The New Yorker's Best Books of 2026 So Far

The New Yorker has released its weekly selection of the best books published so far in 2026. The list, curated by the magazine's editors and critics, includes new fiction and nonfiction recommendations.

Nonfiction

Jill Lepore's The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State is a wide-ranging history. Lepore traces the ideas and technologies that have transformed political life, from census-taking to artificial intelligence. She argues that a growing reliance on machines to predict human behavior threatens democratic self-government. The book grew from a magazine piece published in 2024.

Carlos Barragán's The Yahoo Boys is an investigation into online romance scams. Barragán traveled to Lagos, Nigeria, in 2022 to find the person who ensnared his mother in a scam. He profiles youths, known as Yahoo Boys, who use false identities to con Western targets. Nigerian public discourse reportedly views this lifestyle as both a stain on the country's reputation and a powerful economic engine.

Historian Christopher Clark reconstructs a sex scandal in A Scandal in Königsberg. The book details an 1830s scandal in Prussia involving a charismatic clergyman and his female followers. Clark highlights patterns of public inquisition from the case. The book's foreword cautions that resemblances to present-day situations cannot be ruled out.

Michael Cunningham's memoir Unsayable explores the purpose of writing. Cunningham recounts his upbringing in California, his awareness of being gay, and his time as a student at Stanford. He worked as a hustler and a bartender. The book elaborates on writing's many purposes, including to entertain and to render the world.

Erin Maglaque's Presence is a history of the female body from the 1500s to the 1800s. Drawing on sources like midwifery manuals and court testimonies, Maglaque indexes women's bodily experiences. She notes that breast-feeding in the eighteenth century became ruled by a "coarse moralism" and was seen as an act of sentimental motherhood.

Cal Flyn's The Savage Landscape: How We Made the Wilderness questions the concept of wilderness. Flyn travels to remote sites like the Transylvanian Alps and near Antarctica. She concludes wilderness is "a negative definition, an absence" threatened by trophy-hunting and corporate exploitation. She argues it is also about opening oneself to the immensity of existence.

Fiction & Poetry

Andrea Bajani's novel The Anniversary, translated by Geoffrey Brock, features an unnamed narrator. He proclaims, "Ten years ago, I saw my parents for the last time." The man reflects on his life and upbringing during a decade of estrangement. The book, excerpted in the magazine, challenges readers to reconsider what they owe their families versus themselves.

Chang-rae Lee's seventh novel, A Tender Age, is set in the spring of 1976. The narrator, Jeon-Gi, is almost eleven and roams freely with a gang of kids. His parents are recent Korean immigrants unaware of his troubles. Violence erupts, ending his fifth grade abruptly. A church summer camp offers new friendships, but everything changes again in an instant. Years later, Jeon-Gi is haunted by his actions and intentions.

Jordan Harper's crime novel A Violent Masterpiece follows three characters in Los Angeles. Kara Delgado is a fixer for a concierge service catering to the elite. Doug Gibson is a criminal-defense lawyer. Jake Deal is a live-streamer who tracks scenes of chaos using a police scanner. The book asks about the line between documenting horror and profiting from it.

Jenny Jackson's novel The Shampoo Effect centers on Caroline, a writer recently ghosted by a man. After publishing a story in The New Yorker, she quits her job to write full time. She attends a seaside residency in Massachusetts and falls for a local man. Complications arise when she learns one of his childhood friends is pregnant with his child. The novel studies a season when friendships are tested by ambition and growing families.

Emily McBride's novel Queen Mab follows Madeleine, a twenty-three-year-old graduate student. She decides to have a baby, shocking other academic women in her life. The book explores the body horror of birth and the fairy-tale horror of early motherhood. It is an unsettling novel filled with literary references, questioning if the baby is a changeling and if Madeleine is still herself.

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