest doesn’t look like it strays to far from the author we know. We follow Darcy, a local librarian, married to Joy who runs a book binding service. They have two cats and a beautiful house by the lake. Life couldn’t be better. Until Darcy gets news that her ex-boyfriend has passed away. From there it’s a spiral.

Expected release: January 20, 2026

Pages: 304 Genre: Fiction, contemporary, LGBT.

Just watch me by Lior Torenberg

This books is described as Fleabag meets Big Swiss about a charismatic woman who livestreams her life for 7 days and nights to save money to save her comatose sister.

Narrated in seven chapters, one for each day she is live, as her behaviour becomes riskier and the stakes grow.

Expected release: January 20, 2026

Pages: 288 Genre: Fiction, literary fiction, contemporary.

Vigil by George Saunders

If you’ve read and loved Lincoln in the Bardo, then you must be excited for this one!

Jill “Doll” Blaine is hurling towards earth ready to usher her new charge into the afterlife. Except this particular charge is different from the others. He doesn’t seem to have anything to regret. The oil CEO is ferried from this world into the next with an imagination Saunders is famous for.

Expected release: January 27, 2026

Pages: 192 Genre: Fiction, literary fiction, contemporary.

In bloom by Liz Allan

When the blurb says “part virgin suicides, part Veronica Mars” you know you have the millennials lined up to eat that. Set in the mid-nineties in Australia, we follow four, poor teenage girls starting a rock band. Hoping to win the battle of the bands and a ticket out of the shitty town they were raised. But there are more challenges than just the competition in their way.

Expected release: January 27, 2026

Pages: 256 Genre: Fiction, Adult fiction.

Run Away by Harlan Coben

She’s addicted to drugs and to an abusive boyfriend. And she’s made it clear that she doesn’t want to be found. But you follow her anyway…

It was already released on the first day of the year. Netflix just doesn’t sleep! Starring James Nesbitt, Minnie Driver and Alfred Enoch.

His & Hers by Alice Feeney

Coming to Netflix January 8!

There are two sides to every story – which means someone is always lying.

When a woman is murdered in Blackdown, a quintessentially British village, newsreader Anna Andrews is reluctant to cover the case. Detective Jack Harper is suspicious of her involvement, until he becomes a suspect in his own murder investigation. Someone isn’t telling the truth, and some secrets are worth killing to keep.

Baby Doll by Hollie Overton

First released back in 2016 it was riding the gone girl and girl on the train wave. Held captive for eight years, Lily has grown from a teenager to an adult in a small basement prison. Her daughter Sky has been a captive her whole life. But one day their captor leaves the deadbolt unlocked.

This is what happens next…to her twin sister, to her mother, to her daughter…and to her captor.

The series renamed “Girl taken” is made by Paramount+ and the first episode should be available on January 8.

The people we meet on vacation by Emily Henry

Coming to Netflix January 9! So if you wanna read this before it’s release you better hop to it. Two friends

The seven dials mystery by Agatha Christie

Releasing on January 15, the old Christie tale has gotten a new remake starring Mia McKenna-Bruce leading the three part series. Helena Bonham Carter, Martin Freeman, Corey Mylchreest, Ed Bluemel and Nabhaan Rizwan also star.

Finding her edge by Jennifer Iacopelli

What would winter even be without ice scating?

Three sisters navigate the pressures of their family’s figure skating legacy. Adriana, trains with new partner Brayden while still in love with her ex-partner Freddie. A fake romance with Brayden for sponsorship adds to her challenges.

All episodes will be available on january 22.

H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald

A memoir by Macdonald about when her father dies and she is knocked sideways by grief, she becomes obsessed with the idea of training her own goshawk. She buys Mabel for £800 on a Scottish quayside and takes her home to Cambridge. Then she fills the freezer with hawk food and unplugs the phone, ready to embark on the long, strange business of trying to train this wildest of animals.

The book came out in 2014 and was a big success. It will be coming to screens in Europe around the end of January starring Claire Foy as Macdonald.

An offer from a gentleman (Bridgerton book 3) by Julia Quinn

Netflix switched the books around so season 4 is actually book 3 (and vice versa).

Released in two batches part 1 will be available on Netflix on January 29.

In 2022 I wrote a blog post about #JanuaryinJapan – that you can find HERE – and it still holds water today. A list of Japanese Nobel Prize winners, Notable Japanese writers both fiction and non-fiction, the first book EVER – and of course, Murakami. Last year I bought Murakami’s The wind-up bird chronicle so I’m excited to try that one this year.

There’s also a new genre of Japanese books with cats in the center of the story, also known as “Healing fiction”. Books like: If cat’s disappeared from the world, We’ll prescribe you a cat, The blanket cats etc. Slow it down and find peace to get a great start of the year.

Read with Jenna: Homeschooled: a memoir by Stefan Merrill Block

Stefan Merrill Block was nine when his mother pulled him from school, certain that his teachers were “stifling his creativity.” With no background in education and no formal training, she began to instruct Stefan in the family’s living room. Beyond his formal lessons in math, however, Stefan was largely left to his own devices and his mother’s erratic whims. She forced him to bleach his hair and to crawl like a baby in a strange and regressive attempt to recapture his early years.

Long before homeschooling would become a massive nationwide movement, at a time when it had just become legal in his home state of Texas, Stefan vanished into that unseen space and into his mother’s increasingly eccentric theories and projects. But when, after five years away from the outside world, Stefan reentered the public school system in Plano as a freshman, he was in for a jarring awakening.

Expected release: January 6, 2026

Pages: 288 Genre: Memoir, Non Fiction

GMA: Skylark by Paula McLain

1664: Alouette Voland is the daughter of a master dyer at the famed Gobelin Tapestry Works, who secretly dreams of escaping her circumstances and creating her own masterpiece. When her father is unjustly imprisoned, Alouette’s efforts to save him lead to her own confinement in the notorious Salpêtrière asylum, where thousands of women are held captive and cruelly treated. But within its grim walls, she discovers a small group of brave allies, and the possibility of a life bigger than she ever imagined.

1939: Kristof Larson is a medical student beginning his psychiatric residency in Paris, whose neighbors on the Rue de Gobelins are a Jewish family who have fled Poland. When Nazi forces descend on the city, Kristof becomes their only hope for survival, even as his work as a doctor is jeopardized.

Expected release: January 6, 2026

Pages: 464 Genre: Historical fiction

Reese’s bookclub: The first time I saw him by Laura Dave

Am I the only one a little shocked she picked the sequel to her previous pick or no??

Five years after her husband, Owen, disappeared, Hannah Hall and her stepdaughter, Bailey, have settled into a new life in Southern California. Together, they’ve forged a relationship with Bailey’s grandfather Nicholas and are putting the past behind them.

But when Owen shows up at Hannah’s new exhibition, she knows that she and Bailey are in danger again.

Hannah and Bailey are forced to go on the run in a relentless race to keep their past from catching up with them. As a thrilling drama unfolds, Hannah risks everything to get Bailey to safety—and finds there just might be a way back to Owen and their long-awaited second chance.

Expected release: January 6, 2026

Pages: 288 Genre: Thriller, Mystery

Service95: Night people by Mark Ronson

This pick screeeeaaaams my friend wrote a book pick, but his sales aren’t great so lets help him.

It’s about Mark Ronson being a DJ in the 90’s.

Released: September 16, 2025

Pages: 256 Genre: Memoir

TeaTime pictures book club (Dakota Johnson): The bell jar by Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath masterfully draws the reader into Esther’s breakdown with such intensity that Esther’s insanity becomes completely real and even rational, as probable and accessible an experience as going to the movies. Such deep penetration into the dark and harrowing corners of the psyche is an extraordinary accomplishment and has made The Bell Jar a haunting American classic.

I gave this

Released: January 1, 1963

Pages: 288 Genre: Classics, Fiction, Feminism, Mental health

Inklings book club (Jack Edwards): The safekeep by Yael Van Der Wouden

I feel like I want to add the Inklings book club because it was the fastest growing book club that just started late 2025 and already had tens of thousands of subscribers. And for good reason.

I also wanted to add this because I don’t think I’ve gushed about this book enough. It is such a good book!

It is 1961 and the rural Dutch province of Overijssel is quiet. Bomb craters have been filled, buildings reconstructed, and the war is truly over. Living alone in her late mother’s country home, Isabel knows her life is as it should be—led by routine and discipline. But all is upended when her brother Louis brings his graceless new girlfriend Eva, leaving her at Isabel’s doorstep as a guest, to stay for the season.

It was shortlisted for the bookerprize and has won countless awards – the womens prize for fiction among others.

Released: April 5, 2024

Pages: 272 Genre: Historical fiction