Books to look out for in 2026 – nonfictionNEWS | 25 December 2025Over the past year we’ve been spoiled for memoirs from high-wattage stars – Cher, Patti Smith and Anthony Hopkins among them. But 2026 begins with a very different true story, from someone who never chose the spotlight, but now wants some good to come of her appalling experiences. After the trial that resulted in her husband and 50 others being convicted of rape or sexual assault, Gisèle Pelicot’s aim is to nurture “strength and courage” in other survivors. In A Hymn to Life (Bodley Head, February) she insists that “shame has to change sides”. Another trial – of the men accused of carrying out the Bataclan massacre – was the subject of Emmanuel Carrère’s most recent book, V13. For his next, Kolkhoze (Fern, September), the French master of autofiction turns his unsparing lens back on himself, focusing on his relationship with his mother Hélène, and using it to weave a complex personal history of France, Russia and Ukraine. Family also comes under the microscope in Ghost Stories (Sceptre, May) by Siri Hustvedt, a memoir of her final years with husband Paul Auster, who died of cancer in 2024.
Hollywood isn’t totally out of the picture, though: The Steps (Seven Dials, May), Sylvester Stallone’s first autobiography, follows the star from homelessness in early 70s New York to Rocky’s triumph at the Oscars later that decade. Does achieving your creative dreams come at a price, though? Lena Dunham suggests as much in Famesick (4th Estate, April), billed as a typically frank memoir of how how her dramatic early success gave way to debilitating chronic illness. Frankness of a different kind is promised in More (Bloomsbury, September), actor Gillian Anderson’s follow-up to her bestselling 2024 anthology of women’s sexual fantasies, Want.
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Likely to be somewhat less racy – though just as acutely observed – Alan Bennett’s diaries Enough Said (Faber, March) span the period 2016-2024, taking in such momentous events as Brexit and the death of the Queen, as well as a plague of molehills in Bennett’s garden. After relinquishing his mantle as host of In Our Time, Bennett’s near contemporary Melvyn Bragg travels back to Another World (Sceptre, February), namely his three years at Oxford in the late 1950s. Curious Incident author Mark Haddon also looks to the past, this time to the 60s and 70s, in his quirkily illustrated coming of age memoir, Leaving Home (Chatto & Windus, February). David Sedaris’s latest collection of essays The Land and Its People (Abacus, July) includes such dispatches from his bucolic existence in Sussex as “I know you can’t hold animals to human standards … That said, rams are assholes.”
We’ll have to see whether similarly intemperate outbursts are detailed in a major new biography of Gordon Brown (Bloomsbury, February), for which author James Macintyre was allowed “unique” access to the former prime minister’s personal archives. For his part, ex-home secretary and chancellor Sajid Javid will avoid dishing the dirt on recent governments, focusing instead on his childhood in The Colour of Home (Abacus, February). And following her departure from the cabinet in September, Angela Rayner has decided to write a memoir – as yet Untitled (Bodley Head) – reflecting on her tough upbringing and path into politics, set to be released in the second half of the year.
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Away from life writing, North American heavyweights tackle the big ideas: in A World Appears (Allen Lane, February) by Michael Pollan, the author of How to Change Your Mind considers the small matter of consciousness – what is it, and how do you measure it? With The Beginning Comes After the End (Granta, March), Rebecca Solnit reminds us how revolutionary the past 60 years have been in terms of social change. She views the current turn towards authoritarianism as setback, rather than defeat. Doppelganger author Naomi Klein teams up with documentary maker Astra Taylor to describe End Times Fascism (Allen Lane, September), the “man-made Armageddon complex” built by religious fundamentalists, tech barons and nationalists that threatens democracy. Jared Diamond, the historian best known for Guns, Germs and Steel, returns with his first book in six years, Profits, Prophets, Coaches and Kings (Allen Lane, September), on the influence of charismatic individuals in politics, business, sport and religion. And Patrick Radden Keefe, whose Empire of Pain exposed the billionaire dynasty behind the opioid epidemic, investigates the mysterious death of a young man in London Falling (Picador, April).
Following the extraordinary success of Adolescence, the Netflix show that showed the aftermath of a misogynistic killing, teenage masculinity remains front and centre. One of its stars, Stephen Graham, has teamed up with psychologist Orly Klein to compile Letters to Our Sons (Bloomsbury, October), a collection of fathers’ reflections on “what it means to be man”, including one from the actor himself. And in The Castle (Viking, August), Jon Ronson embarks on a journey to discover exactly what led his son Joel to attend a mysterious event at a multi-millionaire’s mansion in New England, in the process uncovering “a world of unmoored men on a desperate search for purpose”.
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I was going to say Liza Minnelli’s memoir may provide some light relief, but the Cabaret star’s life has contained at least as much tragedy and heartache as it has spotlights and sequins. Still, you’ll be able to read about both in Kids, Wait Till You Hear This!, “as told to” her friend and singer Michael Feinstein – though if you’re expecting a studiedly neutral account, you might have to wait a bit longer: the emphasis is on “dispelling tabloid myths and setting the record straight”. A lower-key but no less interesting musical star, David Byrne, brings us his first proper book since 2012’s How Music Works, Sleeping Beauties (Canongate, October). The title refers to works of art or inventions that are ignored at the time but resurface after years of dormancy – from Bruegel to antiseptics. Finally, in Tonight the Music Seems So Loud (Picador, June), journalist Sathnam Sanghera takes a break from empire to explore just what it was that made enigmatic pop genius George Michael such an influential cultural figure, 10 years after his death at the age of 53.Author: David Shariatmadari. Source
