New Book Releases | May 26, 2026
Including print, ebook, and audiobook editions
Two of the biggest summer releases drop on the same Tuesday. The Midnight Train is the sequel to The Midnight Library(14 million copies sold), and Dolly All the Time is Annabel Monaghan's most anticipated rom-com since Nora Goes Off Script. Both are on our Best Beach Reads 2026 list coming to the blog later this week!
Here are the 15 books worth knowing about this week. If you're catching up on May releases, start with New Book Releases May 19, 2026.
Note: This post contains affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you if you make a purchase through them. Thanks for supporting Ink & Imaginings!
The Big Two
The Midnight Train by Matt Haig
Literary Fiction / Fantasy • Set in the Midnight Library world
The Midnight Train by Matt Haig
📖 Buy on Amazon | Buy on Bookshop.org | 🎧 Listen on Audible
After 81-year-old bookseller Wilbur Budd dies just after receiving a call from his ex-wife Maggie, he boards the Midnight Train. A vehicle that lets travelers relive the moments that meant most to them. Wilbur returns to his honeymoon in Venice and other pivotal moments with Maggie, wishing he could go back and live differently. But changing the past risks everything. If The Midnight Library wrecked you, clear your schedule.
☀️ On our Best Beach Reads 2026 list. Full guide coming to the blog this week.
Dolly All the Time by Annabel Monaghan
Contemporary Romance • Standalone
Dolly All the Time by Annabel Monaghan
📖 Buy on Amazon | Buy on Bookshop.org | 🎧 Listen on Audible
Thirty-nine-year-old single mom Dolly Brick returns to her seaside hometown of Whitfield, Rhode Island, for the summer to help her dad and disabled brother save the family fish house. When she crosses paths with Stewart Whitfield the annoyingly handsome son of the town's wealthiest family. Freshly from a humiliating public breakup they fall into a fake-dating arrangement that quickly starts to feel like something more. Warm, witty, and being called "a spicy margarita" of a book by early reviewers. If Nora Goes Off Script was your favorite Monaghan, you're going to lose it over this one!
Thriller
The Final Target by Nora Roberts
Romantic Thriller • Standalone
The Final Target by Nora Roberts Book Cover
📖 Buy on Amazon | Buy on Bookshop.org | 🎧 Listen on Audible
Debut author Arden Bowie attracts a too-attentive fan named Dustin at her first book event. He keeps showing up. After one coffee meeting goes terribly wrong, Arden is left traumatized by a harrowing assault. Dustin's wealthy mother helps secure him a short sentence at a psychiatric facility, leaving Arden hiding behind locked doors and waiting for him to come back. A gripping stalker thriller with Roberts' signature romance threaded through. Longtime Nora Roberts fans, early reviewers are calling this one of her best in a while.
Murder Most Delicious by Danielle Postel-Vinay
Cozy Mystery • Standalone
Murder Most Delicious by Danielle Postel-Vinay Book Cover
📖 Buy on Amazon | Buy on Bookshop.org | 🎧 Listen on Audible
Think Agatha Christie meets The Thursday Murder Club with French food. American Master Sommelier Olivia Beech moves to Paris to start over after COVID robbed her of her sense of taste and her career, only to have her new dream job end in murder. She joins forces with the Paris Neighborhood Watch. A quirky group including an agoraphobic detective named Augusta Dupin, her British shorthair cat Chateaubriand, a pâtissier, a café owner, a florist, and a sweet cop who may be falling for her. The cozy mystery to devour poolside this summer.
Book Club Fiction
Before I Knew I Loved You by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
Literary Fiction / Magical Realism • Before the Coffee Gets Cold #6
Before I Knew I Loved You by Toshikazu Kawaguchi Book Cover
📖 Buy on Amazon | Buy on Bookshop.org | 🎧 Listen on Audible
Back at the cozy Funiculi Funicula Café in Tokyo, where a special seat lets visitors travel through time as long as they return before their coffee gets cold. Four new guests take their turn: a girl who couldn't call her mother, a man who never heard back from his girlfriend, a woman anxious to see her future, and a student desperate to meet his late father. Longtime readers of the series already know what they're walking into. And if you haven't started it yet, summer is the perfect time.
Reader tip: Use code "LOVEBOOKSELLERS" at Bookshop.org for 15% off any book in the Before the Coffee Gets Cold series, including this new release!
The Summer Boy by Philippe Besson
Literary Fiction • Standalone
The Summer Boy by Philippe Besson Book Cover
📖 Buy on Amazon | Buy on Bookshop.org | 🎧 Listen on Audible
Summer 1985, on a small French resort island. Six teenagers band together for their last golden season before adulthood. Eighteen-year-old Philippe is drawn to Nicolas, the quiet new boy in the group, but part of Nicolas remains unreachable. A sudden tragedy ends their summer and echoes across decades. Short, atmospheric, and devastating. This one is a beautiful and gutting read about the one summer that shapes everything after.
Shopgirls by Jessica Anya Blau
Coming-of-Age / Historical Fiction • Standalone (now in paperback)
Shopgirls by Jessica Anya Blau Book Cover
📖 Buy on Amazon | Buy on Bookshop.org | 🎧 Listen on Audible
San Francisco, 1985. Nineteen-year-old Zippy Tremblay lands her dream job at I. Magnin, rotating three Salvation Army outfits and Vaseline-shined pumps. Surrounded by an eccentric cast of veteran salesgirls, cosmetics ladies, and a roommate who eats only every other day, Zippy navigates 1980s adulthood until two surprises threaten both her sense of self and her coveted position. Day-Glo, witty, and full of found family.
Romance
Bad Boy Era by Amy Daws
Sports Romance • Mountain Men Matchmaker #4
Bad Boy Era by Amy Daws Book Cover
📖 Buy on Amazon | Buy on Bookshop.org | 🎧 Listen on Audible
Everly Fletcher is back from four years in Dublin, ready for a quiet summer on Fletcher Mountain helping launch her aunt's animal rescue. Then Conri "Wolf" Reilly shows up. Wolf is her college roommate's brooding Irish twin, a college rugby bad boy with a red-card reputation trying to repair his image at a Denver training camp. Forced proximity, grumpy-sunshine, best-friend's-brother tropes, and plenty of steam. Amy Daws readers, you already know.
Bromantasy by Máire Roche
Cozy Fantasy / Queer Romance • Standalone
Bromantasy by Máire Roche Book Cover
📖 Buy on Amazon | Buy on Bookshop.org | 🎧 Listen on Libro.fm
"Two heroes. One brain cell." Juniper O'Reilly is good at two things: drinking mead and skincare. Everything else falls to his absurdly capable best friend Mo Elmthorn, including the quest to slay a "fearsome monster" that Juniper has accidentally volunteered them both for. A silly, charming adventure about the mortifying ordeal of being known by your platonic best friend. The natural next read for fans of Legends & Lattes and The House in the Cerulean Sea.
The Summer Share by Jenn McKinlay
Contemporary Romance • Standalone
The Summer Share by Jenn McKinlay Book Cover
📖 Buy on Amazon | Buy on Bookshop.org | 🎧 Listen on Audible
Free-spirited travel influencer Hannah Spencer has spent five years touring the country in her vintage van with her Great Dane, Dude. Then she inherits her Pops's beach cottage in Cape Split, North Carolina. The catch: Simon O'Malley inherited the other 50%. As they tag-team repairs on the crumbling cottage, they discover their grandfathers shared a love story and start writing one of their own. Enemies-to-friends-to-lovers on the Outer Banks.
Phoebe Berman's Gonna Lose It by Brooke Averick
Rom-Com • Standalone
Phoebe Berman's Gonna Lose It by Brooke Averick Book Cover
📖 Buy on Amazon | Buy on Bookshop.org | 🎧 Listen on Audible
Phoebe Berman is a hopeless-romantic, soon-to-be 30-year-old virgin with crippling intimacy anxiety thanks to one disastrous teenage first kiss. With a month before her milestone birthday, she drafts the ultimate checklist and suddenly finds herself juggling three romantic prospects: the hot new fourth-grade teacher at her school, a high-school classmate who resurfaces via Words with Friends, and her roommate (the obvious friends-to-lovers candidate). Brutally honest about anxiety, dating, and being stuck in your own way.
Fantasy
A Curse of Beasts and Magic by Jeaniene Frost
Urban Fantasy Romance • Beautiful and Beastly #1
A Curse of Beasts and Magic by Jeaniene Frost Book Cover
📖 Buy on Amazon | Buy on Bookshop.org | 🎧 Listen on Audible
Beauty and the Beast meets The Witcher except Beauty IS the Beast. Raine Stone survived the attack that killed her family but now carries a violent Beast inside her, which she keeps in check by working as an ER nurse and playing vigilante at night. When she accidentally saves the grandfather of Remington "Remy" Byrne, the Warden who guards the gateway between our world and a realm of mythic creatures, she's pulled into his world. Dark and sexy, and available in a deluxe edition with sprayed edges, a map, and illustrated endpapers.
The Rainshadow Orphans by Naomi Ishiguro
Epic Fantasy • The Rainshadow Trilogy #1
The Rainshadow Orphans by Naomi Ishiguro Book Cover
📖 Buy on Amazon | Buy on Bookshop.org | 🎧 Listen on Audible
An epic fantasy trilogy inspired by Japanese folklore and Studio Ghibli, set in Rainshadow City a corrupt archipelago metropolis terrorized by the Lucky Crows. Three storylines converge: the Kawakami siblings seeking revenge, Haru the Emperor's son who can see magical Sun Spirits, and Theo a reluctant immigrant foot-soldier. When Toshiko Kawakami steals a dragon pearl from a Crow lieutenant, all their fates collide. This one is part fantasy, part cyberpunk, and a sharp commentary on immigration and poverty.
Mystery
The Brothers McKay by Craig Johnson
Mystery / Western • Longmire #22
The Brothers McKay by Craig Johnson Book Cover
📖 Buy on Amazon | Buy on Bookshop.org | 🎧 Listen on Audible
A sly homage to Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. When the universally loathed rancher Pepper McKay is murdered on his Crazy Woman Canyon spread, Sheriff Walt Longmire focuses on McKay's four very different sons: a charmer, a journalist, a reclusive monk, and a half-Native ranch hand. Each has a motive. Then a second body turns up and a wildfire traps Walt in the canyon, turning the case into a survival thriller. Twenty-two books in, and Johnson is still delivering.
YA
The Summer of Lost Things by Jenn Bennett
YA / New Adult • Standalone
The Summer of Lost Things by Jenn Bennett Book Cover
📖 Buy on Amazon | Buy on Bookshop.org | 🎧 Listen on Audible
The Goonies meets Outer Banks with a swoony romance. Star pupil Paige Malone has just finished her first year at Harvard but is spiraling after losing her financial aid. When she finds a hidden secret in her grandmother's beach cottage, she reunites her old middle-school treasure-hunting gang to finally track down the Golden Venus, a legendary local treasure rumored to be worth millions. Second-chance romance, family secrets, and high-stakes adventure on the Michigan coast.
🎬 Book to Screen Watch: Every Year After
Two weeks out from one of the biggest book-to-screen adaptations of the summer. Every Year After, based on Carley Fortune's Every Summer After, premieres on Prime Video June 10 with all eight episodes dropping at once. Sadie Soverall (Saltburn) stars as Percy, Matt Cornett (HSMTMTS) as Sam, and Elisha Cuthbert as Sue Florek. If you haven't read the book yet, this is your window. It's a fast read and the show is going to expand the story across multiple seasons.
If you already read it and you just need a refresher: Every Summer After full guide ending explained, characters, and book club questions.
Never Miss a Release Day
Subscribe to The Weekly Bookmark and get these roundups delivered every Tuesday. No spam. Just the books I'd text a friend about.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the biggest book releases on May 26, 2026?
The biggest new releases for May 26, 2026 are The Midnight Train by Matt Haig (the Midnight Library sequel), Dolly All the Time by Annabel Monaghan (summer rom-com), and The Final Target by Nora Roberts (romantic thriller). Also notable: A Curse of Beasts and Magic by Jeaniene Frost (urban fantasy romance with sprayed edges), Before I Knew I Loved You by Toshikazu Kawaguchi (Before the Coffee Gets Cold #6), and The Rainshadow Orphans by Naomi Ishiguro (epic fantasy debut).
Is The Midnight Train a sequel to The Midnight Library?
Yes. The Midnight Train by Matt Haig is set in the same world as The Midnight Library, which has sold over 14 million copies worldwide. It follows 81-year-old bookseller Wilbur Budd, who boards a train that lets travelers relive their most meaningful moments. You don't need to read The Midnight Library first, but it deepens the experience.
What is the best new romance book of May 26, 2026?
Dolly All the Time by Annabel Monaghan is the headline romance of the week — a fake-dating, small-town summer rom-com being called "a spicy margarita of a book" by early reviewers. If you loved Nora Goes Off Script, this is the natural follow-up.
Are there any new book-to-screen adaptations to know about?
Yes. Every Year After, the Prime Video adaptation of Carley Fortune's Every Summer After, premieres June 10 with all eight episodes dropping at once. Sadie Soverall (Saltburn) plays Percy and Matt Cornett (HSMTMTS) plays Sam. Reading the book first is recommended see our full Every Summer After guide for the plot summary, characters, and ending explained.
What new books are coming out next week?
The June 2, 2026 release week roundup will be linked here once published. Subscribe to The Weekly Bookmark to get the roundup in your inbox every Tuesday.
Where can I find more 2026 summer reading recommendations?
Start with our Best Beach Reads 2026 list, which is updated throughout the summer as new releases land. Both The Midnight Train and Dolly All the Time are already on it.
