The new film adaptation by Saltburn director Emerald Fennell looks set to be provocative – but nowhere near as shocking as Emily Brontë’s original

The most astonishing thing about the first trailer for Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights is not the extreme closeup of dough being kneaded into submission. It’s not that in the lead roles Margot Robbie is blonde and 35, and Jacob Elordi is white, when Emily Brontë described Cathy as a teen brunette and Heathcliff as “a dark-skinned gypsy�. It’s not the gaudy splendour of the interiors – silver walls, plaster Greek gods spewing strings of pearls, blood-red floors and a flesh-pink wall for clutching and licking. It’s not Robbie’s gobstopper diamonds or her scarlet sunglasses or her stuffing grass into her mouth or the loud snip of her corset laces being slashed with a knife or her elaborately – erotically – bound hair as she contemplates multiple silver cake stands stacked with vertiginous fruit puddings. It’s not any of her dresses – the red latex number or the perfectly 1980s off-the-shoulder wedding dress topped by yards of veil half-wuthered off her head. Nor is it any of the times Elordi takes his top off.

The most astonishing thing is that the trailer says Wuthering Heights is “the greatest love story of all time�. Which is almost exactly how the 1939 Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon film was trailed – as “the greatest love story of our time … or any time!� Have we learned nothing? I am not talking about the fact that (like Oberon’s!) Robbie’s wedding dress is white, which is not period-correct. This has exercised many people on the internet. I’m more worried about the fact that almost a century since Olivier’s film, we are still calling it a love story – a great one! The greatest! It’s being released the day before Valentine’s Day! – when what actually happens is that Cathy rejects Heathcliff because she’s a snob, and he turns into a psychopath.

From companionship to psychotherapy, technology could meet unmet needs – but it needs to be handled responsibly

There is much anxiety these days about the dangers of human-AI relationships. Reports of suicide and self-harm attributable to interactions with chatbots have understandably made headlines. The phrase “AI psychosis� has been used to describe the plight of people experiencing delusions, paranoia or dissociation after talking to large language models (LLMs). Our collective anxiety has been compounded by studies showing that young people are increasingly embracing the idea of AI relationships; half of teens chat with an AI companion at least a few times a month, with one in three finding conversations with AI “to be as satisfying or more satisfying than those with real‑life friends�.

But we need to pump the brakes on the panic. The dangers are real, but so too are the potential benefits. In fact, there’s an argument to be made that – depending on what future scientific research reveals – AI relationships could actually be a boon for humanity.

New books by Liza Minelli, David Sedaris, Maggie O’Farrell and Yann Martel are among the literary highlights of the year ahead

2026 is already promising plenty of unmissable releases: there are new novels by George Saunders, Ali Smith and Douglas Stuart, memoirs from Gisèle Pelicot, Lena Dunham and Mark Haddon, and plenty of inventive debuts to look forward to. Here, browse all the biggest titles set to hit shelves in the coming months across fiction and nonfiction, selected by the Guardian’s books desk.

Maggie O’Farrell, Yann Martel and Julian Barnes are among the authors publishing new novels this year

The beginning of the books calendar is usually dominated by debuts, but January 2026 sees releases from some of the year’s biggest authors. Known for his surreally bittersweet short stories, George Saunders has written only one novel so far – but that one won the Booker prize. The follow-up to 2017’s Lincoln in the Bardo, Vigil (Bloomsbury) focuses on an unquiet spirit called Jill who helps others pass over from life to whatever comes next. She is called to the deathbed of an oil tycoon who is rapidly running out of time to face up to his ecological crimes, in a rallying cry for human connection and environmental action. Ali Smith’s Glyph (Hamish Hamilton) is a companion to 2024’s Gliff, and promises to tell a story initially hidden in that previous novel. Expect fables, siblings, phantoms and horses in a typically playful shout of resistance against war, genocide and the increasingly hostile social discourse. And in Departure(s) (Jonathan Cape), Julian Barnes announces his own – this blend of memoir and fiction, exploring memory, illness, mortality and love across the decades, will be his last book. “Your presence has delighted me,� he assures the reader. “Indeed, I would be nothing without you.�

The Hamnet adaptation hits UK cinemas in January, but Maggie O’Farrell’s next novel isn’t out until June. Land (Tinder), a multigenerational saga which opens in 19th-century Ireland in the wake of the famine, is inspired by her own family history and centres on a man tasked with mapping the country for the Ordnance Survey. There’ll be much anticipation, too, for The Things We Never Say from Elizabeth Strout (Viking, May). The ultra-prolific Strout is adored for her interconnected novels, but this story of a man with a secret is a standalone, introducing characters we’ve never met before. In John of John (Picador, May) Douglas Stuart, author of much-loved Booker winner Shuggie Bain, portrays a young gay man returning home from art school to the lonely croft on the Hebridean island where he grew up. And September sees a new novel from Irish writer Sebastian Barry: The Newer World (Faber) follows Costa winner Days Without End and A Thousand Moons in transporting the reader to late 19th-century America in the aftermath of the Civil War.

A Pulitzer finalist is among the first-time novelists, in tales of love, a surreal prison, teen murder and a tradwife

Belgrave Road
Manish Chauhan (Faber, January)
An affecting tale of loneliness and love in Chauhan’s home town of Leicester, Belgrave Road tells the story of Mira, newly arrived in the UK from India following an arranged marriage, and Tahliil, a Somali cleaner who becomes her lunch partner, and her escape. By day, Chauhan is a finance lawyer; his debut novel follows his shortlisting in last year’s BBC short story competition.

This Is Where the Serpent Lives
Daniyal Mueenuddin (Bloomsbury, January)
The Pakistani-American writer’s 2009 story collection, In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, was a Pulitzer finalist. Like his debut, hHis first novel is set in Pakistan, moving between bustling cities and agricultural estates, interrogating the country’s class dynamics through an epic portrait spanning six decades.

Memoirs from Liza Minnelli and Lena Dunham, essays by David Sedaris and Alan Bennett’s diaries are among the highlights of the year ahead

Over 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.

Looking for a new reading recommendation? Here are some brilliant new paperbacks, from a festive mystery to a kaleidoscopic ode to the animal kingdom

New novels from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Ian McEwan, plus the return of Slow Horses and Margaret Atwood looks back … Guardian critics pick the must-read titles of 2025

The Guardian’s fiction editor picks the best of the year, from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Dream Count to Thomas Pynchon’s return, David Szalay’s Booker winner and a remarkable collection of short stories.

Writers and Guardian readers discuss the titles they have read over the last month. Join the conversation in the comments

I finally got round to Thoreau’s Journal. It is determinedly down-to-earth and soaring, lyrical and belligerent, humane and cantankerous. Walt Whitman thought Thoreau suffered from “a very aggravated case of superciliousness�, but as Walt also said (of himself) the Journal of this brooding, solitary figure is great; it “contains multitudes.�

Homework by Geoff Dyer is published by Canongate (£20). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

The Mercy Step by Marcia Hutchinson is published by Cassava Republic. To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply

A masterful introduction to the economics of our most basic asset

‘The landlord is a gentleman who does not earn his wealth … his sole function, his chief pride, is the consumption of wealth produced by others.� It was 1909, and a liberal politician was launching an assault on a class of people who – in the eyes of many – contributed nothing to Britain’s advances in industry while living off its gains.

A little over a century after David Lloyd George’s Limehouse speech, and it feels as though the issue of land has returned to politics: an analysis of MPs’ financial interests revealed that a quarter of all Tory MPs earned more than £10,000 from renting out property, while 44 Labour MPs – 11% – did the same. The winner of the most dazzling political campaign of the past year, New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani made “freeze the rent� his central pledge. On the right, a revolt against property taxes is gathering pace. Journalist Mike Bird’s history of the most basic asset arrives, then, at an opportune moment.

Bob and Dick Sherman take centre stage in this well-researched account of how Walt Disney created a classic

Like many kids of the VHS generation, I must have watched my taped-off-the-telly copy of Disney’s Mary Poppins (1964) well over 100 times. I probably knew every frame as well as Walt Disney himself, who invested 20 years in bringing it to the screen.

The culmination of his live action achievements, Mary Poppins remained the project Walt was most proud of. A sophisticated, multi-Oscar-winning musical that proved the House of Mouse was about more than just cartoons, its box office success enabled him to expand his Florida ambitions for Disney World resort and shore up the company’s financial future.

A brilliant history of psychiatric ideas suggests we are on the cusp of a transformation in our understanding of severe mental illness

In 1973, an American psychologist called David Rosenhan published the results of a bold experiment. He’d arranged for eight “pseudo-patients� to attend appointments at psychiatric institutions, where they complained to doctors about hearing voices that said “empty�, “hollow� and “thud�. All were admitted, diagnosed with either schizophrenia or manic-depressive psychosis. They immediately stopped displaying any “symptoms� and started saying they felt fine. The first got out after seven days; the last after 52.

Told of these findings, psychiatrists at a major teaching hospital found it hard to believe that they’d make the same mistake, so Rosenhan devised another experiment: over the next three months, he informed them, one or more pseudopatients would go undercover and, at the end, staff would be asked to decide who had been faking it. Of 193 patients admitted, 20% were deemed suspicious. It was then that Rosenhan revealed this had been a ruse as well: no pseudopatients had been sent to the hospital at all. Not only had doctors failed to spot sane people in their midst; they couldn’t reliably recognise the actually insane.

The precarious, cruel but dazzling world of a foundling hospital is brought wonderfully to life by the author of Botticelli’s Secret

Joseph Luzzi, a professor at Bard College in New York, is a Dante scholar whose books argue for the relevance of the great Italian art and literature of the late middle ages and Renaissance to our own times. A great populariser and advocate of the humanities in public life, he has done for Dante what his Bard colleague Daniel Mendelsohn did for Homer in An Odyssey and other books.

This short volume tells the story of the Hospital of the Innocents in Dante’s home town of Florence, a building Luzzi has been fascinated by since encountering it in 1987 on his college year abroad. The Innocenti, as it is known, was the first institution in Europe devoted solely to the care of unwanted children. The first foundling, named Agata because she was left by its gates on Saint Agata’s Day 1445, had been nibbled at by mice.

From exile to family dysfunction, street food to sex, this stylish novel about a mother visiting her estranged gay son in Tokyo explores familiar themes

While we now use it to mean a fuss or convoluted mess, the origins of the word palaver, the title of Bryan Washington’s third novel, lie in the Portuguese term palavra, which simply means “word�. Over time, and possibly coloured by the historical context of Portuguese colonists’ rampages across the globe, “palaver� came to refer to a complex debate or negotiation between two culturally distinct parties.

Culture clashes, conflicted conversations, oppositions and exchanges are principal interests for Washington. His debut novel, 2020’s Memorial, was a sobering but sensitive consideration of a fracturing interracial gay relationship set between Houston and Osaka. This was followed in 2023 by Family Meal, again taking place in Houston, with its pithy observations of a combustible queer love triangle. Palaver centres on the tense relationship between protagonists “the son� and “the mother�. Guarded and prickly, the son is an American who has lived in Tokyo for the best part of a decade, teaching English as a foreign language. Throughout this period, he’s been estranged from his Jamaican-American mother back home in Texas. The novel opens with the equally crabby mother unexpectedly turning up on her son’s doorstep, and mostly covers the week and a half they spend together, moving between their two perspectives. Illuminated by Tokyo’s harsh neon, mother and son edge around reckonings with their bitter past of familial dysfunction, and make their way towards something resembling rapprochement.

Anointing a new Santa; a child refugee’s tale; a dangerous journey across frozen wastes; a YA roadtrip romance and more

The Great Christmas Tree Race by Naomi Jones, illustrated by James Jones, Ladybird, £7.99
Star always goes on top of the Christmas tree – until new decoration Sparkle kicks off a race. Who will win: Lights, Bauble, Snowflake or Reindeer? A festive picture-book caper with a child-pleasing twist.

The Boy Who Grew Dragons: A Christmas Delivery by Andy Shepherd, illustrated by Sarah Warburton, Templar, £12.99
Tomas, Lolli and the dragons in Grandad’s garden all love Christmas, but when a baby snow dragon hatches, her icy flurries make present-delivering impossible. Children and dragons team up to find a solution in this charming, funny picture-book introduction to the bestselling 5+ series.

This resurrected Danish novel about a man who is ‘frozen down’, awaking in an Orwellian dystopia two decades later, is inventive, funny and all too timely

In the Danish author’s uncannily prescient novel, first published in 1969, the year is 1973 and Bruno works as a fiction editor for a popular weekly magazine; his talent for generating story ideas makes him indispensable to his authors. Invited for dinner at the home of one of them, Bruno finds himself seated next to a woman named Jenny, a struggling ballet dancer with a gloomy aspect and no sense of humour. Bruno is drawn to her nonetheless, and finds himself inventing stories about her. The following day, he is admitted to hospital to undergo tests: a small lump on the side of his neck has raised some concerns. Bruno cannot help feeling the two events are somehow connected.

It comes as little surprise to Bruno when he learns he has cancer. The doctor in charge of his case, Josef Ackerman, offers a choice: he can either undergo the gruelling and fallible radiotherapy currently prescribed for his disease, or he can become a pioneer in a new, radically experimental treatment programme in which patients are “frozen down�, remaining in a state of suspended animation until such time as medical science has advanced sufficiently to offer a cure.

This story of a teenage druid whose body is discovered in a peat bog has memorable moments – but its evocation of time and place is unconvincing

Anna North’s fourth book, Bog Queen, is a stranded or braided novel. First “a colony of moss� speaks – or rather, does not speak, but “if such a colony could tell the story of its life�, here’s some of what it might say. Then we have Agnes in 2018, American, tall, awkward, expert in forensic pathology and uncertain about everything else, including much of life in England. And then, in the first person, there is an iron age teenage girl, the druid of her village, riding towards a Roman town with her brother Aesu and friend Crab: “I had been druid for two seasons at that point and everyone said I was doing very well.�

Agnes has a post-doctoral fellowship in Manchester, from which she is summoned to the discovery of a body in a peat bog in Ludlow. The story shadows that of Lindow Man, found by peat harvesters in a bog near Wilmslow in 1984. In this novel, “Ludlow� is a town in which “the steel mill has closed down� leaving nothing but “[a] few shops, a Tesco, a Pizza Express�. It’s “the Gateway to the north� and a bus ride from Manchester. Novelists may of course invent time and place as they see fit, but it’s an odd choice to borrow the location of a bourgeois satellite town of Manchester and give it the name of a pretty medieval market town in the Welsh Marches, with a history that belongs to neither.

The return of Charlie and Lola; the second lives of trees; the dangers of time travel; a YA Bluebeard retelling and more

The Street Where Santa Lives by Harriet Howe and Julia Christians, Little Tiger, £12.99
When an old man moves in on a busy street, only his little neighbour notices; with his white beard and round belly, she’s convinced he’s Santa. But when Santa falls ill, other neighbours must rally round to take care of him. Will he be better in time for Christmas? This sweet, funny, acutely observed picture book is a festive, joyous celebration of community.

I Am Wishing Every Minute for Christmas by Lauren Child, S&S, £12.99
Twenty-five years after their first appearance, this delightful, engaging new Charlie and Lola picture book is filled with Lola’s excited impatience as she and her big brother get everything ready for Christmas.

The healing power of gardens; celebrating an abolitionist; hope in the toughest times; a gladiator romantasy and more

The Butterfly House by Harry Woodgate, Andersen, £12.99
Miss Brown’s wild garden scares most people, but when Holly discovers her reclusive neighbour’s sadness, she decides to help turn the wilderness into a butterfly haven. A beautiful, moving picture book about the healing power of gardens and community.

The History of We by Nikkolas Smith, Rock the Boat, £8.99
Via rich, dynamic paintings and thoughtful pared-back text, Smith answers the question “What does the beginning look like?� with this powerful picture book, the shared story of humanity’s first ancestors in “the fertile cradle of Africa�.

A bothered bear; a great guide to drawing; a life of Josephine Baker; a role model daughter; a search for words and more

Bear’s Nap by Emily Gravett, Two Hoots, £12.99
Someone is cheeping and keeping Bear from sleeping in this increasingly uproarious picture book filled with forest-dwelling creatures and their noises. A joy to read aloud.

This Is Who I Am by Rashmi Sirdeshpande, illustrated by Ruchi Mhasane, Andersen, £12.99
A moving celebration of heritage and identity, this softly coloured picture book follows a little girl with “a foot in two worlds�, who is both “the richness of all the worlds she belongs to� and uniquely, proudly herself.

A huge brolly; sibling revelry; poetic Paris; first aid for youngsters; Regency blackmail; blackly comic YA fiction and more

A Totally Big Umbrella by Sarah Crossan, illustrated by Rebecca Cobb, Walker, £12.99
Rain ruins all Tallulah’s favourite things until she finds a really huge umbrella – but it’s so big it holds her back. Could there be worse things than getting wet? Enchanting and imaginative, this gentle, playful picture book addresses an anxious child’s need to find control.

The Elephant and the Piano by Colette Hiller, illustrated by Nabila Adani, Magic Cat, £7.99
Short-tempered and destructive, Bonti the elephant is all alone – until the music of a piano reaches him. A luminous, touching picture book, based on a true story.

A knighthood, a lifetime achievement award and a hit theatre production of The Line of Beauty… the author on a year of personal success and political change

If there can be a downside to receiving a lifetime achievement award, it can surely only be the hint of closure it evokes. I put this as tactfully as I can to Alan Hollinghurst, this year’s winner of the David Cohen prize, which has previously recognised the contribution to literature of, among others, VS Naipaul, Doris Lessing and Edna O’Brien. It does have “a certain hint of the obituary about it�, he concedes, laughing. “So I’m very much doing what I can to take it as an incentive rather than a reward.�

But there have been plenty of rewards recently. Hollinghurst was knighted in this year’s New Year honours list, a couple of months after the publication of his novel Our Evenings, the story of actor Dave Win’s journey from boarding school to the end of his life, which received rave reviews. In the Guardian, critic Alexandra Harris announced it his finest novel to date, noting that it “forms a deep pattern of connection with its predecessors, while being an entirely distinct and brimming whole�.

As the first part of his acclaimed Blinding trilogy is released in the UK, the novelist talks about communism, Vladimir Nabokov – and those Nobel rumours

In 2014, when he was travelling around the US on a book tour, Mircea Cărtărescu was able to fulfil the dream of a lifetime: a tour of Vladimir Nabokov’s butterfly collection. Cărtărescu is a great admirer of the Russian-American author, and shares with him a literary career that bridges the western and eastern cultural spheres – as well as a history of being mooted as the next Nobel literature laureate but never having won it.

Above all, the Romanian poet and novelist shares Nabokov’s fascination with butterflies. As a child, he harboured dreams of becoming a lepidopterist. On a visit to Harvard, Cărtărescu was allowed access to Nabokov’s former office and marvelled at specimens the St Petersburg-born author had collected. “His most important scientific work was about butterflies’ sexual organs, and I saw these very tiny vials with them in,� he whispers in awe. “It’s like an image from a poem or a story. It was absolutely fantastic.�

Democracy, birds and hangover cures – famous fans put their questions to the visionary author

After the ­phenomenal global success, not to mention timeliness, of the TV adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale in 2017, Margaret Atwood has been regarded as “a combination of figurehead, prophet and saint�, the author writes in her new memoir Book of Lives. Over 600 pages this “memoir of sorts� ranges from her childhood growing up in the Canadian backwoods to her grief at the death of her partner of 48 years, the writer Graeme Gibson, in 2019, with many friendships, the occasional spat and more than 50 books (including Cat’s Eye, Alias Grace and the Booker prizewinning The Blind Assassin and The Testaments) in between.

The author, who turned 86 last week, always likes to take the long view, often from a couple of centuries’ distance. As Rebecca Solnit notes below, she now has a long view of our times. Age and the freedom of being a writer (as she says, she can’t get sacked) make her fearless in speaking out.

The Safekeep author on her secret childhood reading, falling in love with Elizabeth Strout and why she keeps coming back to Zadie Smith

My earliest reading memory
I had a children’s encyclopedia on the shelf above my bed – orange and brown, the cover old flaking plastic – but I retain nothing of what I read. I do remember a book of dirty jokes I was obsessed with at the age of eight. I was convinced it was off limits to me (it wasn’t) and so I waited until my parents were at work to shamefully steal it from the bookshelf. One time, my mother found it under my pillow and I was mortified. I recall her being confused and putting it back with a mumbled “I don’t judge� as she left the room.

My favourite book growing up
That must have been one of Thea Beckman’s novels, most likely Hasse Simonsdochter. Beckman was the author for young adults in 80s and 90s Netherlands.

The wife of William Shakespeare takes centre stage in a rich, sensitive examination of parental grief, sensitively narrated by Jessie Buckley

The jury is still out on the merits of Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet, which arrives in cinemas next month, but there is no arguing with the quality of the source material. Maggie O’Farrell’s lyrical and immersive novel, which won the Women’s prize in 2020, imagines the relationship between William Shakespeare and his wife, Agnes Hathaway, and their grief over the death of their 11-year-old son, Hamnet, from the plague in 1596. The book opens with the young Hamnet realising his twin sister Judith is unwell and searching for an adult to attend to her, while unaware that he is the one who is fatally ill.

Shakespeare – who is never named and instead referred to as “the husband� or “the father� – is depicted not as a literary superstar but a flawed man who is rarely home. The focus is on Hathaway, a free-spirited woman with deep connections to the landscape. The narrative shifts between her childhood, the early years of her marriage and the aftermath of Hamnet’s death, during which Shakespeare writes one of his greatest plays, Hamlet (records state that the names Hamlet and Hamnet were interchangeable in those days).

A melancholy December vision in Liverpool invokes a Dickensian ghost with more worldly but still warm realism

Down on the canal on Christmas Day

Down on the canal on Christmas Day
a man walks towards me out of water-light,
upright, Cratchit-wrapped, a smile to say:
I know you. Hello Chris. Ghost in a time-ripped landscape
where a low solstice sun spills whisked
through a metallic staircase.
With joy, the man’s smile haunts me for miles —
a long blasted path, where a dead rat’s belly festoons
its purple crinoline Christmas hat.