Need to Read: Spring 2026
Tim Ehrenberg of “Tim Talks Books” gives you his recommendations for spring reading.
Lost Lambs
by Madeline Cash
The beginning of 2026 was one of the best reading seasons I’ve had in a decade. It started with the wittiest debut novel I have ever read by Madeline Cash, Lost Lambs. I’m not joking when I tell you I laughed out loud on almost every page in this zany family drama filled with characters and situations you won’t soon forget. It was so8 cleverly curated and felt fresh in a way you will understand when you read it. I read so many books and I am rarely surprised, but Lost Lambs knocked my socks off. It played out so visually that it felt like watching a movie in my mind and I still smile when I think of its quirkiness.
Kin by Tayari Jones
February may be the shortest month, but it packed a punch with stellar titles. The author of An American Marriage
(one of my favorite novels of 2018) is back on our shelves in2026 with
Kin. It’s the tale of two motherless girls who grow up together in 1950s Jim Crow Louisiana, but take different paths in life. Vernice and Annie, the book’s leading ladies, are so fully imagined that I am still thinking about them two months after I closed the book. Their voices and spirits linger in your heart.
Kin
is about found family and the search for belonging, and it’s told to us by one of the brightest voices in contemporary fiction.
More than Enough by Anna Quindlen
February also brought us More Than Enough
by Anna Quindlen. I don’t know where I’ve been, but I had never read a novel by Quindlen, and I have been missing out.
More Than Enough has a little bit of everything: ancestry tests, aging parents, the meaning of family, friendship and marriage, as well as book clubs and fertility issues. You come to care for these characters as you do for people in your own life, hoping everything works out for them in the end.
London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe
One of my favorite nonfiction writers and past Nantucket Book Festival presenters, Patrick Radden Keefe, is back with London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family’s Search for Truth. It’s a true crime narrative investigating the mysterious death of19-year-old Zac Brettler, who jumped from a London tower in 2019, and his family’s subsequent investigation into his secret life, which led them into London’s criminal underworld. Keefe knows how to consume you with whatever subject he takes on, and you fall under his spell in
London Falling.
Good People by Patmeena Sabit
Another title to note if you missed it is Good People by Patmeena Sabit. I read it in one sitting because of its short chapters, suspenseful plot and an obsession to know exactly what was going on. It examines Islamophobia, xenophobia and generational differences, with a plot that unfolds like a literary game of ping pong where the reader isled to believe one thing on one page, only to be confronted with the complete opposite on the next. I quite literally couldn’t turn the pages fast enough.
The Calamity Club by Claire Hoffmann
April showers bring May flowers, as well as some incredible spring reads. The multi-million-copy bestselling author of
The Help returns after 17 years with The Calamity Club, a big (600-plus pages) and big-hearted saga about friendship and resilience in1930s Mississippi. Stockett balances humor and heartbreak with an ease that makes the pages fly. One moment you’re laughing at a perfectly observed social disaster—the next you’re sitting with a character in a moment of raw vulnerability. If you’re looking for a character-driven novel with southern charm, biting social observation and a cast of women you’ll fall in love with,
The Calamity Club
absolutely delivers.
A Violent Masterpiece by Jordan Harper
For my mystery and thriller buffs, don’t let this Violent Masterpiece slip by. Jordan Harper turns the city of Los Angeles into an entire character in this powerfully written and gripping literary thriller of the highest order. You feel like you took a trip to LA with the best tour guides, stuck in traffic and spotting celebrities everywhere you look. Our official tour guides in this story are alive-streaming nightcrawler, a street lawyer and an underground concierge who come together to solve a crime and navigate a cityscape of drug-fueled celebrities, riots, a serial killer, a missing friend, secret vaults, orgies and violent circumstances. On a shelf full of thrillers, this one stands out.
The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout
What can I say about Elizabeth Strout? Her writing and characters are like a love letter to why I read and enjoy fiction. The Things We Never Say is new this month and introduces a new group of characters and a new town for Strout. In its pages we meet Artie Dam, a high school history teacher, husband and father who seems like he couldn’t ask for more out of life, even though inside, he struggles with isolation. He consistently asks himself: How is it that we know so little about one another, even those closest to us? This novel does what Elizabeth Strout does best. It explores the human condition, how we love and why we love, how we interact with one another, the emotions we feel and the emotions we share with others. I always feel a little more connected after finishing one of her novels.
American Fantasy by Emma Straub
As spring slowly showed its colors here on Nantucket, I took a cruise—a literary cruise that is—in Emma Straub’s American Fantasy. I haven’t had this much fun with a book in quite some time. I had a perma-grin on my face during the entire reading experience. It’s about a newly divorced woman who rediscovers herself on a cruise with a ’90s boy band (think New Kids on the Block or NSYNC) that she loved as a teen, exploring themes of nostalgia, aging, celebrity, fandom and second chances. It’s also pure Emma Straub, who has been coined as “sunny delight in human form” by my own personal book whisperer, Jenna Bush Hager. I will always be first in line at the bookstore for whatever Emma publishes.
John of John by Douglas Stuart
If I had to sum up John of John by Douglas Stuart in one word, I would choose lyrical. Stuart manages to write about the simplest of moments in the most artistically expressive way. By the author of the Booker Prize winning novel, Shuggie Bain and sophomore book Young Mungo, this is a tale of a father’s expectations and a son’s desires. This is more of a quiet story than some others on this list. Its beauty is in the writing and emotions of the characters that bleed off the page.
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