Bookworm: Spring 2026

Joy, fear, wisdom, weirdness, and a peek into the future

Any time is prime reading weather, but with spring’s arrival and summer travel on the horizon, you may be looking for some good books to accompany your downtime. If you’re in need of inspiration, here are some of the highlights from my reading stacks since I last popped up in your inboxes. A few are new, but many are backlist titles I’ve finally gotten around to reading.

American Fantasy by Emma Straub: I’ve been anticipating this one for a long time, and am so excited that next Wednesday I’ll be speaking with Emma about the book and all things boy bands and joy at Books & Books in Coral Gables. Miami friends, please come along—I promise it will be a fun conversation. I don’t think I’ve been so qualified to discuss something since I interviewed NKOTB about Hangin’ Tough for Rolling Stone!

American Fantasy has had a lot of buzz, so you probably already know that it’s about a middle-aged woman who reluctantly goes on a boyband cruise solo. But the novel is about so much more than that, too: It’s about fame and aging and letting go of preconceived notions to really feel the pure joy of the present moment. Especially when that moment is in the presence of your favorite boy band on the lido deck! I have a confession to make: I’m not a huge cruising fan, but this was easily one of my favorite ways to experience the high seas.

Haunting Reads

Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy: The hype is well-deserved. I gulped down this blend of suspense, romance, and climate fiction, and was sad when it was over. A family living on a remote island between Australia and Antarctica grapples with trust issues and a web of secrets when a strange woman washes up on their shore. It’s spookier than I anticipated, but fast-paced and beautifully written.

Bear by Julia Phillips: I read this while staying in a cabin in the woods on a remote Washington island, which might not have been the smartest idea, as I kept wondering if every sound I could hear outside could be a bear like the one that looms over the characters in this novel… which is set on a remote Washington island. I love the contrast between the main character’s pragmatism and her sister’s magical thinking, as well as the fairytale vibes and constant dread that keeps you turning the pages.

Whidbey by T Kira Madden: I also read this in the cabin in the woods—as it turns out, the same cabin where Madden wrote some of this incredible novel. The meta effect of reading Whidbey while on Whidbey Island, experiencing many of the things described on the page, is a unique reading experience I’m not sure I’ll ever have again. A lot has been written about how deftly and generously Madden captures the ripple effects of abuse—not just on victims but also on the loved ones of both victims and perpetrators. That’s all true, but the book also contains some breathtakingly beautiful writing about dark moments and thoughts, and it stays with you long after you put it down.

Futuristic Reads

What We Can Know by Ian McEwan: The premise of a future-world scholar studying a mysterious lost poem, supposedly only read aloud at a 2014 dinner party, sounds pretentious, but persevere past the first section of this book and you’ll be rewarded with some fascinating takes on what our future world may look like—and a sharp POV switch that reveals the other side of the story, in the vein of the switch in Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff.

The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa; translated by Stephen Snyder: These futuristic books could also live under the “haunting reads” header, and in this case the dread comes from the surveillance state and the ongoing drain of collective memory from the residents of a small, unnamed Japanese island. Despite the dystopian outlook, this book has a surprising depth of warmth, love, and generosity.

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro: The titular Klara is an Artificial Friend, a kind of doll who longs to be chosen. Then, when she is, she puzzles over the inconsistent attention of the girl she assists, and tries to figure out her place in the house and the world at large. Another great example of pairing a cold view of the future with a big-hearted protagonist.

Author Universes

Exit Party & Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel: Apologies for raving about a book that won’t be out until September 15, but consider this a sign to place a preorder: Exit Party is another expansion of the Mandel universe, one that returns to characters from previous books (mostly The Singer’s Gun) and catapults us into two alternatively chilling visions of America’s future. In one (A-Side), it’s the spring of 2031 and America has collapsed into a maze of new republics and sovereign states, with militia roaming the highways. In the second (B-Side), the country has closed ranks and become a fortress, with all citizens under surveillance. The “exit party” of the title refers to a party in the A-Side world where two characters seem to have doubles who appear out of nowhere, and another character simply vanishes.

In Sea of Tranquility, we see characters in 1912, 2020, 2203, and 2401, and the mystery centers on an apparent glitch in the time-space continuum where characters in three different timelines all experience a sudden, fleeting vision set to the same piece of violin music.

My favorite thing about Mandel’s work is that she successfully plays with sci-fi concepts without it ever feeling gimmicky. We always feel grounded in the emotional worlds of the characters, no matter what crazy event may be unfolding in their particular timeline. Reading these two most recent books sent me down a Mandel rabbit hole—I’d read Station Eleven some years ago, but in the past few weeks I’ve read her entire body of work. Especially given the way she returns to certain characters and images across novels, it’s a reading experience I heartily recommend.

The Correspondent by Virginia Evans: Yes, it’s as delightful as everyone says. Reading the main character Sybil’s quirky letters sent me on a quest for more of a similarly wise, older female narrator, which I found in spades in two of Elizabeth Strout’s Lucy Barton novels that I hadn’t read yet—Lucy By The Sea and Oh William! Strout’s newest novel, The Things We Never Say, which is apparently not connected to Lucy or to her other beloved character, Olive Kitteridge, comes out on May 5.

Unhinged Women

Youthjuice by E.K. Sathue: This one skews towards horror, but it’s also a deliciously fun romp and takedown of the cult-like beauty world and girl-boss culture. It’s about a twenty-something copywriter who’s pulled into the dark side of a luxury skincare company. Their new product has the most amazing results, but what is the mysterious ingredient and why do the company’s fresh-faced young interns keep disappearing?

All’s Well by Mona Awad: I came to this earlier book of Awad’s via another author-rabbit-hole, after reading Bunny and We Love You, Bunny (I was already a big fan of her other novel, Rouge). As the title suggests, the plot revolves around a theater production of Shakespeare’s All's Well That Ends Well, but the real draw of this novel for me was the devil’s pact the main character Miranda makes in order to escape her debilitating back, hip, and leg pain. Awad’s descriptions of chronic pain are some of the most visceral I’ve ever encountered.

Hyped Memoirs

Easy Beauty by Chloé Cooper Jones: As a philosopher, Jones infuses her personal tales of living with a disability with a thought-provoking layer of cultural criticism. She is an exquisite writer and there is not an ounce of self-pity to be found in the book. What impressed me most about this memoir (as someone who also experiences chronic pain) is how determined Jones is to experience life to the fullest, even when she knows she’ll have to push through eye-watering agony to do so. The book takes us from bars and Jones’s home in Brooklyn to Milan, where she attends a Beyonce concert alone, to Indian Wells, where she reinvents herself as a tennis reporter.

Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner: This was a hit for good reason: it’s sad and funny and filled with mouthwatering descriptions of Korean dishes and ingredients that Zauner savors as a child, and again as a young adult trying to navigate grief.

Strangers by Belle Burden: Yes, this is a divorce memoir by a privileged white lady from a society family. But if you go in accepting that, you’re likely to be pulled along by the same question that kept me turning the pages: is this guy (Burden’s husband, who leaves her out of the blue during Covid, wanting no custody of their children) for real? As well as questions like: What is Burden going to do with the shock and financial precarity she finds herself in when he leaves and becomes a dick about enforcing their prenup? How could a Harvard-trained lawyer wind up in this position? A quick and easy read, with an “I’m watching a train-wreck” layer of fascination.

Timely Nonfiction

I don’t often cover nonfiction here, but if it’s your jam, I recommend Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves by Sophie Gilbert, and Why We Can’t Sleep: Women’s New Midlife Crisis by Ada Calhoun. I saw myself (in different timelines) in both of them!

How about you, friends? What have you been reading and loving?