Sizzling hot fiction arriving in 2026

Welcome to a new year with a fresh new line-up of books to keep you entertained, engaged, informed, and delighted. We’re ready to dive in! Enjoy this list of upcoming fiction in the first half of 2026, and make sure to visit your local independent bookstore or library to find them.

January

The beginning of the year brings local author Steffanie Holmes’ latest, A Grave Mistake, published by Simon & Schuster and billed as a cosy paranormal romance, featuring vampires, cups of tea, and a book group. Veteran author Nalini Singh has a thriller out this month: Such a Perfect Family, a story of newlywed Tavish Advani, who’s been left holding the can for the explosive murder of his wife’s wealthy family. 

Rural crime fiction is a rapidly growing trend, and Geoff Parkes’ debut in 2025 was a well-received example. His second, The First Law of the Bush, out now, is another murder mystery set in the rural King Country. February Two beach reads in February include Erin Palmisano’s Secrets of the Lost Vineyard, which takes the reader away to an inherited Argentinian vineyard where love is on the agenda, and Elisabeth Easther’s debut novel Seed, pitched at readers of Marian Keyes, follows four women with babies on their minds. 

Following that, Deborah Challinor’s third Tatty Crowe historical novel, Black Velvet and Vengeance, brings more Victorian funereal business to life. And J.P. Pomare, crime writer extraordinaire, is back with The Gambler, in which PI Vince Reid investigates a gun crime at a public event. For those wanting more contemplation, Breton Dukes’ first novel Party Boy explores the mind of a stressed man trying to be it all, and cope with it all, as his fiftieth birthday approaches.

March

Literary superstar Charlotte Grimshaw’s My Black Monk hits shelves in March. Alice, trying to hold her family together while her brother spirals into addiction, is haunted by a black monk. This is Grimshaw’s first novel in five years, and follows memoir The Mirror Book, which was shortlisted for the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. 

Debut author KJ Holdom’s historical novel, The End and the Beginning, is a different take on a familiar setting: the story of a young man who runs from a Hitler Youth camp toward the end of WWII. Also set abroad is RM Caldwell’s fun regency romance, Fast & Fastidious. 

The first short story collection for the year is Shariff Burke’s Childish Palate, coming from small but mighty Tender Press. The collection follows a group of outsiders hunting hope as they navigate Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington. And in the crime fiction space, Vanda Symon’s newest novel is called Reaper, featuring unlikely hero Max, homeless and forgotten. April Second-time novelists Megan Nicol Reed and Lauren Keenan follow up their debuts this month. Nicol Reed’s Other People’s Bodies is an exploration of friendship, gym membership, and the power of belonging – a preoccupation that also ran through her first book. Keenan’s The Other Catherine is the story of two women, a century apart, both battered by the march of colonisation.  Another story of colonisation, literary debut Banjara, by Shana Chandra, explores how the Fijian-Indian indenture system affected generations across the Pacific. May Romantasy continues to fly off the shelves. Ivy Clearwater’s sequel to The Shadow Weaver is due in May, so keep an eye out for The Storm Weaver. Equally busy is crime fiction, and popular character Detective Honey Chalmers returns in Gavin Strawhan’s Slash. 

Last year’s Ockham poetry winner Emma Neale’s seventh novel promises to be a treat. Entitled Maybe Baby, it’s a story of love and grief with a speculative element. Also appearing in May is Lawrence Patchett’s Have this Heart, short stories peering at the intricacies of men at work, their privilege and trauma amongst parenthood and the patriarchy. Possibly the only novel to be released this year with an accompanying soundtrack, debut novelist Nic Sceats' Paper Husbands centres around group of friends in Wellington trying to make a comeback as a band, seeking the fame and glory they missed out on years before. June Look out for Relic Party, an edgy short story collection by Susanna Elliffe, which won the 2025 NZSA Laura Solomon Cuba Press Prize. Majella Cullinane, author of poetry collection Meantime, is also due to release a short story collection, Islands Ever After, with Quentin Wilson Publishing. 

Also perhaps on the edgy side, but certainly speculative, is Tim Corballis’ sixth novel, Nova, a dialogue between humanity and machines. 

Another award-winner due to publish in June is Anne Cleary with The Nowhere Boy, a psychological thriller about a missing child, which won the Allen & Unwin Fiction Prize in 2025. 

July and onwards Coming from Bateman Books is a new novel by Jackie Davis, entitled Aftermath. No Prisoners, by Ellis Blake/Ben Sanders, a thriller in which Hannah sets out on the run to find her husband, is being published by Moa Press. And Adam Perry’s debut thriller, Every Lake, will also hit the shelves.

Looking further into the year, another Bookshop Detectives mystery by Gareth and Louise Ward will be popular among fans, as will a new novel by acclaimed Taranaki author Jacqueline Bublitz. 

The Body and the Blood, a crime novel set in Dunedin by Molly Crighton, is scheduled for August, and so is a historical thriller based around the events of the Tarawera eruption from experienced Auckland author Sarah Ell. With an as yet unconfirmed publication date, a speculative historical novel called The Valley of Unlikely Acquaintances, written by Terri Te Tau, will be published by Spoor Books. Challenge on: how many of these can you read this year?