2026 has now entered the history books. Well, not exactly, as it will be decades before historians have enough perspective to analyze WTF just happened. Still, it’s over, and everything feels like it’s starting fresh. Whether it actually is or not, time will certainly tell.

In the bookish world, we’ve all posted our “Best Books of the Year” list for the old year, and now it’s time to look at what’s coming for us – or at us – in the new.

But before I do that, I always take a look back at which books I was looking forward to this time last year, to see how they – or I – did – and the answer is not too badly, all things considered.

Out of last year’s list of 20 “most anticipated” titles, I read 17. And for the most part, had a great time doing so. (A Drop of Corruption was one of my A++ reads in 2025 and is on my – and a lot of readers’ – best books lists for 2025. The first book in the series, The Tainted Cup, won the Hugo for Best Novel this past year and I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see A Drop of Corruption do the same this year. The ONLY thing that would have stopped the third book from being on this Most Anticipated List would be if it were not coming out in 2026. But it is and it is – although there’s no cover image YET.

About those books I didn’t get around to, one (Gryphon’s Valor) seems to be indefinitely delayed – or until 2033, which amounts to the same thing. I’m still interested, but it’s just not happening at the moment. One book, A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping, I bounced hard off of twice and probably won’t go back to. The third, The Sea Eternal, I’m still very interested in reading/listening to because I loved the first book AND I enjoy fantasy/SF reworkings of the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, but it’s a book I planned to listen to – like the first – and the 19 hours that’s going to take haven’t materialized – at least not yet.

Which leads me right back to the books I’m most looking forward to for this coming year – not that I haven’t already teased you a bit.

But first, the books that are teasing ME this year that aren’t on the list because…reasons. The reason that they are not certain for this year, at least not yet, no matter how much I want them to be. I hope for/expect a fifth book in Tracy Clark’s Harriet Foster series at the end of 2026 but there is no announcement as yet. Louise Penny’s next book, The Last Mandarin, is not in the Chief Inspector Gamache series, which means that while I’m anticipating reading it, it doesn’t make the “most anticipated” list as Gamache himself would. And finally, L.E. Modesitt Jr.’s final book in his Grand Illusion series, titled Premier, has been turned into the publisher but will not be published until late 2026 or sometime in 2027. Damn, both that it’s the last and that it’s not here yet.

Without further ado, because there’s been plenty of that already, here are the books that I’m most looking forward to reading in 2026 that I have reasonable expectations will be released this year – regardless of the availability of even preliminary covers to ooh and ahh over. Whether each of the titles listed will turn out to be good, great, terrible or terribly great is something that we’ll all get to discover in the year ahead.

I hope at least some of the books on this list will spark anticipation for your reading year to come as well!

Brimstone Hollow (Annie Gore #2) by Archer Sullivan (August)
Daggerbound (Swordheart #2) by T. Kingfisher (August)
A Deadly Episode (Hawthorne & Horowitz #6) by Anthony Horowitz (April)
Green & Deadly Things by Jenn Lyons (March)
Green City Wars by Adrian Tchaikovsky (June)
Inside Man (PAR Unit #2) by John McMahon (January)
Lightning Runes (City of Shadows #2) by Harry Turtledove (March)
A Lion’s Ransom (Owen Archer #16) by Candace Robb (January)
A Long and Speaking Silence (Singing Hills Cycle #7) by Nghi Vo (May)
Palaces of the Crow by Ray Nayler (May)
Platform Decay (Murderbot Diaries #8) by Martha Wells (May)
A Pretender’s Murder (Eric Peterkin #2) by Christopher Huang (January)
Radiant Star (Imperial Radch) by Ann Leckie (May)
The Shadow Carver (Inspector Angelica Henley #4) by Nadine Matheson (March)
The Tailor (DS Cross Mysteries #8) by Tim Sullivan (July)
This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me (Maggie the Undying #1) by Ilona Andrews (March)
A Trade of Blood (Shadow of the Leviathan #3) by Robert Jackson Bennett (August)
Villain (Hench #2) by Natalie Zina Walschots (May)
When the Wolves are Silent (Sebastian St. Cyr #21) by C.S. Harris (April)
Zyon (Haze #2) by Katharine Kerr (August)

Here we are again with another yearly edition of “as the spinner turns”. Well, not really as those spinning paperback racks are no longer much of a thing, and I mostly read ebooks these days.

But the idea is still there, that 2024 is done and dusted, the tallies have all been tallied and all the “Best Books of the Year” lists have been published, including my own, and that it is time to look ahead to all the wonderful books coming in 2025 with eager anticipation.

Not, however, without taking a look back at last year’s list, if only to see whether or not my anticipation was met. Last year’s list held 24 books that I expected would grab and hold my attention in 2024. Of those 24 titles, one I can be excused for not having read as it was not released after all. Gryphon’s Valor by Mercedes Lackey has thus become part of this 2025 list. There were four books I just did not get to this year, Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands by Heather Fawcett, Glass Houses by Madeline Ashby, House of Open Wounds by Adrian Tchaikovsky and The Sky on Fire by Jenn Lyons. I still want to read every single one of them, so they may turn up among this year’s reads even though they are now last year’s books. We’ll see.

(I’ve decided to cap the list at 20 from now on, making that another score we’ll see if I kept this time next year.)

Without further ado, and definitely without looking in the rearview mirror at the year that has just closed, here are the books that I’m most looking forward to reading in 2025 that I have expectations will be released this year. Whether each of the titles listed here will turn out to be good, great, terrible or terribly great is something that we’ll all get to discover in the year ahead.

I hope at least some of the books on this list will spark anticipation for your reading year to come as well!

The Adventures of Mary Darling by Pat Murphy
Alchemy and a Cup of Tea (Tomes & Tea #4) by Rebecca Thorne
Dead in the Frame (Pentecost and Parker #5) by Stephen Spotswood
Direct Descendant by Tanya Huff
Down in the Sea of Angels by Khan Wong
A Drop of Corruption (Shadow of the Leviation #2) by Robert Jackson Bennett
Everybody Wants to Rule the World Except Me (Dark Lord Davi #2) by Django Wexler
A Fashionably French Murder (American in Paris Mystery #3) by Colleen Cambridge
Gryphon’s Valor (Kelvren’s Saga #2) by Mercedes Lackey and Larry Dixon
Hemlock & Silver by T. Kingfisher
Kills Well With Others (Killers of a Certain Age #2) by Deanna Raybourn
Pearl City (Phoenix Hoard #3) by Julia Vee and Ken Bebelle
The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses (Investigations of Mossa and Pleiti #3) by Malka Older
The Sea Eternal (Empire Without End #2) by Emery Robin
Shadow of the Solstice (Leaphorn, Chee & Manuelito #28) by Anne Hillerman
Slayers of Old by Jim C. Hines
Tea You At the Altar (Tomes & Tea #3) by Rebecca Thorne
The Tomb of Dragons (Cemeteries of Amalo #3) by Katherine Addison
What Stalks the Deep (Sworn Soldier #3) by T. Kingfisher
A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping by Sangu Mandanna

While we’re all still reeling that 2023 is in the rearview mirror, it’s time to take a look at what’s coming up in this new year of 2024. Or at least the books I think I’m planning to read in 2024 – as no plan survives contact, etc., etc., etc.

Which is why I also take this post as a chance to look back at what I thought I was looking forward to this time last year and see if I got to them, or, for that matter, whether they got to me. Sometimes books don’t arrive when it was intended that they would, and some books don’t grab me when or the way I thought they would.

So, since I AM keeping score, sorta/kinda, I read 21 of the 23 books I was looking forward to this time last year. The two that I didn’t manage this year were Cassiel’s Servant by Jacqueline Carey and The Ghosts of Trappist by K.B. Wagers. I’m still intending to get to both of them – I even have audiobooks for both titles. But they’re both long and the ’round tuit’ slipped out of my hands when I got to them.

And, unlike the Best Books List which I try to keep down at least NEAR to 10, this is a list that grows each year. At least so far, as it has the potential to get rather unwieldy if it keeps on going. Still, at the end of the year looking back on what actually happened, it’s not unreasonable to keep the list to a reasonable number. Or that’s the theory.

From the perspective of looking forward upon the year that’s just barely begun, considering that I generally read about 300 books in a year, I’m predicting less than 10% of the books I will likely read this year. I’m not in a position (mostly) to say whether these books will be good, GREAT or terrible – just that I’m eager to find out.

Hopefully, some of these books – or at least their covers – will set your reading senses a-tingling as well!

Blood Jade (Phoenix Hoard #2) by Julia Vee and Ken Bebelle
The Brides of High Hill (Singing Hills Cycle #5) by Nghi Vo
Close to Death (Hawthorne and Horowitz #5) by Anthony Horowitz
The Comfort of Ghosts (Maisie Dobbs #18) by Jacqueline Winspear
Court of Wanderers (Reaper #2) by Rin Chupeco
The Daughters’ War (Blacktongue #0) by Christopher Buehlman
The Dead Cat Tail Assassins by P. Djeli Clark
Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands (Emily Wilde #2) by Heather Fawcett
Fiasco (Uncharted Hearts #2) by Constance Fay
Ghostdrift (Finder Chronicles #4) by Suzanne Palmer
Glass Houses by Madeline Ashby
Gryphon’s Valor (Kelvren’s Saga #2) by Mercedes Lackey and Larry Dixon
House of Open Wounds (Tyrant Philosophers #2) by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Kill List (Inspector Anjelica Henley #3) by Nadine Matheson
The Lantern’s Dance (Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes #18) by Laurie R. King
Mal Goes to War by Edward Ashton
Mislaid in Parts Half-Known (Wayward Children #9) by Seanan McGuire
The Missing Witness (Quinn & Costa #5) by Allison Brennan
Navigational Entanglements by Aliette de Bodard
The Sky on Fire by Jenn Lyons
A Sorceress Comes to Call by T. Kingfisher
The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett
What Feasts at Night (Sworn Soldier #2) by T. Kingfisher
Wicked Problems (Craft Wars #2) by Max Gladstone