‘You don’t really see it in fiction’: how one novelist brought ‘Detty December’ party season back from Ghana

Jessica Carmichael’s coming-of-age YA novel is set during the huge annual diasporic return to west Africa, which ‘changed the trajectory’ of her life

Cape Fever by Nadia Davids review – a power struggle between mistress and maid

Set in a colonial city after the first world war, this story of a battle of wills between an elderly widow and her young servant is deftly told

The Guardian view on the National Year of Reading 2026: time to start a healthy habit for life

Editorial: A Children’s Booker prize, library cards for newborns and a major campaign – initiatives to encourage a love of books in children are a cause for celebration

This Is Where the Serpent Lives by Daniyal Mueenuddin – set to be a standout novel of 2026

From an acclaimed short-story writer, this epic of power and class across generations in Pakistan is brutal, funny and brilliantly told

The Cat by Georges Simenon review – Maigret author’s tale of a toxic marriage

The Belgian author’s genius comes to the fore in a dark domestic drama

Books to look out for in 2026 – fiction

Maggie O’Farrell, Yann Martel and Julian Barnes are among the authors publishing new novels this year

Michael Slater obituary

Scholar of Charles Dickens who wrote a definitive biography and shone a light on the writer’s more neglected works

The best recent crime and thrillers – review roundup

Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy; Darkrooms by Rebecca Hannigan; The Nancys and the Case of the Missing Necklace by RWR McDonald; Best Offer Wins by Marisa Kashino; Your Every Move by Sam Blake

‘Like Kafka by way of Pedro Almodóvar’: 10 debut novels to look out for in 2026

A Pulitzer finalist is among the first-time novelists, in tales of love, a surreal prison, teen murder and a tradwife

Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell audiobook review – the life and loss of the woman behind the Bard

The wife of William Shakespeare takes centre stage in a rich, sensitive examination of parental grief, sensitively narrated by Jessie Buckley

How the French fell in love with family-driven memoirs and autofiction

Matriarchs, absent fathers and troubled childhoods: 2025 was the year French literature focused on family, says writer Anne-Laure Pineau

Ice by Jacek Dukaj review – a dazzling journey to an alternate Siberia

The 1908 Tunguska comet changes the direction of history and gives rise to a weird new reality in this acclaimed epic from the Polish author

Truth in fantasy: what Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials taught us over its 30-year run

The ‘religious atheist’ author held a reputation as CS Lewis’s opposite. But his two trilogies – which came to a close this year – were a celebration of humanity and imagination

Bad Bad Girl by Gish Jen review – why was my mother so cruel to me?

The American author uses fiction to explore the life of her Chinese mother as she seeks to understand the violence that marked their relationship

John Updike’s best books – Ranked!

Following the publication of the novelist’s letters, we count down the best of his books, from the dark magic of The Witches of Eastwick to the misadventures of Rabbit Angstrom