Right, here we go my friends. A work of quite epic proportions, my summer 2026 books guide. The novels I’ve read this year which I think would make excellent holiday companions, handily delivered during a heatwave.
This is the first instalment - I must divide it into parts or you will never receive it. I’ve been writing this off and on for weeks: my desk is surrounded by piles of books, like a paper fortress. Now, these are mostly recent titles, but do by all means dip into last year’s list if you prefer a paperback, or this round-up might bear literary fruit. Part two will feature non-fiction, fiction in translation (which is really just fiction, but humour me as for the sake of my sanity I had to arrange this in a vaguely orderly manner), books I shall simply label ‘summer’, and a yet-to-be-named category in which there are some very good books.
N.B. This is a very long post indeed (50 books!) so it may not confine itself to an email, so do click through to read it in the app or online.
Historical Fiction
Mrs Dickens - Emily Howes (Phoenix) - Warning: you may never feel the same way about Charles Dickens after you read this. I had the joy of interviewing Emily at one of her bookshop events and by the end we pretty much led an admittedly partisan crowd in a ‘down with Dickens’ chant.
Mrs Dickens follows the marriage of Kate Hogarth to Charles Dickens from its beginning to the end. Kate met Charles Dickens when she was 19 – he came to her father’s house and she was charmed by his charisma and energy. They marry and Kate is immersed in Dickens’ world - and it very much is his world. When Dickens’ ardour cools significantly, the cracks in their marriage deepen: after 22 years and 10 children , he launched a smear campaign against her, describing her as a “a page in my life which once had writing on it is now blank”. In an extraordinary actor of literary ventriloquism, Emily rescues Kate from the shadows of history.
Elizabeth and Marilyn - Julie Owen Moylan (Penguin Michael Joseph) - The two iconic women met once, at a film premiere. From this, Julie has spun gold. In 1956, both women were 30. Elizabeth II was pacifying Prince Philip and Anthony Eden; Marilyn was filming The Prince and the Showgirl at Pinewood Studios with Laurence Olivier, her husband Arthur Miller in tow. Both are struggling to keep their husbands happy - and with the weight of expectation, playing roles whilst battling their inner demons.
The Colour of Home - Tammye Huf (Bantam) - This is a truly eye-opening novel, about the impact of segregation during WW2. Three young black men enlist to fight for the freedom of a country which affords them very little. Cora, who marries in haste before the war (and not to the man she loves….), is left behind. When they return, they are different men. This powerful novel is a brilliant feat of storytelling - ideal for Kristin Hannah fans.
A Great Act of Love - Heather Rose (John Murray) - Caroline is determined to secure her future, so she reinvents herself as a wealthy widow, Mrs Douglas, when she arrives in Hobart Town in the late 1980s, Van Dieman’s Land - a place of wild, brutal beauty - in the late 1830s, determined to bring a disused vineyard back to life and somehow save her father, Jacque-Louis, who once worked in Louis XIV’s vineyards, but is now a convict on Norfolk Island, a violent, miserable place. A soaring tale of hope and redemption that crosses oceans.
Honey in the Wound - Jiyoung Hang (Manilla) - Now, this is not an easy sun-lounger read. It’s a haunting, sweeping, immersive multi-generational historical epic which tore my heart asunder. It tackles a dark period of history: the displacement thousands of women who were abducted and coerced into sexual slavery by the brutal Imperial Japanese Army. But it is also a testament to courage and resilience, written with a lyrical beauty which is shot through with magical realism in a manner that recalls Toni Morrison. A stunner of a book.
Love stories
Annie Knows Everything - Rachel Wood (Bonnier Books) - Who knew that they needed a workplace romance set in the world of tech and data? Definitely not me. And yet, and yet…. It turns out I very much do when it has Nora Ephron levels of repartee and charm, a terrific cast of supporting characters, a heroine with gumption, and chemistry between the main players which zips off the page.
When Annie loses her job at a tech start-up, she talks her way into another role, working on data strategy and something about…coding, is it? Turns out, she’s rather good at it, loves the adorably geeky (NB as a geek of the literary variety, am totally on board with geeks) tech team. If only her boss, Connor, wasn’t quite so charming and distractingly hot.
People in Love - Claire Daverley (Penguin Michael Joseph) -Ah, Claire, how you unstitch the hearts of your characters and reveal the wonders within in your gorgeous, lyrical prose. Nora has just accepted her boyfriend, Robin’s proposal (much to her mother’s disapproval: it’s not Robin, it’s the idea of marriage). On the eve of their engagement party, Bren- her childhood friend and next-door neighbour - and the one who she thought would be the one. This is a gorgeous meditation on love, on roads not taken, on living one life and imagining another, on what would happen if the near-miss turned up and disrupted the life you thought you were set upon.
Main Characters - Bobby Palmer (Headline) - This is a clever conceit: a polyphonic love story narrated by everyone except the main characters, Seb and Clara. Shouldn’t work, very much does. It’s a gorgeously London-y novel with a cinematic sweep - they even first meet in London’s Golden Square: he an actor, she a would-be director. Seb and Clara’s paths criss-cross over the years - they come together, fate rips them asunder. They have, cries one of their friends, ‘the kind of love you see in movies’ - but will they jettison it? THEY MUST, you will shriek between your tears. Oh yes, I’ve read this thricely (if this is a word?), and sobbed every. Single. Time.
If Books Could Kill - Kate Eberle (Michael Joseph) - With the vale of tears occasioned by the previous two. you’ll need a pick-me-up, and a romp through the tropes of genre fiction should do it. When Annie is whisked into the pages of her favourite romantic novelist’s latest novel (stay with me) she’s delighted - until she discovers that this particular book is a thriller, and the dashingly handsome stranger is actually out for her blood. To plot her escape, she enlists (okay, kidnaps) English professor Grant Hoffman (handily fond of crime novels). Riotously good fun.
I also loved…
There are many (many!) more where these came from i.e. the depths of my bookish brain and bookshelves. Subscribe now and all shall be yours. Plus the love of my heart etc.