Erika Dreifus

If you follow bookish sites, or even simply book coverage elsewhere, you’ve likely been catching lots of lists setting forth the “most anticipated” books of 2026. Once again, as far as I’ve noticed in the “mainstream” examples, the presence of Jewish books—particularly books by authors who don’t make it a regular practice of declaring their “good Jew” anti-Zionist bona fides—ranges between “slight” and “nonexistent.”

The 18 titles below—including one that goes on sale today—are books I know about because they’re written by friends/acquaintances, or because they’ve otherwise come to my attention (in part, via the Edelweiss platform). But they’re truly only a sampling of those on my radar for the first half of 2026.

Now, they’ll be on yours, too.

• Samantha Ellis, Always Carry Salt: A Memoir of Preserving Language and Culture. Pegasus Books (out January 6).
• Josh Shapiro, Where We Keep the Light: Stories from a Life of Service, HarperCollins (out January 27).
• Howard Blas and Ilana Trachtman, A Different Spirit: Creating Meaningful B’nai Mitzvah for Children with Disabilities, Behrman House (out February 3).
• Michael Lowenthal, Place Envy: Essays in Search of Orientation, Mad Creek Books/Ohio State University Press (out February 9).
• Allegra Goodman, This Is Not About Us: Fiction, The Dial Press (out February 10).
• Zeeva Bukai, The World Between: A Novel, Delphinium Books (out February 24).
• Meg Richman, Freya the Deer: A Novel, Rootstock Publishing (out March 3).
• Mark Oppenheimer, Judy Blume: A Life, G.P. Putnam’s Sons (out March 10).
• Lore Segal (intro. Vivian Gornick), Still Talking, Melville House (out March 10). This one requires additional notes: Still Talking will be a posthumous publication; the following week, The New Press will release a 60th-anniversary edition of Segal’s novel Other People’s Houses. And all of this follows a new 40th-anniversary edition of her novel Her First American, also from The New Press (with an introduction by Jeffery Renard Allen, out January 20) and a reissue of her Pulitzer-finalist story collection Shakespeare’s Kitchen (out February 17, also from The New Press). It truly is the season of Lore Segal, as the Leo Baeck Institute in New York will be hosting And That’s True Too: The Life and Work of Lore Segal. The exhibit opens January 22 and runs through mid-April; note accompanying programming as listed on the webpage.
• Elisa Boxer (illus. Oksana Drachkovska), Under the Rubble: The Hidden Letters of the Warsaw Ghetto, Apples & Honey Press (out March 17).
• Moacyr Scliar (trans. Heath Wing; intro. Ilan Stavans), The Woman Who Wrote the Bible: A Comedy of Truly Biblical Proportions, UNM Press (out March 17).
• Matti Friedman, Out of the Sky: Heroism and Rebirth in Nazi Europe, Spiegel and Grau (out March 24).
• Jessica Brilliant Keener, Evening Begins the Day: A Novel, Koehler Books (out March 24).
• Nicholas Lemann, Returning: A Search for Home Across Three Centuries, Liveright (out March 24).
• Judy Batalion, The Last Woman of Warsaw: A Novel, Dutton Books (out April 7).
• Yevgenia Nayberg, Chernobyl, Life, and Other Disasters: A Graphic Memoir, Neal Porter Books (out April 14).
• Karin Brygger and Anneli Rådestad (illus. Joanna Rubin Dranger; trans. B.J. Woodstein), Jewish Changemakers: Stories of Courage, Creativity and Impact, Orca Book Publishers (out May 19).
• Marc David Baer, Children of Abraham: The 1,400-Year History of Jewish-Muslim Relations, Basic Books (out June 9).