Irish Times Best Fiction of 2026 'A painfully optimistic book that does the favour of making you laugh as it breaks your heart' Kenneth Branagh'A tender, elegant novel about the beauty and importance of friendship...One of the most moving books I've read in some time' John Boyne***A tender coming-of-age story about friendship, first love, loss, and facing the ultimate question: who am I going to be? For fans of Douglas Stuart, Michael Magee, David Nicholls and Andrew O'HaganBrendan's best friend, his only friend, is Ronan McCoy. He knows things about Brendan that no one else does: about his job washing the cars at Feeney's Funeral Home, about the loneliness he sometimes feels even when surrounded by hundreds of others at school. But Brendan never told Ronan about the dark feeling that sits at the bottom of his stomach, the feeling that tells him something bad is coming.

'Offbeat, ironic, humane and hilarious, Experts in a Dying Field is an earworm you ll be humming along to for a long time to come.' PAUL MURRAY 'A wonderfully evocative novel from a major storytelling talent. JOSEPH O'CONNOR Just pure joy and pure heartbreak and GENUINE LAUGHS all the way through. I cried a few times too. MARINA HYDE

‘A harrowing, heartbreaking and yet heartwarming story.’ MARY McALEESE‘We all know Ciara as a warrior on the athletics track. Now she faces the race of her life with the same grit and determination we have come to expect from her.’ SONIA O’SULLIVAN‘This book is devastatingly brilliant. Ciara’s life on the track has been world class and contrasting that with her cancer fight is compelling reading ... I genuinely couldn’t stop reading.’ DERVAL O’ROURKE‘A raw account from the peak of athletic success to the devastating life-altering blow of cancer, Ciara’s journey is both powerful and unflinchingly honest - one that forces you to pause and reflect on what truly matters.’ DAVID GILLICK‘An honest, raw, and heartbreaking account of what it takes to fulfil your dreams and endure the pain of having them taken away. Ciara Mageean is a national treasure.’ JACQUI HURLEYFew Irish track athletes are as universally loved as Ciara Mageean, who has remained endearingly down-to-earth, candid and optimistic despite the dramatic twists and turns of her world-class career. In 2024 she finally won a European title, crossing the line to secure that gold medal in a moment of pure euphoria.

THE INTERNATIONALLY BESTSELLING NEW NOVEL FROM THE PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF THE DUTCH HOUSE AND TOM LAKE 'Few writers are more adept than Patchett at delineating the collisions between present and past' Observer 'Whistler is top-shelf comfort food, the literary equivalent of pricey ice-cream' Guardian, Book of the Day __________

WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2026A SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLERTHE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLEROVER TWO MILLION COPIES SOLD WORLDWIDEA TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2025AN IRISH TIMES BESTSELLERA BBC RADIO 2 BOOK CLUB PICK'A warm, funny gem of a novel'LAURA HACKETT, THE TIMES'Masterful . . . I was delighted and moved'NEW YORK TIMES 'Immensely enjoyable'GUARDIAN'I can't praise it enough. It's an absolute triumph'CLARE CHAMBERS'What a novel! Tender, dry, sharp...devastating, but still feel good.'PANDORA SYKES 'Tremendous'FREDRIK BACKMAN'Shows us what a glorious thing growing older can be'FLORENCE KNAPP'The year's breakout novel no one saw coming'WALL STREET JOURNAL–Sybil Van Antwerp is seventy-three, slowly losing her sight and always writing letters . .

From the creators of the internationally bestselling, award-winning, multi-adapted phenomenon The Lost Words: a dazzling celebration of birdlife in Britain, re-imagining the classic field guide for a new generation of nature loversA great thinning of the skies is underway. Around 50% of bird species are in decline worldwide. Our dawns and springs are quieter each year than the last. An almost unimaginable abundance has been lost. It does not have to be this way –– but we will not save what we do not love. The Book of Birds is a compendium of forty-nine bird species, from Avocet to Yellowhammer, all of which are declining or endangered in Britain. Inspired by the classic bird-books with which the authors grew up, this is a field guide with a difference. It asks not ‘What is that bird?’, but ‘Who is that bird?’ It shows its readers how to identify birds, but also how to identify with them. With lyrical precision and playfulness, Robert Macfarlane evokes each bird’s habits and habitats –– their patterns of flight and of song, how they hunt and gather, how they nest and raise their young, the stories and myths which attend them, the threats which shadow them, and how their wild lives intersect with our own.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2026AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERA SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER'Touching, thoughtful, a deeply affecting love story about time and regret' DAVID NICHOLLS'Steeped in yearning, melancholy and the reckoning with mortality that must come to us all . . . King's writing still pierces you' The Times'Exploring how first love shapes a lifetime, here is a novel of piercing clarity' Independent'Beautifully written . . .

The New York Times and Irish Times bestseller After the sudden death of his father, Dara Waldron became disoriented in a world that had once filled him with wonder. A year later, he meets an abandoned border collie called Oscar hiding on a derelict farm in County Clare. When Dara brings him home, he believes he’s committing an act of rescue. Oscar’s submissive behaviour hints at a difficult upbringing and, determined to earn his trust, Dara cares for him, walks with him and learns all he can about one of Ireland’s most beloved working breeds.

A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2026 IN VOGUE, BBC, NEW YORK TIMES, W MAGAZINE, TOWN & COUNTRY 'A beautifully written eulogy for the loss of a relationship' Joyce Carol Oates 'Beautiful... devastating ... Strangers reads with all the momentum and colour of water-tight literary fiction' British Vogue How do we go on when a loved one betrays us? On a chilly day in March of 2020, in the early days of the pandemic, Belle Burden s husband of twenty years announced, with no prior warning, that he was leaving her. His decision shocked Belle to her core: she believed he was a happy man, a committed partner, and a devoted father to their three children. She thought he was a man who had settled into the life he had always wanted: a successful career, summers spent at their beloved home on Martha s Vineyard, lots of tennis. Overnight, he transformed from her steady companion into a stranger. As she pieces her life together in the wake of a loss she had never imagined coming, she finds she is much stronger than she ever expected. Exploring the transformation of a shy, quiet girl, nicknamed Belle the Good to a powerful, brave, determined woman who has learned to use her voice to expose the patriarchal structures that have forced women to be discreet and compliant for far too long, Strangers is a must-read memoir of self-discovery.

From the author of A Ghost in the Throat, an unforgettable book - both history and ghost story - that will leave you gasping by its final page. 'There's magic in this one' Kevin Barry'This book will be read for decades to come' Anne Enright'Astonishing' Yiyun Li'Nobody currently writing is pulling off sorcery like this' RTÉThe more she learned, the more certain she became: this other world was alive and true and trembling, and very close to her own. Now she had a secretIn the city of Cork, a derelict Victorian mental hospital is being converted into modern apartments. One passerby has always flinched as she passes the place. Had she lived in another time, she too might have found herself held within those walls. Now, she notices a sign: FOR SALE.