LJ and Goodreads Fall Book Previews 2026

This month Library Journal has their preview of the busiest season for new books-- Fall. Written by Jessica Trotter, this is a preview of all adult books-- fiction and nonfiction-- broken out by larger trends and covering the entire season. 

Whether you order books, help patrons, do one or both, you want to get a snap shot of what is hot and what titles are filling that trend, get in on this now.

It also comes with a spreadsheet of every title, to make ordering easier as well.

And if this huge preview is too much for you to digest right now, click here to read the Editor's Picks for Fall Finds. 

Before I send you to LJ's preview, I also think we need to balance this professional opinion with the readers' most anticipated books lists. We can get that via Goodreads and their MANY access point:

• Readers’ 60 Most Anticipated Fall Books
• New Horror Coming this Fall
• Your Guide to Fall's Top Adult Fiction
• New Romantasy and Paranormal Romance for Fall
• Fall Fantasy and SciFi Preview
• Upcoming Mystery and Thriller 

I am always advocating for looking at professional resources and reader driven resources to make sure we have the 360 degree picture of that is going on in the book world from conversations to anticipated titles to trends. No Fall Preview is Complete without looking at Goodreads or other reader focused resources.

Now back to the LJ article, click here to read it or see the overviews for Fiction and Nonfiction in general, reposted below, to get started. But then you have to click through for all of the details.

Fall Book Preview 2026 | The Seasonal Forecast About Books and Trends To Know

by Jessica Trotter 

Aug 12, 2026 | Filed in Reviews+

FICTION

The fiction forecast sees horror remaining a key trending genre and also growing more varied. Somewhat adjacent, witches are moving even more mainstream and appearing in many genres this season. Romantasy continues to dominate broadly, but there is a notable uptick in dark academia titles nipping at its heels. In romance, second-chance-at-love stories and paranormals are leading the season. Cozy and epic fantasy, representing two ends of the fantasy genre, are both holding strong, while space operas and aliens are key in the smaller science-fiction field. Novels about bookish subjects remain a popular choice and are plentiful across multiple genres. Download a spreadsheet of these titles plus nonfiction here.

NONFICTION

A year focused on commemorating the Declaration of Independence brings a wide breadth of history works and social sciences surveys examining the events that created the modern United States. Politics is heavily represented as well, with political books, partisan histories, and social justice–themed titles. Culinary tomes help make the fall delicious; among them is a new cookbook from Kwame Onwuachi (interviewed on p. 30). Nature writing is still very popular, as are biographies and memoirs, with a large list to pick from, whether readers enjoy music, movie stars, writers, or tales of more ordinary lives. Other subjects sustain interest as well, from Hollywood stories to poetry to self-help.

Click here or on the image below to read the entire article.

Lit Hub's 2025 Ultimate Fall Reading List

Back in December, I had this post about one of my favorite end of the year Best List-- LitHubs's Ultimate Best Books List. 

What I love about this list is how it crowd sources dozens of major publications' "Best Lists" from all over and totals them all up to see what the most popular "Best" titles are. It gives you a survey of the entire "Best" landscape in an easy snapshot. If you look at that post or use the LitHub tag for all of their ultimate lists you can get current and backlist lists that look at all the lists. While that is a lot of instances of the word list, you get what I mean. LitHub's "Ultimate Lists" are an excellent resource because by definition they are crowd sourced, but also because LitHub makes it so easy to get the current list and the last few year's of lists with a single tagged link.

That's a general PSA for all of their "Ultimate Lists," but right now I want to focus of the current 2025 Ultimate Fall Reading List.

Author Emily Temple "processed" 28 Fall reading lists and crunched the numbers. This is THE Fall reading list you need for your patrons because it is comprised of all the lists.

Below I have reprinted the intro but you can click here to read The Ultimate Fall 2025 Reading List. 

Of course, many of these books will be checked out all Fall, but many of these authors have older books you can suggest to readers while they wait.

Post this list online and in your libraries as the "Best of the Fall Reading Lists." Put up a sign and then fill the display with Fall titles that are on the shelf. Use titles from previous years (use the Lit Hub tag for "Fall Books" to find dozens of options), with previous titles by these authors, and with readalike titles for all of the authors. 

I feel like a broken record, but it bares repeating. Books do not have to be from this exact summer to be great summer reads. Any book can be on that list. There is no summer reading police. Get creative but use the marketing of "Summer Reading" to your advantage and draw readers to you.

Speaking of....here is the link to pull up Ultimate Reading Lists going back to 2018.

This is also a great time to use my conversation starter to display posts (and handout with examples) to ask your staff and readers to share this favorite "Fall Reads." Note, I did not say, favorite Fall Reads out in 2025. Keep it broader. Find out what they have loved the most and you can not only make a display, but get some, in real time, feedback about what your patrons like to read in the Fall. And it makes for an easy, interactive display that SHOWS your patrons that you are listening to them.

Be creative and broad with your "Fall Reading" lists, suggestions, and displays. Include titles from year's past, include other books by the authors on this year's lists, include readalikes for these authors... You get my point. Be as open as possible.

Give people more options that what they see in that one list they saw on that one website. No one is going to "check your math," and be like, "Umm....what list told you this was a "best" Fall read." Of course not. They trust you to help them find the books they wouldn't find without you. They expect to find things at the library they wouldn't see other places. This is where we excel and leave a mark on those we assist with their leisure reading. Embrace it and go for it.

And Ultimate Lists are a great resource to begin doing this work. Here's the intro and a link to the full 2025 Fall Reading Ultimate List.

It may still be in the 70s in New York, but autumn, they assure me, approaches. This means it’s time for Literary Hub’s annual Ultimate Fall Reading List, in which (in case you’re new) I read all (or at least many) of the seasonal literary recommendation/anticipation/best of lists on the internet, and then collate them for you in a handy list-of-lists. 

This season, I processed 28 lists, which collectively recommended a total of 466 books. 95 of these were included 3 times or more, and these I present to you in descending order of popularity. The list of list surveyed is, as ever, at the bottom. Have fun, and see you in the winter. 

Click here to explore the list and don't forget to scroll to the bottom for linked access to each of the lists used to make this ultimate list.  That list is a whole other cache of resources as well.

What Readers Are Most Anticipating: Start with Goodreads and End With Your Library's List

The Fall Frenzy is almost upon us. I know we have had most of these books on order for quite a while, but  having these books and being ready for the ones readers are most excited about are two different things.

Goodreads has crowd-sourced the books that are generating the most early buzz on their site. Click here to get right to the post or read the intro here or click through with the link I provide at the end of this post. Also please scroll to the bottom of the full post for more picks in each of the genres.

But before we get to their most anticipated, what about your patrons? What are they most excited about? This Goodreads list is a great place to start asking them. First, get this up on all of you digital platforms and ask for comments from your patrons as to what books they are most excited about this Fall. Both titles from the list and those that are missing (in their opinion)

Next, follow my conversation starter to display advice and ask all your patrons to share their most anticipated books. You can make this the question that you put out at every service desk and into every book on the hold shelf for the rest of August. Again click here for more on how to do this.

Not only will this help you identify which Fall books your patrons are most excited about (so that you can prepare "while you wait lists" or even add more copies) but also, it will help you understand in general what books they are looking for. You might have great readalikes for these upcoming titles on the shelves that you can prepare to make into displays right now. You can use this info as a resource for your future ordering. Maybe you will give a new or midlist author a shot knowing that it will appeal to other books your patrons enjoy. You can also use this information to pull out any backlist titles by authors your patrons identify as being most excited about and make a display that is titled, "Books by This Fall's Most Anticipated Authors." Get those backlist titles out of the stacks and give them their moment in the spotlight. Many readers don't ever think to read previous books by an author who they like. Showing them that you have those books, titles they wouldn't remember to check out without you, makes your service that more valuable to them.

Now back to Goodreads. Use this post to get you started.

Bookworms, rejoice! The autumn reading season is just over the horizon. Crisp evenings. Knit sweaters. Autumnal vibes. As such, we have compiled our annual preview of the season’s most highly anticipated new books, as determined by Goodreads members.
 
The books are selected by tracking Goodreads members' early reviews and the titles that your fellow readers are adding to their Want to Read shelves. We’ve sorted the list into the usual genres, but as always, some books resist easy classification. Which is a good thing! We did our best. Everything below is slated to be published in the U.S. between now and the end of December.
 
Prepare your frontal lobes, because there are a lot of interesting books on the way. Lily King is back on shelves in September with Heart the Lover, concerning a passionate love triangle among English majors—the most lovable of all undergraduates. Author Oyinkan Braithwaite writes of strange magic in her Nigerian family with the heartfelt and humorous Cursed Daughters. And Ian McEwan imagines life in the year 2119 with the literary speculation of What We Can Know.  
 
Over on the mystery-thriller shelves, look for new books from Richard Osman and Stacy Willingham, plus John Grisham’s first stab (heh) at the traditional whodunit. SFF fans can look forward to alchemists in L.A., time travel in Virginia, and The Great Gatsby in 2075. For Halloween reading, we’ve got new books from Isabel Cañas and Mona Awad, plus a haunted house story for the Information Age.
 
Also in the mix for this fall: new romance novels from Ali Hazelwood and Ana Huang; new romantasy hybrids from Rebecca Ross and Jasmine Mas; and a promising batch of YA books concerning, oh, Gothic horror, Ojibwe mysteries, small-town hockey—stuff like that.
 
Finally, the nonfiction stacks are particularly intriguing this year. Look for memoirs from authors Arundhati Roy and Elizabeth Gilbert, plus some incredible real-life stories about World War II spies, online entropy, and replaceable body parts. Not in the same book. But still.

Happy reading! Feel free to add any interesting leads to your digital shelf using the Want to Read button. 

Click here to see the lists.  

Instagram Reading Challenges With Tons of Recs Courtesy of Kelly Jensen

I have a special place in my heart for anyone who takes on any kind of month long challenge because I have subjected myself to one [31 Days of Horror] every October since 2011.

I am also often asked about ways to better engage with patrons on Instagram. I get this question because as this Huffington Post article notes, readers have really changed the way Instagram is used in the last few years as the #Bookstagram community has grown in numbers and influence.

These visually driven posts put book covers front and center, allowing the object itself to help create the buzz. But it is more than a gimmick. The text that accompanies these posts adds detail about the books themselves and the readers who are posting. The posts are inviting. People interact with the posters and ultimately the books themselves. Many #Bookstagrammers have become among the most influential book promoters on social media, especially in the areas of genre titles [romance, horror, SF, and fantasy] and tend to include more own voice titles.

Again, you can read this article from 2017 which talks about the #Bookstagram movement in much more detail.

Today, Kelly Jensen from Book Riot wrote about her experience participating in a Book Riot month long instagram challenge on her Stacked Books blog. She writes about how she physically gathered the content, managing to post every day despite a heavy travel schedule, and included every single #Riotgram she posted in October of 2018, making this both a great how-to piece and a treasure trove of some great recommended reads.

Kelly makes what could be a very daunting project seem manageable. I know many of you are considering how to engage with readers through Instagram more. You can use this post for inspiration. While those of you who are not using Instagram and have no plans to start, her post is still useful because of the wide range of titles she suggests which you can turn around a hand-sell to patrons right this minute. 

With Kelly's permission, here is the opening to her post. Click here to see the entire thing.

#RIOTGRAMS ROUNDUP POST: OCTOBER 2018

Written by:  Kelly on November 8, 2018.

One of the fun things I get to do at Book Riot is put together the prompts for the seasonal Instagram challenge, #Riotgrams. I love not only coming up with fun things to encourage people to post, but I also love spending time every day seeing the books people have, that they’re borrowing, and that they’re excited to talk about.

Since I managed to take part all month long — which is the challenge in and of itself, as anyone who does an Instagram challenge can tell you — I wanted to round them all up in a post for readers who’d like some book recommendations.

Have you ever taken part in any kind of month-long (or week long!) Instagram challenge? I discovered one thing that helped change my participation: take photos in advance. I like to do a week or more at a time and save them, so that if I’m traveling or feeling uninspired, I know that I’ve used the time and creative energy I had at another point to make the process easier on my future self. Take that tip back with you next time you think about wanting to do a challenge but feel you wouldn’t keep up/would forget a day/aren’t home. I was gone half of October, and having the images stockpiled kept me going.

...click here to read more and see the #Riotgrams and all of the suggestions

Display Idea for Hotly Anticipated Fall Releases

The big Fall releases are starting a week before Labor Day this year with Franzen’s Purity coming out tomorrow. In general, Fall is the time of year when the most blockbuster titles come out, especially those that will be up for major literary and/or genre prizes.

Often the problem libraries have in promoting the newest and hottest titles is that we only have a few copies of these books and they all have long holds’ queues.  So, we end up focusing on readalikes for the hottest titles, otherwise known as “While You Wait” lists.

But, some readers do not want readalikes for the current “it” books. They want that book.  In my experience, I have found that these readers are actually happier reading an older book by the author whose current book they came in for than they are simply getting a readalike for said book [even if the readalike is a better match than a previous book by the author].

In this case, the patron is more interested in reading something by the author everyone is talking about than they are in reading that exact book.  We need to remember that as we help people.  It is the same reason why some patrons will only read something if it is, or has been, on the bestseller list.

Book stores have the luxury of having scores of copies of these big releases stacked in piles waiting for people. At the library, we want to help readers who have come in because of the buzz around a hot new title, but we cannot ever hope to have enough copies to satisfy demand in those first few weeks. The problem is simply magnified by the heavy Fall release schedule.  

But, I have an idea that will help you to promote tall the big fall reads in a new way; a way that will win over these particular [and numerous] patrons.

First, click here and here to see some of the release lists for the most anticipated books of Fall.

Second, take those lists and cut and paste the titles you think will be most popular at your library into your own list. If you can make a poster sized list that would be great. Or, if you do 1/2 sheets with the cover of each upcoming title and post those somewhere.  Or, make a bookmark with the info. The key is to have a list you can make available for patrons in some eye catching way.

Third, pull the other books by the authors on the list you have created.  Try to get a mix of formats too [audio, LP, etc...]

Fourth, sit back and watch those backlist titles fly off the shelf and watch your patrons leave happy.

[I realize that this display idea leaves out the chance to highlight debut authors, but that cannot be helped in this example.]

What you get from this simple display idea is a two sided victory for your RA services. One, you have let your patrons know that you have the hot fall books, even though they are not on the self right now, and two, they leave with a book by one of this Fall’s hottest authors in their hands. It might not be the exact book they wanted, but they are still “in the know,” reading the hot author of the moment. 

Plus, you look brilliant.

You have anticipated their requests.

You have made it clear that you know about the book they want, own it, and have an option while they wait for their turn on the holds list.

And, you promoted your awesome backlist, reminding them of all of the great reads available throughout the library beyond those on the new shelf.

Everybody wins! 

I like when that happens at the library.

ARRT is Bringing the BEA and ALA Book Buzz to You!

Not at #BEA15 right now? Not going to ALA Annual in June? Over at ARRT we totally understand; in fact, many of us cannot make it this year either. So here are 2 things that can help you get over your jealousy and still be a part of the Book Buzz.

The first one is of right now. You can click here to access Barbara Hoffert’s BEA Galley guide.  Learn about the hottest titles for adult readers coming soon. She has also included an icon to let you know if you can get the book with an eARC.

The second, is on July 9th at RAILS HQ in Burr Ridge, IL.  ARRT is offering a smaller scale version of the conferences. We are bringing the Book Buzz [with free ARCs] to you...to all of you...to any of you, member or not, who works in a library and can make it, and it is FREE!

I SAID FREE

See the flyer below and our Eventbrite listing for details and to hold your spot.

Resources to Help You to Keep Up: Booklist

The big fall season of major book releases is upon us.  I have learned by past mistakes not to try to keep up with reading all of the new books this time of year. Instead, I spend my time figuring out the best resources for me to efficiently and effectively handle this overwhelming time.

I hope to share some of these here on the blog in the coming weeks.

Today, I will start with Booklist.

As I mentioned here, the people over at Booklist online just released a brand new way for you to navigate their wealth of RA relevant content.  Click here for The Booklist Reader which provides (in their words) "OPINION, NEWS, AND LISTS FROM THE BOOK PEOPLE AT BOOKLIST, BOOK LINKS, AND BOOKLIST ONLINE.”

I don’t think this tag line does enough just justice to how great this new resource is.  Before, you had to bounce around to a lot of different places to discover articles and lists both interesting and useful.  Now, if I want to see, for example, all of the lists people over at Booklist Online have compiles, I click here and it doesn’t matter if they are audiobooks, YA books, fiction, of book club lists.  Now they are all at this link.  Before you would have to peruse four different blogs, and then compile it yourself if you wanted to use all of the information at one time.

It is quite remarkable and useful, but the key here is it will save you time while making you look smarter!

Besides consolidating the various Booklist blogs, lists, and info in one place, in this new portal you also have 1 click access to the Booklist Webinars.  Today I watched one of my favorites-- the annual Spotlight on Romance webinar.

Okay, quick pause. Many of you are confused.  Regular readers know I am not a Romance fan, but this is EXACTLY why I love this annual webinar.  I know that I will get a sense of the biggest trends, hottest titles, and need to know authors in a RA friendly program.  This is for librarians who work with romance readers.  It is all about Romance but geared toward you. And, this year, like previous years, I came away with a new list of books to buy and pass on to my romance fans [who, by the way are some of my favorite patrons to help even though we do not share a love of the same type of stories].

Click here to see the full slate of past webinars and here for the list of upcoming ones.

A quick perusal of The Booklist Reader a few times a week, will give you a big boost in knowledge and confidence.  I even added a direct link to it i the right gutter of the blog under my “Sites Worth Checking Out.”  This way you don’t have to remember.

Fall Previews Are Coming Fast and Furious

As I do at the beginning of most seasons, I will periodically point out a few of the important and interesting pre-pub lists. But I also want to remind you that my colleagues over at RA Online are the experts here.

Go to their Fall Books list now to see a comprehensive list of Fall books in all genres (including nonfiction).  It will be updated throughout the season.  Don't forget to also take a look at their awesome list for Summer 2012 to see what a completed compilation looks like. Which reminds me, just because it is not summer anymore, that doesn't mean those hot summer books are off limits now.  In fact, hold lists may finally be done for many of those titles.

This is also an important time to note one of my blog philosophies, both for me and anyone looking to start a library blog. You need to pick a focus for your blog and stick to it.  In my case, I have my mission statement right at the top of every page:

LOOKING FOR YOUR NEXT GOOD READ? RA FOR ALL IS A BLOG TO SHOWCASE HOW THE READERS' ADVISORS AT YOUR LOCAL PUBLIC LIBRARY CAN HELP.

On the horror blog, I have a longer mission statement here.

I try very hard to stick to those missions and not go too far away from their scope and intent.  So, in this case, I have made the choice to pass on a few lists each season, but I do not try to keep up with all of them for you.

Resources like RA Online, however do this as part of their mission.  A good librarian knows where to find the answers, when to share them, and not to waste time (and money) duplicating services.  To that end, use RA Online's comprehensive season lists; don't look here for that information.  Go there for up to the minute additions.  Goodness knows I use those lists frequently both as a collection development tool and to help readers.  In fact, as mentioned above, I particularly like to use the immediately past season to help readers looking "for something good."

That being said, to get you started, here are a few lists and articles about this busy fall season that I wanted to pass on:

• Early Word has this post about the literary traffic jam that is stacking up right now.
• io9 has this list of the best SF and Fantasy coming out in September
• While I have seen many articles about the plethora of book based movies coming out soon, this post from BookBrowse is they only place where I have seen a bunch of the trailers all in one place.

Look to the Fall Books 2012 archive on RA Online for more.