I don't know about you, but I'm one of those readers who's always looking ahead to what exciting new books are on the publishing horizon. Of course, I love this week's TTT prompt: Top Ten Most Anticipated Books Releasing in 2026. I've actually already read several of the 2026 titles I had been most looking forward to, but there are always more I want to get my hot little hands on. I'm going to list the ones I've already read first, with links to my reviews on Goodreads, so you can see my thoughts on them if you're interested. Then, I'll list ten more that I still want to read. I'm sure there are hot new up-and-comers that I'm not even aware of, so I'm looking forward to perusing your lists to see what other books I should be watching for. 

As always, Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by the lovely Jana over at That Artsy Reader Girl.

2026 Releases I've Already Read:

A Box Full of Darkness by Simone St. James (available January 20, 2026) **** stars

Such a Clever Girl by Darby Kane (available January 20, 2026) ** stars

First Sign of Danger by Kelley Armstrong (available February 17, 2026) **** stars

Missing Sister by Joshilyn Jackson (available March 3, 2026) *** stars

Everyone in This Bank is a Thief by Benjamin Stevenson (available March 17, 2026) **** stars

Mad Mabel by Sally Hepworth (available April 26, 2026) **** stars

When No One Else Will by Amanda Skenandore (available May 26, 2026) ***1/2 stars

1. Murder Your Darlings by Jenna Blum (available January 13, 2026)—Historical fiction author Blum pens her first contemporary novel with this bookish murder mystery featuring two novelists whose relationship becomes very sketchy very fast. 

2. This Book Made Me Think of You by Libby Page (available February 3, 2026)—Another bookish read, this one features a new widow who is shocked when she's informed that her late husband left her a birthday gift at their local indie. The present is twelve books, one for each month of the first year without him, to help comfort and guide her through the grieving process. She vlogs about her reading and reading-inspired adventures, finding a global support system that carries her through a difficult year.

3. The Astral Library by Kate Quinn (available February 17, 2026)—New bookish books for the win! Quinn's latest and greatest centers around a young woman who finds refuge from her struggles in the real world in the reading room at the Boston Library. When she discovers a hidden doorway leading to a secret library where lonely souls can literally disappear inside their favorite books, she's dazzled. Then, she's confronted by a frightening enemy who's a danger to everyone the library has sheltered. As she escapes through various books, she must figure out how to defeat this threatening foe.

4. A Kingdom of Shadows by Emily Bain Murphy (available March 3, 2026)—The first book in a new middle grade fantasy series, this novel introduces a trio of young thieves who live in a world of increasing darkness and despair. When a stranger tells them about a lake of light, they embark on a quest across the kingdom to bring light and life back to their dimming world. Naturally, they get more than they bargain for...

5. The Keeper by Tana French (available March 31, 2026)—This is the final book in French's trilogy starring retired Chicago detective Cal Hooper. Now living in a small Irish village, he's become apart of the tight-knit community's fetes and feuds. When a local young woman is found dead in a river, tearing the townspeople in two over ages-old issues, Cal's fiancèe urges him to stay out of the whole mess. Unfortunately for her, his copper instincts and loyalty to his village mean he has to investigate, even if it makes them a target.

6. Last One Out by Jane Harper (available April 14, 2026)—Even though Harper's newest seems to be getting very mixed reviews, I'm excited to read it. The standalone novel is set in a New South Wales mining town that's been left to rot. Ro's son vanished from the ghost town five years ago while working on an oral history of the place. On the anniversary of his disappearance, the distraught mother returns to the abandoned village determined to figure out what happened to her missing child.

7. Caller Unknown by Gillian McAllister (available May 5, 2026)—I always look forward to a new McAllister thriller. This one has an intriguing premise: while staying in a remote Texas cabin with her daughter, Simone wakes up one morning to find the young woman missing. In her place is a phone with a ransom message. When Simone responds, she discovers that her daughter's kidnappers don't want money; instead, they want her to do something unthinkable. How far will she go to save her daughter?

8. The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett (available May 5, 2026)—From the author of The Help comes a new historical novel set in Mississippi during the Great Depression. When the lives of three females—an 11-year-old orphan, a struggling old maid, and a fiery woman with a past—converge, the trio form an unlikely team that will change all of their lives forever.

9. An Ordinary Sort of Evil by Kelley Armstrong (available May 19, 2026)—Armstrong's A Rip Through Time is one of my very favorite historical mystery series. In this fifth installment, our girl Mallory—a modern-day homicide detective trapped in Victorian Scotland—and her employer, undertaker Duncan Gray, are summoned to the home of a wealthy woman. Assuming she has a dead body for them to take care of, they're stunned to find that she actually has a request from the ghost of her dead maid to investigate the maid's murder. Although they're skeptical, they agree to look into the matter, which does indeed present an intriguing mystery.

10. A Pair of Aces by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray (available June 23, 2026)—This historical novel stars Eunice Carter, Manhattan's first Black prosecutor, who becomes assistant DA for the city of New York. Determined to bring down crime boss Lucky Luciano, she decides to catch him through his hand in prostitution. With the help of Polly Adler, owner of a high-class brothel business, she works day and night to bring Lucky to his knees, no matter the consequences to themselves.

There you go, ten 2026 releases I'm looking forward to reading. How about you? Which up-and-coming titles are you dying to get your hands on? I'd love to know. Leave me a comment on this post and I will gladly return the favor on your blog.

Today's TTT topic is all about our favorite fictional heroines (Top Ten Favorite Heroines [Or Heroes, If You Like]). Since my aging brain is pretty much rubbish at remembering specifics about characters and would likely revert to leading ladies I've already talked about a million times, I'm going to go in a different direction today. February is almost over and I've yet to talk about Black History Month at all. So, today, I'm going to dish about books on my TBR list by Black authors. 

As always, Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by the lovely Jana over at That Artsy Reader Girl. Click on over there and give her some love, won't you? If you want to join in the TTT fun, all the details are on her blog.

This duo's forthcoming novel, The First Ladies, which publishes on June 7, also sounds like an excellent read. 

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4. A Few Red Drops: The Chicago Race Riot of 1919 by Claire Hartfield—Helen reviewed this middle-grade non-fiction book on her blog a few years ago and I knew it was one I needed to read. It recounts the true story of some young Black teen boys who accidentally swam too close to a "white" beach on Lake Michigan. A incensed white man began throwing rocks at one of them, causing the young man to drown. The police refused to arrest the man. Tensions stemming from the incident led to days of violent race riots in Chicago. 

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There you go, ten books by Black authors that are on my TBR mountain chain. Have you read any of them? What did you think? Which literary heroines/heroes did you feature today? I'd truly love to know. Leave me a comment on this post and I will gladly return the favor on your blog. 

Today's Top Ten Tuesday prompt is easy and fun. Perfect! It's all about book covers with X on them—"X" can be a person, a place, a color, an animal, a particular font, a scene, whatever. I'm sure I won't be the only one who chooses books for my X. What can I say? It's one of my favorite things to see on a cover! I love this theme so much that I actually used it for a list back in January 2020. Luckily, there are lots of bookish covers out there, so I used ten different ones this time around. 

Don't forget to click on over to That Artsy Reader Girl and give our hostess, Jana, some love. If you're in a list-making mood today, be sure to join in the TTT fun.

I haven't read most of these, I just enjoy their cover art. My reviews are linked to the titles of the two I have read.

1. The Woman in the Library by Sulari Gentill—I'm reading this mystery right now. It has a fun story-within-a-story format that I'm really digging.

2. The Bookshop on the Corner by Jenny Colgan

3. Aria's Travelling Book Shop by Rebecca Raisin

4. The Library by Sarah Stewart

5. Prose and Cons by Amanda Flower

6. The Librarian by Christy Sloat 

7. The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop by Lewis Buzbee

8. Murder in the First Edition by Lauren Elliot

9. The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray

10. The Librarian of Crooked Lane by C.J. Archer

There you have it, ten bookish covers that I love. What do you think? Have you read any of these? Which cover is your favorite? I'd truly love to know. Leave me a comment on this post and I will gladly return the favor on your blog.

Carrying on with the Crayola theme from last week, today's Top Ten Tuesday is all about colorful book covers.  Funny thing about that—when you read a lot of dark mysteries, chilling thrillers, and sobering historical novels, you don't end up with a lot of bright, fanciful cover art!  Since those genres are my jam, I struggled to come up with any colorful covers at all, let alone ten.  As I was scrolling through my TBR lists on Goodreads, however, I did see some interesting trends and patterns in the cover art of some of the books I'm looking forward to reading.  Even if you're not a big hist-fic fan, you've probably noticed that dozens of recent additions to the genre feature covers with women looking away from the camera.  If you look further, you'll also see that many of these are done in mostly dark colors—black, grey, navy, emerald, etc.—with just pops of brighter hues, usually red.  While cover trends can get annoying, making books look too much alike, I can't deny that the kind of cover I just described really appeals to me.  It signals that this is the kind of novel I like, the sort I really want to read.  Like, now.  Just yesterday while browsing the book section at Costco, I answered the seductive siren call of a historical novel cover with—guess what?—a woman in a red (I guess it might be more purplish) coat looking away from the camera!  Well played, book marketers.  Well played.  I want to show you what I mean, so my list today will be comprised of historical novels on my TBR list that follow this trend.

What kind of list do you want to make today?  You can use the prompt, twist it up a little, or create your own list.  It doesn't matter what you do, just join in the TTT fun.  Hop on over to That Artsy Reader Girl to get started.

1.  The Last Bookshop in London by Madeline Martin—This is the novel that hopped into my cart at Costco.  Don't you hate it when that happens?  It's about a woman who moves to London just as World War II is heating up.  She finds a job in a bookshop, where she learns about the transformative power of books and stories, especially in perilous times.

2.  The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray (available June 29, 2021)—Based on a true story, this novel stars Belle de Costa Greene, who was hired by J.P. Morgan to curate a collection of rare manuscripts, art, and books for his Pierpont Morgan library.  A society darling known for her impeccable taste, Belle was keeping an explosive secret that could have ruined everything for her—her father is Black.

3.  Those Who Are Saved by Alexis Landau—Vera is a Russian Jew living in France.  When the Nazis take over the country, all Jews are ordered to report to an internment camp.  Desperate to save her young daughter, Vera leaves young Lucie with her governess, who vows to protect the little girl.  A chance to escape to America complicates the already impossible situation, leading to a heartbreaking separation that will tear Vera apart.  Will she ever see Lucie again?

4.  The Librarian of Saint-Malo by Mario Escobar (available June 1, 2021)—As France is torn apart by war, a librarian tries to offer her neighbors comfort through books.  When the Nazis threaten to destroy volumes they deem dangerous, she risks everything to save her beloved tomes.

5.  The Clockmaker's Wife by Daisy Wood—Featuring a dual-timeline, this novel concerns a woman in modern-day New York who finds a beautiful watch that belonged to her grandmother, whom she never knew.  Intrigued, she begins looking into her grandmother's past and is shocked by the harrowing World War II tale she uncovers...

6.  Off the Wild Coast of Brittany by Juliet Blackwell—Another WWII story set in France, this one revolves around a woman who's left high and dry after her husband leaves her.  With a half-finished guesthouse to deal with, she and her sister set about making the place inhabitable for visitors.  As they do so, they uncover the home's incredible war-time secrets.

7.  The Girl From the Channel Islands by Jenny Lecoat—Having fled Austria, a young Jewish woman is hiding in plain sight on the Nazi-occupied island of Jersey.  

8.  The Last Garden in England by Julia Kelly—Okay, so this one has more than one pop of color, but I still think it fits the theme.  The story juggles three different timelines, all revolving around people who lived and worked around the lush garden at Highbury House.

9.  The Orphan Collector by Ellen Marie Wiseman—This one also bucks the trend a little since the person in red is a young girl and she's not facing away from the "camera," just shielding her face.  Still.  Set during the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic, the story concerns a 13-year-old German girl living in Philadelphia who must face prejudice against immigrants, crippling poverty, and forced separation from the younger brothers she has vowed to protect at all costs.

10.  The Outcasts by Kathleen Kent—When she gets a chance to escape the Texas brothel where she's basically being held hostage, Lucinda Carter takes it and doesn't look back.  With the promise of a pirate's treasure to be had, she embarks on an adventure that she hopes will lead to wealth, love, and freedom.

There you have it, ten books that follow the dark-covers-of-historical-novels-with-pops-of-red-and-women-facing-away trend.  Which others have you noticed?  Have you read any of these?  Which colorful covers did you choose for your list today?  I'd truly love to know.  Leave me a comment on this post and I will gladly return the favor on your blog.

Happy TTT!