The best books I've read this year so far
I wanted to call special attention to some of the lesser-hyped books I’ve loved this year.
For Esquire, I picked the 18 best books of the year so far — though really they’re the best books I’ve personally managed to read and enjoy since 2026 ARCs started arriving in the mail last fall.
Some of these will be obvious to anyone who keeps up with book reviews or follows critics on social media. Ben Lerner’s Transcription, Tayari Jones’s Kin, Patrick Radden Keefe’s London Falling, Douglas Stuart’s John of John.
But I wanted to call special attention to some of the lesser-hyped books I’ve loved this year.
One Sun Only: Stories by Camille Bordas (Random House)
I’ve been telling people for years that Bordas is one of our greatest living short story writers. Her new collection, One Sun Only, showcases her unique command of voice, tone, and tension. In “Chicago on the Seine,” a man who repatriates American bodies after they die in France is asked to spend the night with one in a morgue. In “The Presentation on Egypt,” a surgeon’s unexpected death changes the way his surviving wife perceives time. It’s a great concept album on how we experience life, death, time, and space—with no skippable tracks.
Autobiography of Cotton by Cristina Rivera Garza, translated by Christina MacSweeney (Graywolf Press)
Now 61 years old, the Mexican novelist and memoirist Cristina Rivera Garza remains one of the most innovative and fascinating writers in the Western Hemisphere. Her latest, Autobiography of Cotton, is a stunning work of autofiction based on her grandparents’ journey to the cotton fields along the US-Mexico border. Originally published in Spanish in 2020, this new translation from Christina MacSweeney is silky smooth. I also highly recommend Rivera Garza’s New and Selected Stories from Dorothy.
The Natural Way of Things by Charlotte Wood (Riverhead)
When I read the first chapter of Charlotte Wood’s fifth novel, I was completely entranced and kept reading until well after midnight. First published in Australia ten years ago, The Natural Way of Things is a subtle, haunting, sun-bleached nightmare of a novel. When several women wake up in a spartan compound somewhere in the desert, with no memory of how they arrived, they share stories and realize they all have something in common: abuse at the hands of powerful men. Wood’s sparse and evocative prose makes this an unforgettable reading experience.
Questions 27 & 28 by Karen Tei Yamashita (Coffee House Press)
Karen Tei Yamashita deserves to be a literary household name courtesy of her previous novels Brazil-Maru, Tropic of Orange, I Hotel, and Through the Arc of the Rainforest. I devoured her ambitious fifth novel, Questions 27 & 28, titled after the “so-called loyalty questionnaire” that 120,000 Japanese Americans were forced to take in order to be considered for release during their internment in concentration camps after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
One Leg on Earth by ‘Pemi Aguda (W. W. Norton)
A stunning and lyrical literary horror novel set in the city of Lagos, Nigeria, where rumors contend that pregnant women are inexplicably walking into bodies of water and drowning themselves. When a 23-year-old woman named Yosoye arrives in Lagos to start her career at a prestigious architectural firm helping build Omi City—a luxury development on reclaimed land—she soon discovers her own pregnancy. Aguda was a finalist for her 2024 short story collection Ghostroots, but One Leg on Earth is even more richly imagined and deftly executed.
Coming up
My most anticipated books of 2026’s second half (later this week, fates willing)
Early reviews of some fall books I’m reading now, including Emily St. John Mandel’s Exit Party and Marlon James’s The Disappearers.