From the forty-nine books I read in the first three months of 2026, I’ve picked the five that brought me the most reading pleasure as my Best Reads.
I was suorised to find that none of them where published this year. The oldest was published in 1957. One is a cosy mystery, two are speculative fiction and two are thrillers. The authors are from England, Canada and the United States.
Below, you’ll find a description of each book, a brief summary of what I enjoyed about it, a link to my review of the book and a short biography of the author.
I hope you’ll find at least one book among these five that calls to you
Shocking news reaches the Thursday Murder Club.
An old friend in the antiques business has been killed, and a dangerous package he was protecting has gone missing.
As the gang springs into action they encounter art forgers, online fraudsters and drug dealers, as well as heartache close to home.
With the body count rising, the package still missing and trouble firmly on their tail, has their luck finally run out? And who will be the last devil to die?
A return to form for The Thursday Murder Club series. This was an excellent read. What I loved most about it was the empathy Richard Osman generates for the small details of our lives that do so much to define us, and his understanding of the different ways in which we feel and show love for each other. The mystery worked well, but the focus was on the relationships. Stephen’s battle with dementia and Elizabeth’s grief at seeing him slipping from her were deeply affecting. Joyce, as ever, was a delight.
Richard Osman is an author and television presenter.
His novels, The Thursday Murder Club, The Man Who Died Twice, The Bullet That Missed, The Last Devil to Die, We Solve Murders, and The Impossible Fortune were number one international bestsellers as well as New York Times bestsellers.
He lives in London with his wife, Ingrid, and their cats Liesl and Lottie.
The movie adaptation for The Thursday Murder Club released in 2025, produced by Amblin Entertainment.
Photo: © Conor O’Leary
You think you know everything about your life.
Long-married couple Junior and Henrietta live a quiet, solitary life on their farm, where they work at the local feed mill and raise chickens. Their lives are simple, straightforward, uncomplicated.
Until everything you think you know collapses.
Until the day a stranger arrives at their door with alarming news: Junior has been chosen to take an extraordinary journey, a journey across both time and distance, while Hen remains at home. Junior will be gone for years. But Hen won’t be left alone.
Who can you trust if you can’t even trust yourself?
As the time for his departure draws nearer, Junior finds himself questioning everything about his life – even whether it’s really his life at all.
‘Foe’ was a deeply engaging, suspenseful read. It was so intense that I had to make myself take breaks from it. The sense of gathering darkness, deepening wrongness and oncoming but unknowable tragedy made that very hard to do.
From the beginning, the writing was focused, concise, quietly disturbing and completely engaging. There is a sense that something was off, that there was a gap between words and actions. That the most important things were being left unsaid and that there was a lie behind every smile. The more I searched for the truth in the novel, the more I realised how deeply it was hidden, which, of course, made me hungry to find out not just what was being hidden but why and by whom.
The uncertainty in the novel pushed me to think about bigger themes: the nature of identity, the reality of and restrictions on choice, the reciprocity needed to sustain a marriage and whether the interior world of an individual’s experiences is unique or fungible.
Iain Reid has written five books, including the New York Times bestselling novel I’m Thinking of Ending Things, which has been translated into more than twenty languages and was adapted into a Netflix film by Oscar winner Charlie Kaufman.
His second novel, Foe, was also adapted to film, starring Saoirse Ronan and Paul Mescal.
His third novel, We Spread, was nominated for the Governor General’s Literary Award.
Phote © Iain Reid.
From international bestselling author Anthony Horowitz (Midsummer murders, Foyles war, Alex Rider, Hawthorne) comes 3 new books about one of literatures most famous characters, Sherlock Holmes, like you have never heard him before. The Red Circle, first installment in the upcoming 3 book series “Becoming Sherlock” is a story set in a dystopian London in the near future. At the same time a passenger plane goes down in central London, Dr. Watson finds a man naked and beaten in the street. The man has no memory, no past but seem to inhabit exceptional gifts of detection. This is the start of a mystery that unravels rapidly with one burning question at the center of it, who is Sherlock Holmes?
‘Becoming Sherlock: The Red Circle‘ was excellent. An original idea, executed with style and conviction, delivering a genre-bending story with a solid mystery at its heart. It was clearly designed to be an audiobook, and it made the most of that medium without dropping into the see-how-immersive-our-sound-effiects-are? mode that I usually find distracting. It is the first book in a trilogy. I recommend the other books ‘Becoming Sherlock: The Irregulars’ and ‘Becoming Sherlock: The Magician’. Each book is self-contained but they form a single story arc about becomig Sherlock.
Sarah J Naughton was born in 1975 and grew up in Dorset. She studied English Literature at UCL and has been in London ever since, spending ten years as a copywriter in an advertising agency before giving it up to have children.
She was shortlisted for The Costa Children’s Book Award for her novel The Hanged Man Rises, and now writes psychological fiction for adults. In addition to the ‘Be oming Sherlock’ trilogy she has published Tattletale (2017), The Other Couple (2018), The Mothers (2020), The Festival (2021) and ‘Sleep Road’ (2026).
She lives with her husband and two sons.
.
Melinda Van Allen is beautiful, headstrong and sexy. Unfortunately for Vic Van Allen, she is his wife. Their love has soured, and Melinda takes pleasure in flaunting her many affairs to her husband. When one of her lovers is murdered, Vic hints to her latest conquest that he was responsible. As rumours spread about Vic’s vicious streak, fiction and reality start to converge. It’s only a matter of time before Vic really does have blood on his hands.
‘Deep Water’ was dizzyingly strange. It had an almost hallucinogenic feel to it, as if reality was just slightly off. The calm detachment of the main character was as ominous as it was superficial. He constantly narrated his experience, but it always felt like a lie he was telling himself to see how believable it might be.
Patricia Highsmith drew a very plausible picture of a man capable of remorse-free, spontaneous murder who, most of the time, presents a kind, calm, generous, and forgiving face to the world. The scariest part about that is that he isn’t really pretending. He is strangely detached from his own life. He lives off inherited wealth, and it seemed to me that he was a dilettante in everything that he did, including being a husband and a father.
Patricia Highsmith was born in Fort Worth, Texas in 1921 but moved to new York when she was six. In her senior year she edited the college magazine, having decided to become a writer at the age of sixteen.
She came to prominence when her first novel, Strangers on a Train, was made into a film by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951. She wrote 22 novels and numerous short stories. Her work has been adpated for film more then two dozen times. She is best known for her series of five novels featuring the character Tom Ripley.
She moved to England in 1964, to France in 1967 and finally to Switzerland in 1982. She died in Locarno, Switzerland in 1995..
Am I a murderer? You tell me . . .
You probably already know my name. Lucy Chase, the woman who doesn’t remember murdering her best friend.
Even though they couldn’t find enough evidence to charge me, I know you all think I did it. That’s OK. I realise being found wandering the streets the next day covered in her blood wasn’t a great look.
Believe me, I’m as frustrated as you are. I’d love to know if I’m a murderer – it’s the sort of thing you really should know about yourself, isn’t it?
And now, thanks to true-crime podcast Listen for the Lie, I finally have the chance to find out. But will I be able to live with myself if it turns out it was me?
And if it wasn’t, will digging into the secrets of the night I forgot make me the next target of whoever did?
WOW! Great writing, great storytelling and a perfect use of two narrators in the audiobook. First-class entertainment.
Ignore the ugly, brash, clichéd cover and the cheesy title. This is an exceptional book, especially if you listen to the audiobook version, which is outstanding.
It has a clever plot, complicated characters, and deliciously tantalising exposition, including an inspired use of podcast segments to move the story forward.
Amy Tintera has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Texas A&M and a master’s degree in media arts/screenwriting from Emerson College. She worked as a talent agency assistant in Hollywood before becoming an author. Raised in Austin, Texas, she frequently sets her novels in the Lone Star state, but she now lives in Los Angeles.
Amy’s Youg Adult novels include ‘Reboot’, a Kids Indie Next pick and YALSA Quick Pick for Reluctant Readers, the Ruined series, The Q, and All These Monsters, a YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults selection. ‘Listen For The Lie’ is her first thriller for adults.
Photo Credit: Stephanie Girard
Mike Finn's Fiction 