28 NEW Books from Small Presses!

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]Hey folks, it's been a while. I have this video I have wanted to share with you for a while of some books being published in 2026 from independent and non-profit presses. I originally filmed this video way back in February and I edited it and it was all ready to go and I was gearing up to post it when life intervened and I was suddenly faced with a really big medical issue that completely took over my life and is continuing to take over my life going forward and so I am here. I'm back. I'm feeling a lot better right now for the time being.

[00:00:49]So I wanted to come and and share this video of all of these great books that are either have already come out or are coming out in 2026. In several places in this video I mentioned doing a part two because I had a ton of more books being published that I wanted to share. There will not be a part two. I'm just going to move forward. I will definitely be making videos coming up, you know, probably on a a slower schedule than maybe usual but there won't I'm not going to go back and do the part two mostly because I had all of the books that I had found and wanted to share were like tabs a bunch of tabs open in one web browser that has long since been closed. So there is not going to be a part two but I definitely want to share part one cuz there are some awesome books that I know I'm really looking forward to and I bet there are folks out there who are looking forward to these as well or want to know about them. So without further ado, here is me from the past. Hey folks, welcome to the place where we talk about all the cool books being published by small presses and there certainly are a ton of them but it's not always easy to find them.

[00:02:09]>> [clears throat] >> So I spend my time scouring the internet for books being published by smaller publishers.

[00:02:17]And I have a big list of books being published in 2026 to share with you today and even this list is just a fraction of the books that are going to be getting me excited in 2026. There will very likely be a second video with another big long list. Even that won't cover all of the amazing books that are being published by small presses this year. If you want more lists like this, you can sign up for my newsletter. I'll leave the link below. I send a list like this every single month and even that even those lists don't even cover all of the amazing books that are being published. We do what we can.

[00:02:59]So this I haven't even counted the number of books and publishers we're going to go through today. You probably know already based on either the title or thumbnail so you'll know before I do.

[00:03:11]Let's just jump right in. So I've organi- I've organized this by publisher. My tendency is to read fiction so the vast majority of books on here are fiction. There's a little bit of non-fiction. Poetry is something I include in my email newsletters each month. So if you're interested in poetry also then definitely sign up for my newsletters. So let's jump right in.

[00:03:36]This is organized by publisher. Again, this is only a fraction of the publishers that I love and and think about and try to follow. We got to start somewhere. So first up is one of my absolute favorites though. It's Coffee House Press and they have a bunch of books that come out every year that get me excited. I had to choose just a couple to include on this list so far and the first is probably the book I'm most excited about for 2026 and that is Ada which is a novel by Mark Haber. For these I forgive me, I'm just going to read some of the description from each publisher to save save a little bit of my time. Again, this is something you can look into on your own a little bit more about each book if you are interested in learning more about them.

[00:04:19]So first up is Ada a novel by Mark Haber. He wrote one of my very very favorite books from last year, Lesser Ruins and Ada takes place in a remote country in Europe where Gerard de Sacre the ninth who is a petty tyrant and French nationalist wants nothing more than to be re- reunited with Ada, the object of his desire ever since their brief fling in Paris years before.

[00:04:49]Though Ada is on her way to visit, there are the unfortunate matters of civil unrest, assassination attempts and Ada's affluent and highly inconvenient husband to contend with before bliss is obtained.

[00:05:02]If it's anything like Mark Haber's other books, it's highly literary but also kind of goofy >> [laughter] >> which it sounds like just from that description alone and I'm super excited.

[00:05:17]Also from Coffee House Press this year is Electric Shamans at the Festival of the Sun, a novel by Monica Ojeda translated by Sarah Booker. This is described as a blazing psychedelic novel about girlhood, violence and the loss of innocence. It's set in the near future where best friends Noa and Nicole flee their home in Guayaquil, Ecuador to to attend the Solar Noise Festival, a week-long retrofuturistic gathering at the foot of an active volc- volcano.

[00:05:50]While Noa fully embraces the haze of narcotics and hedonism in an effort to obscure her true reason for attending, Nicole senses something darker at play behind the festival's so-called celebration of life. And the last one from Coffee House Press on my list, not the last one they're publishing this year, go check them out. Um >> [clears throat] >> is a novel called Inigo and it's by Glenn Diaz and it follows one woman's reluctant trek through a forest of ghosts in the aftermath of empire in modern Philippine life.

[00:06:23]Iniga leads an ordinary life in Manila until the day a retired army general wanted for the murder of peasants is captured across the street from her house.

[00:06:33]Days later, her unassuming neighborhood is burned to the ground in retaliation.

[00:06:39]With nowhere else to go, she returns to the small fishing village of her childhood but the terror thought that she thought she escaped still stalks her there forcing her and her cat into a nearby forest of both trees and trauma that has long haunted her family. I was supposed to share the dates.

[00:06:59]>> [laughter] >> Let me get to these. So Ada is being published in July. Electric Shamans at the Festival of the Sun is being published in May and Iniga is being published in August. Next up is Two Lines Press. This is a publisher that's dedicated completely to literature in translation. They're publishing this year a book called White Nights by Ursula Honeck that's translated from the Polish by Kate Webster. This was published in the UK a couple years ago and was longlisted for the International Booker Prize. I think maybe something like 2023 but this must be its first North American publication. And it says in a village in the remote countryside of southern Poland, it's as if poverty and brutality emanate like mist from the cursed dirt. These 13 interconnected stories in White Nights tell of families scarred by tragedy but also by each other.

[00:07:54]Whether digging a pond deep in the woods, taking a lover, raising a family or simply trying to get ahead of the endless work as thunder rolls over their home, Honeck's characters share with sincerest care and honesty a local yet so clearly universal story of ruin and hope. And that is coming out in February. By the time you see this, it might already be published.

[00:08:15]Also being published by Two Lines Press this year is I Was Alive Here Once.

[00:08:20]These are ghost stories from Korea, Yemen, Poland, Japan, Uzbekistan, Iceland, Tanzania and Thailand. So it's an anthology. It's part of their Calico series which is published twice a year and it's usually a collection that is of poems or stories that is organized either around the original language that they were written or organized around a theme like these ghost stories. From Transit Books, there is a new newly published book from Jacqueline Harpman called We Were Forbidden. It's translated by Ros Schwartz. This is the author Jacqueline Harpman is the author of I Who Have Never Known Men. It's a start- which is has been a a big big hit for Transit Books. This is a startling new collection of three never before translated stories each plumbing the depths of that most necessary human instinct, defiance. About the first story, it says in the wake of some unfathomable war, a woman wanders the forest. She and her fellow survivors are forbidden from leaving its boundaries or pausing in their eternal march through its strange depths. The second story is attending a rigid French school in 1940s Casablanca, a teenage girl is barred from ever questioning the dogma she's taught to believe. Her punishment for doing so will be as swift as it is shocking. And the last story, about the last story, it says locked in a loveless marriage in the Belgian bourgeoisie, a young woman satisfies her husband's desires twice weekly as required. She has not yet sought to pursue her own.

[00:10:01]And that book is coming out in July.

[00:10:03]Also coming out from Transit Books is On the Other Side is March by by Sólrún Michelsen, translated from the Faroese by Marita Thompson.

[00:10:13]This is a poignant and darkly witty portrait of aging, memory, and multi-generational caretaking from the first female Faroese writer to ever appear in English.

[00:10:25]And a quote from the book, it says, "I'm a woman in my early 60s, somewhere between late and never. No longer the career woman, mother, housewife, and lover doing it all. Now I'm wife, mother, grandmother, and my mother's mother. But I still have to I but I still have to satisfy all the demands placed on me."

[00:10:45]So begins a tender and darkly witty exploration of what the author considers to be the strange remaining leg of life's journey. And again, this is the first of the first Faroese female writer to be translated into English. And that is being published in June. And finally, coming in April from Transit Books is a book called The Abyss by J by Jaya Mohan, translated from Tamil by Suchitra.

[00:11:14]This is a raw, tender, and darkly comic masterpiece from a writer whose body of work has shaped modern Tamil literature.

[00:11:24]This follows a man who is known as a successful, god-fearing man about town.

[00:11:29]He has a loyal wife, three daughters, and money to pay for their dowries.

[00:11:33]However, it's an open secret that his success is fueled by a trade that is as profitable as it is cruel.

[00:11:40]owns and breeds a group of physically deformed beggars and places them outside temples to collect money. There is a man with just one arm, no legs, and a little head on top who only speaks in divine songs he himself invents.

[00:11:56]An intellectual An intellectual whose testicles hang to the floor like two great pumpkins, and a mother to 18 children. To the businessman Pandaram, they are only items to be bought and sold like cattle. But when he makes an impulsive trade, his luck turns.

[00:12:11]Archipelago Books is publishing in February, so it might already be out by the time you see this. A Parish Chronicle by the Nobel laureate Halldór Laxness, and it's translated from Icelandic by Philip Roughton.

[00:12:24]Uh this is an essayistic tale of the unlikely miracles that return a church faded to disappear over and again throughout time to the same hillside.

[00:12:33]And it's an intimate ode to the way of life in Laxness's home valley Laxness's home valley and a shrewd commentary on how history bends to the quirks of certain individuals. Also from Archipelago Books um coming out in February is Queen by Birgitta Trotzig, translated from Swedish by Saskia Vogel.

[00:12:52]This is It says it's the long-awaited rediscovery of visionary Swedish writer Birgitta Trotzig and her mythic mythic modernist classic Queen. It's a story of a girl named Judith who is stubborn and singular, distant and unyielding. She has a love of lilies, and she is called Queen.

[00:13:11]Her entire world exists in a village in the south of Sweden.

[00:13:16]Uh but when she's nine, her mother dies in childbirth, leaving her and her two brothers to continue on as a precarious family. And eventually, one of these brothers, I believe, moves um one of these brothers, I believe, moves to America and upends Judith's entire life.

[00:13:34]So this is the English language discovery of Birgitta Trotzig, one of the greatest Swedish writers of all time. From New Vessel Press is a novel called My Dreadful Body by Elchin Gana Gurbanov, translated by Lisa C. Hayden.

[00:13:50]This is a dazzling debut novel about a young woman's vexed coming-of-age in a traditional Azerbaijani community in Russia, where she is grappling under the weight of Muslim patriar- patriarchal norms and a debilitating neurological condition.

[00:14:05]The mysterious affliction leaves her unable to control her muscles, plagued by pain and speech disorders to find diagnosis.

[00:14:14]Addressing each body part with the scrupulousness of a medical researcher, the narrator explores memories, traditions, and taboos related to her physical self. And in the process, a woman once destined for the role of a beautiful, marriageable daughter comes to be perceived as damaged goods.

[00:14:30]And that's coming out in April. Also from New Vessel Press is Botany of Madness by Leon Engler, translated by Alexandra Reesh.

[00:14:39]A young man is gripped by one fear that he'll lose his mind. In his family, mental illness has shaped lives for generations, and time in psychiatric wards has become almost a rite of passage. He's afraid to inherit his mother his grandmother's suicidal behavior, his mother's bipolar disorder, or his father's bouts with alcoholism and depression. So he flees Germany for New York via Paris and Vienna, only to end up in just the kind of mental institution that so terrified him. But he works there as a psychologist rather than undergo treatment as a patient himself. And he learns that a person is always more than a diagnosis. Botany of Madness comes out in November, so a little bit of of a wait.

[00:15:23]From Split Lip Press is Crackles' Last Movie, a novella by Chelsea Sutton. And it says, "When underground documentarian Minerva Crackle mysteriously disappears after an interview with the modern-day mummy of San Bernardino County, her assistant Carper her assistant Harper is left with a mess of footage and a tight deadline.

[00:15:43]During her review of 30 years of interviews Crackle conducted with a real-life monsters, werewolves, vampires, invisible dancers, mermaids, sea monsters in the desert, Harper's Harper pieces together their links with Crackle's disappearance and also with the tragic on-stage death of a pop musician known as the Great Merlon with an A instead of an I.

[00:16:06]With the help of Crackle's former bodyguard Doctor Danger and small and small-town diner waitress Liz, Harper must decide whether to expose her own hidden history to finish the film or let Crackle's legacy disappear right along with her." All right, sounds great. Um it's forthcoming on February 10th, so probably already out. From Restless Books is A Compass on the Navigable Sea: 100 Years of World Literature, which is edited by Daniel Simon. And this is a landmark collection of fiction, essays, poetry, and reviews that commemorates a centur- century of exploration through pen and ink.

[00:16:41]It's a bold anthology that reimagines what international writing can be. From Nobel laureates to dissident authors, iconic mainstays to extraordinary newcomers, this collection brings together powerful poetry, visionary lectures, and urgent reflections on to comprise a literary beacon for a rapidly changing world. It offers readers a vibrant map of how stories can cross borders, bridge histories, and shape futures. And asks, "What can literature do in a time of crisis?" This ca- comes out on February 3rd, 2026. From Other Press is Pure Men by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, translated by Lara Vergnaud.

[00:17:21]It says, "A young professor grapples with homophobia and Muslim Senegal in this searching, heart-wrenching novel from from the National Book Award long-listed author of The Most Secret Memory of Men, which I have somewhere on my shelves over there, but have haven't actually read yet.

[00:17:35]A viral video makes the rounds in Dakar showing an incensed crowd that gathers to dig up a grave and drag a corpse from holy ground.

[00:17:44]When Indéné, a din- Indéné, a French literature teacher, watches the video, he's surprisingly affected. Who was this man, and what could he have done to deserve such a fate? The answer soon becomes clear. He was one of the so-called men-women, the shameful label given to homosexuals, cross-dressers, or any man who lives outside the accepted norm.

[00:18:05]Haunted by the video, Indéné sets out to learn more. With the help of a friend who works in nightlife, he explores the hidden side of the city, away from the rigid Islam of his family and university. And it's a powerful, nuanced portrait of queerness in a conservative society and comes out in June. From Open Letter is Fortress of the Forgotten Ones by Fátima Riaz, translated from Urdu by Sana Chaudhry. This novel transports readers to 5th century this place, the zenith of the Saz- Sasanian Empire, in a brilliant historical novel that blends rich cultural memory with striking political relevance and feminist leanings.

[00:18:59]Set against the backdrop of fire worshipers, Parsi kings, and the ancient Avesta, this ambitious tale follows Mazdak, the first socialist revolutionary in history, as he challenges the power structures of his time, attempting to bring about a more fair and just society. With vivid depictions of the Great Palace of King Kobad, the lands of the White Huns, and the impoverished masses, Riaz delves deep into the forces of history that shaped Mazdak's quest for social justice. Fátima Riaz passed away in 2018 and was an iconic and outspoken Pakistani writer, poet, and activist who was forced into exile for her political beliefs. And Fortress of the Forgotten Ones is considered her greatest work of fiction, and that is being published at the end of March. From Milkweed is a sweeping epic called The Last Quarter of the Moon by Chi Zijian and translated by Bruce Humes. Again, this is a sweeping epic full of love and loss. A woman from one of the last remote reindeer herding tribes in northeastern China tells the story of her family and the last century of her country's history.

[00:20:11]At dawn, an elder sits among the birch trees while the rest of her tribe descend the mountain to permanently inhabit the town at its base.

[00:20:18]She's a member of the nomadic Evenki tribe who traverse the forested mountains of China's eastern ridge with herds of reindeer and she tells the tale of her life to the rain and fire. A life lived in close communion with nature at its most beautiful and cruel. This was the winner of China's most prestigious literary award and it asserts that all is shared and interconnected, humbly challenging us to bear witness to both loss and wonder. Also from Milkweed is a memoir called The Company of Owls by Polly Atkin.

[00:20:52]It is a love letter to the clutch of tawny owlets residing near Polly Atkin's home in the heart of England's Lake District. Circumscribed by a chronic illness to her cottage and the surrounding area, she turns to the trees and the animals among them for companionship, especially the owl siblings who surprise and delight her.

[00:21:12]As Atkin watches them grow from curious fledglings into sleek raptors, she contemplates the act of survival and our place within it. When should a human intervene? When should nature take its course? What do the owls know that we do not? And that is probably already published by the time you're seeing it.

[00:21:28]It comes out in February. From Assembly Press, there's a book called Mom Camp by Veronique Darwin. It's a debut collection of interconnected fiction that delivers a frothy philosophical take on modern female archetypes. In elementary school math, Jean was given a worksheet with six connected squares in the shape of a T. So, she drew one girl in each box. When Jean was told to cut around the shape and fold and tape the squares into one cube, she couldn't decide whether to keep the girls outside of the box looking away from each other or trapped inside looking in. Her solution was to rip it up and eat the pieces. The six characters have lived inside her ever since.

[00:22:10]It goes on to talk about the rest of the stories in the book, but I think I'm going to leave it there. Assembly Press is also publishing a book called Do It Wrong: How to Be a Poet in the 21st Century by Derek Beaulieu. This is a radically liberating collection of essays, ideas, and approaches to writing and teaching poetry. A short, snappy series of provocations and suggested suggestions designed to help poets think outside the box and foster creativity.

[00:22:35]And also a playful, purposeful contribution toward the building of stronger, more resilient writing communities. And that comes out in April.

[00:22:45]Mom Camp comes out in May. Nightshade by Lynn Hutchinson Lee is a gorgeous gothic Romani coming-of-age story set against the backdrop of the 1980s southern Ontario tobacco belt with a dash of magic realism. Looking for glamour and riches and freedom, Zelda is a young woman who chafes against her Romani identity and her family's poverty.

[00:23:07]Everything changes when she's lured away from working alongside her mother and aunts and other migrant workers in the tobacco fields and is hired as an assistant and good luck charm to the charismatic Trixie Tormentine.

[00:23:19]Eventually, the story goes on from there, but eventually the description ends with the devil appearing to Zelda one night in a motel parking lot. And that comes out in March. From World Editions is The Perfect Circle by Claudia Petrucci, translated by Ann Milano Appel. Two women, far apart in time, a mysterious, unsellable mansion in Milan that connects them.

[00:23:44]Two lives that start to overlap as impossible parallels are revealed in this story of passion, betrayal, and selfish desire.

[00:23:52]That's kind of all I need to know.

[00:23:54]>> [laughter] >> It's coming out in April. From Joyland Editions is Learning by Courtney Bush.

[00:24:00]This is coming out in June. It's a sincere, funny, and insightful novella from a poet and filmmaker.

[00:24:07]It's a one woman's account of a single Monday working in a progressive New York City daycare. The narrator, Courtney, spends her days in the blue room guiding her 3-year-old students through the early lessons of their lives.

[00:24:20]Her consciousness flickers between the children full of generosity, wonder, accidental brilliance, and infinite questions and her life outside the classroom.

[00:24:29]While tying shoes and peeling clementines, Courtney returns to the grief over her the death of a hometown friend, her recent divorce, the hope of a new relationship, her family back in Mississippi, and thoughts on forgiveness, empathy, and her own capacity for cruelty.

[00:24:44]I love a novel, condensed time novel set in one day. Also from Joyland Editions is Three by Na Jeong, coming out in October. An expansive yet personal story of a town and a family changed by the breakneck pressures of modernization.

[00:25:01]The small industrial town in China, a family of three, a prideful teacher, her husband, and their quietly rebellious daughter share a simple life weathering moves, fights, a layoff, illnesses. Two decades later, the daughter, now a writer living with her husband in America, reunites with her parents in her hometown after a long separation caused by the global pandemic. The trip is an occasion for her to reflect on her fraught relationship with her mother and the forces that pressurized and combusted their lives. Echoes of distant wars and not-too-distant revolutions, tides of breakneck modernizations modernizations, and the relentless erosion of time. And it says it is for fans of Annie Ernaux's The Years. From Featherproof Books is Some Some Stupid Glow by T.J. Fuller. This is a debut collection and it says the characters in this debut collection are desperate.

[00:25:54]They want their lives to mean something.

[00:25:56]They seek solace in work, validation and hope in others, and they fail a lot.

[00:26:01]The songs they sing us hit home and they hit hard, but not without humor, grace, and some straight-up weirdness. At times these stories are specula- speculative and/or surreal, set in the Pacific Northwest, and feature as many Philip Seymour Hoff- Hoffmans as you can imagine. Even more dream versions of yourself, aging backyard wrestlers, homeless gamblers, and much more.

[00:26:25]Let T.J. tell you some tales you won't soon forget. And that's coming out in the spring.

[00:26:31]Also from Featherproof Books is Danny B by Tim Kinsella. That's coming out in the summer.

[00:26:36]It says Danny didn't feel at home at home, but the pinball arcade and the strip club welcomed him.

[00:26:42]It's Portland, 2004, and with the fog of his mother's unsolved murder years earlier still hanging over him, Danny joined NA.

[00:26:51]The motorcycle gang that ran this NA group got him a job as a first call responder for the city morgue, requiring him to regularly walk in on the worst day of a stranger's life.

[00:27:02]Based on a propulsive true story of becoming oneself, Danny B is an impressionistic drift that pauses to zoom in on minute particulars. And finally, from Dorothy, a publishing project, is Blue Sunset by Denise Rose Hansen.

[00:27:19]At a conference somewhere in Europe, Maja meets the author. Haunted by a recent tragedy, she leaves him unexpectedly she leaves with him unexpect- very different to leave him versus leave with him. She leaves with him unexpectedly to his home on the Italian coast, where she stays for a time wandering into the rhythms of his life, observing the landscape through the lens of his days, the glossy floors of the supermarket, open windows on the autostrada, the sea. Yet everywhere over their new and tender intimacy hangs knowledge that soon she will have to return home to Copenhagen, the site of her own devastating loss.

[00:28:02]Denise Rose Hansen is a Danish writer and the publisher points out that Danish novels are kind of all the rage right now. So, this fits in well with that.

[00:28:13]Uh and that's coming out, as all Dorothy books do, um all two of them every year, uh comes out in October. And the second of the two books Dorothy's publishing this year in October is What Remains by Brace Lamella, translated by Jacob Rogers. Shifting between the present and the archival past, New York City, and the remote mountains of Spain, What Remains follows a young scholar's journey into a forgotten episode of the Franco regime, uncovering both the tragic history and the still present afterlife of a forced resettlement project in the Galician countryside of the 1950s.

[00:28:49]This is a hybrid work that blends fiction, memoir, essay, and archival research to set history in conversation with contemporary reality. And the result is a work of striking intimacy that explores with subtle prose and arresting imagery the complexity of modern migration and the legacy of 20th century colonization. And that, my friends, is the list I have for you today. Were you counting? Do you know how many that is? Cuz I don't. It was a lot. I've been sitting here a while. I am really, really excited to hear what you think and if you want to pick any of these books up as they're published throughout the year.

[00:29:25]My name is Sarah. Thanks so much for joining me today. I'll talk to you next time. Bye.