Fiction

Five 2026 fiction titles, ranked by a panel that read every one of them in full — from Ocean Vuong's quiet devastation to a plot-forward pick for readers who find literary fiction too slow.

Backman's most structurally ambitious novel yet follows a painting across two timelines and the friendship that made it real. Our panel argued about the ending for a week.

Vuong's second novel trades his debut's direct address for a wider, slower story about an unlikely caregiving friendship. The best sentence-level prose we read this year.