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List: New Fiction in May 2026


A photo of Caller Unknown

Caller Unknown

There is nothing that Simone won't do for her daughter, Lucy. With Lucy about to leave home for university, they depart the UK for a vacation to Texas to spend some quality time together. But when Simone awakens on their first morning in the desert, Lucy is gone, missing from their rental cabin. In her place is a cell phone, and a voice on the other line issues a shocking ransom demand. Though Simone's husband urges her to bring in the authorities for help, she knows she can't take any chances. The kidnappers might kill Lucy if she tells anyone. No mother would take that risk. Instead, that night, she drives to the isolated meet-up. What she finds there changes everything.

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A photo of The Shippers

The Shippers

After a whole lifetime of being bad at love, JoJo Burton decides to solve her intimacy issues once and for all at her sister’s destination wedding on a cruise ship. With the help of a little pop psychology, she diagnoses herself with a fixation on the neighborhood guy who was her first crush and first kiss (and who just happens to be a newly-divorced wedding guest), and she decides to woo him during the cruise for some long-delayed closure. Only problem is, her sister’s a little busy being a bride at the moment—so JoJo ropes in her childhood bestie, Cooper Watts, to be her wing man.

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A photo of Seek The Traitor's Son

Seek The Traitor's Son

Elegy Ahn did not ask for destiny to find her. She is happy with her life as a soldier, defending her small country from the Talusar, a powerful nation who worships a deadly Fever. A fever that blesses half of its victims with mysterious gifts. But then she's summoned to hear a prophecy-her, and the most ruthless of Talusar generals, Rava Vidar. Brought face to face, they learn that one of them will lead their people to victory over the other...but they don't know which. And at the center of both of their fates: a man. A man that, Elegy is told, she will fall in love with. In just one day, Elegy's old life-her job, her purpose, and her future-is over. She and Rava are destined to collide, with the fate of their nations hanging in the balance. And when they do, only one will be left standing. Elegy intends to make sure it's her.

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A photo of Broken Dove

Broken Dove

After blowing her cover as a double agent within Silver Elite and fleeing the Prime-controlled capital, Wren Darlington is finally safe behind allied lines. As her lover and former commander Cross Redden works to disrupt the Primes from inside their ranks, Wren turns her focus toward assisting the Uprising in overthrowing their rule once and for all. Though she’s back among her own people, trust is hard-won and hidden agendas abound on the Mod base. Complicating matters even further is her shocking reunion with hotshot fighter pilot and undercover operative Grayson Blake. Once her closest friend in Silver Elite, Gray seems to understand Wren on a level she never thought possible.

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A photo of Midnight Train

Midnight Train

No one can change the past, but the Midnight Train can take you there. The chance to re-live the moments that meant most. To see what kind of person you really were. For Wilbur his best days were with Maggie, the love of his life. On his honeymoon in Venice. Before he gave it all away. He wishes he could go back and live differently. But to do so risks everything . . .

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A photo of The Things We Never Say

The Things We Never Say

Artie Dam is a man with a secret. He goes about his days teaching American history to high schoolers, correcting their casual ignorance, and lending a kind word to those who need it most. He spends his free time sailing the beautiful Massachusetts Bay, or with his adult son and his wife of more than three decades -- and as Artie does these things, he plans the event that will forever change the world he inhabits. But when a startling accident awakens a new perspective, and he realizes that life has its own secret it's been keeping from him, he charts another course full of grief, hilarity, and heart, to a place where the end marks the beginning.

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A photo of The Final Target

The Final Target

He showed up at Arden Bowie's debut author appearance with a copy of her novel and an eager smile. He showered her with compliments and got her autograph. Then he came to her next event. And the one after that. Dustin was just an aspiring writer who wanted advice, Arden reassured herself. But after giving in to one of his incessant invitations and chatting with him over coffee, she discovered that ignoring her inner alarm bell had been a terrible mistake...

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A photo of Take Me With You

Take Me With You

A poignant, hilarious, and wholly original love story, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Celebrants and winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor.

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A photo of The Foursome

The Foursome

A boldly original reimagining of an astonishing true two sisters in nineteenth-century North Carolina—Kline’s own distant relatives—who married world-famous conjoined twins from Siam.

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A photo of The Daisy Chain Flower Shop

The Daisy Chain Flower Shop

The brand new summer romance set in Dream Harbor from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Pumpkin Spice Café and The Strawberry Patch Pancake House!Another gentle small-town romance with Hallmark movie vibes... Dream Harbor remains a cozy spot to linger Publisher's Weekly.

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A photo of The Last Mandarin

The Last Mandarin

A mother and a daughter race against time in this all-too-real thriller that reaches from Tiananmen Square all the way to the White House. The Last Mandarin is an electrifying study of absolute power and voracious greed, political terror and personal conviction. But it is also an intimate examination of choice, of sacrifice, of memory and myths, both cultural and personal. It is the story of a mother and daughter, as well as a compelling international thriller about the precarious balance of power across the world, and within a family. And what happens when both break down.

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A photo of The One Day You Were My Husband

The One Day You Were My Husband

Carrie and Johan marry on a beach in Thailand only months into their whirlwind romance. Carrie, a British surgical intern, is too happy to care that she's being impulsive. But as the wedding festivities stretch into the night, a group of armed men suddenly swarm the beach, taking Johan away. She never sees him again. Twelve years later, Carrie is living in the English countryside with her husband, Robin, and their six-year-old twins, running a holiday cottage rental business on the side. One night, she stumbles across an online post in which she discovers that Johan escaped from Thailand years ago, and has been living in Stockholm ever since. As the memories of their passionate relationship flood her, she becomes obsessed with discovering what happened on their wedding day all those years ago. But just when Carrie thinks she knows what she must do, a shocking twist tears apart everything Carrie thought she knew. The One Day You Were My Husband asks readers what--and whom--they would give up to return to a first love and to the people they once were.

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A photo of The Parisian Chapter

The Parisian Chapter

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Paris Library and Miss Morgan's Book Brigade, a charming and cinematic novel following a young woman from Montana who takes a job in the American Library in Paris, where she discovers the power of storytelling and her own dreams.

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A photo of The Calamity Club

The Calamity Club

Oxford, Mississippi, 1933. Abandoned by her mother one Christmas Eve, Meg Lefleur has learned the hard way to rely on no one. Now one of the unadoptable "big girls" at the Lafayette County Orphan Asylum, she fights each day to keep her spirit unbowed. Birdie Calhoun, unmarried and outspoken, has come to Oxford to ask her socialite sister to help the struggling family she's left behind. But as the Depression tightens its grip, Birdie discovers her sister's charmed life is a tapestry of lies. Then, Birdie encounters Charlie, a woman running low on luck with little left to lose. When their fates--and Meg's--converge, Charlie comes up with an audacious plan to claim what's rightfully theirs.

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A photo of Good Joy, Bad Joy

Good Joy, Bad Joy

From the bestselling author of The Collected Regrets of Clover comes a vibrant, heartfelt novel about friendship over the decades, self-discovery, and what it means to have a life well-lived.

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A photo of First and Forever

First and Forever

A football star and his team's die-hard fan find themselves entangled in a PR stunt--that only one side knows is fake--but it might just be the right play...

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A photo of Transcription

Transcription

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.

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A photo of Enormous Wings

Enormous Wings

At seventy-seven, Pepper Mills is too old to be a stranger in a strange land. She didn't choose the Vista View Retirement Community of Austin, Texas-that would be her three grown children-but when she grudgingly moves in, she not only makes new friends, she falls in love. Then the exhaustion, vomiting, and confusion start. Her children and grandchildren worry it's cancer, dementia, a stroke. But a raft of tests later, the news is even more shocking: she's pregnant. Once word gets out, everyone wants a piece of her: the press and the paparazzi, activists and medical researchers, all descending on Vista View as Pepper tries to determine her next move. Soon Pepper has some hard decisions to make-and some she's not allowed to make. Enormous Wings is an urgent novel about female agency and bodily autonomy, morality and mortality. It's about what happens when you don't get to choose. It's about motherhood and family, sex and love and friendship, and how those bedrocks-even so late in the day-can still change, and then change everything.

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A photo of Tom Clancy Rules of Engagement

Tom Clancy Rules of Engagement

When a member of his Cabinet is killed in a plane President Jack Ryan suspects that the "accident" is anything but in this latest shocking entry in this #1 New York Times bestselling series. The White House is stunned when the Secretary of Commerce is killed in a plane crash in Turkey. President Jack Ryan isn't ready to write this off as a simple accident. Not only has he lost a good friend, but the Secretary was on an important mission: on the surface he was making an appearance at an economic conference, but the CIA was also using the flight as cover to extract an important asset from the Middle East. Soon, Lt. Commander Katie Ryan and her team are working with the investigators to find the cause of the tragedy, but one shocking revelation changes everything. There were supposed to be 16 people on the plane, but there are only 15 bodies. The quest for answers will lead the team deeper and deeper into a quagmire of lies and deception that will force President Ryan to face an unprincipled enemy with global ambitions.

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A photo of The Anniversary

The Anniversary

In the aftermath of a violent May Day attack, Jules Delaney is left wrestling with survivor’s guilt, while Quinn Riley returns from juvenile detention to the shock of his mother’s unsolved murder. Each May 1st, their lives intersect again, revealing how past mistakes, buried secrets, and long-standing grief bind them together. As the years pass, two lingering mysteries begin to align—while the elusive May Day killer continues to haunt the edges of their story.

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A photo of The Wish

The Wish

A dying teenager with a final wish, a lonely young man on a journey towards connection, and the unexpected friendship they find together, this is an irresistible and unforgettable read for fans of Jojo Moyes, Jodi Picoult, and John Green. Jesse is fifteen. She loves her friends, her little brother and her parents, even when they're arguing, which feels constant these days. But most of all, she loves playing video games. Even from her hospital bed. Alex is twenty-nine. He doesn't love a lot of things and isn't really sure he knows how to. A virtual reality games designer, his work desk is empty except for his computer, much like his life sometimes feels. Then Jesse makes a wish. A simple one: a video experience made of her life, something to be there, just in case she isn't. One loving teenager. One lonely adult. Which one will get the happy ending?

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A photo of A Curse of Beasts and Magic

A Curse of Beasts and Magic

Raine Stone was the sole survivor of a horrific creature while camping. Her account of the attack was attributed to shock, but Raine knows all too well that her story is true because now she carries that same Beast inside her! She’s been restraining its violent urges by letting it 'feed' on the pain and chaos she’s exposed to as an ER nurse, and by playing vigilante against would-be muggers at night. But when Raine uses the Beast’s energy to heal a frail elderly gentleman from a seemingly random attack, she opens herself to a new world of danger—literally. Remington “Remy” Byrne knows that the wall between a realm of deadly mythic creatures and our own world is very thin; he’s the Warden who guards the gateways between them. He also rules the supernatural creatures living in secret among us. Raine’s Beast makes her an intruder on Remy’s territory, but the elderly gentleman she saved is Remy’s grandfather, and her Beast contains power that could tip the scales in a sinister plot against Remy’s rule—if Raine allies with him. Will they be friends or foes…or will the dangerous attraction between them turn into something else? And can our world be saved by their explosive alliance?

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A photo of Phoebe Berman's Gonna Lose It

Phoebe Berman's Gonna Lose It

Meet Phoebe Berman: despite being a hopeless romantic, she's about to be a thirty-year-old virgin. With one month before her milestone birthday, she's determined to finally lose it...if her own anxiety doesn't slow her down. Phoebe Berman's Gonna Lose It is a brutally honest and completely relatable story for anyone who's ever felt stuck between coming of age and coming apart.

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A photo of Before I Knew I Loved You

Before I Knew I Loved You

Toshikazu Kawaguchi takes us back to the warm heart of the mysterious Funiculi Funicula Cafe, with another four guests whose luminous stories of love, lost and won again, will reaffirm your belief in its eternal potential. Yet the same rules always apply – you must return before the coffee gets cold. And while it does, memories are revisited, people are changed for ever, and the enduring power of love transcends the boundaries of time.

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