If you felt a disturbance in the force earlier this week, it was probably just the Book Riot editorial team making exclamation points both literal and spiritual about the news that Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro’s next novel is a WWII spy caper.

Due out March 9, 2027 (smash that preorder button), Miss Lambert Steps Aboard Danger opens in London in 1938 as a man departing from a music hall performance has a chance meeting with an enigmatic woman. Jordan Pavlin, publisher and editor-in-chief of Knopf, describes the book as “a blend of spy fiction and the kind of wit P.G. Wodehouse was known for,” to which we say, “LET’S GOOOOOO.”

Ishiguro is no stranger to this setting—his 1989 novel The Remains of the Day also takes place in 1930s Britain—nor to experiments with genre.

📋 Catch up on Ishiguro’s backlist while you wait with our Zero to Well-Read episode about Never Let Me Go. — RJS

Books from 2025 continue to rule the 2026 conversation as Allen Levi’s feel-good Theo of Golden maintains its reign atop the paperback bestsellers list and Virginia Evans’s The Correspondent notches another win with the Women’s Prize.

But! New books are picking up momentum.

🎧 Hear our breakdown of these and more trending titles.

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Thriftbooks looked across more than 19 million titles to find the books readers keep choosing, loving, and returning to. Here are the 250 books that rose to the top—shop the list today! 

If you’re not already a Libro.fm member, you’re gonna want to be when you see the audiobooks included in their BOGO sale.

A ton of Book Riot house faves are included:

🎧 See all of the BOGO titles, and join Libro.fm to get two audiobooks for one credit. Every purchase supports local bookstores.

Alessandra Ferreri is the Head of Content for Wattpad, a global webnovel platform. Below, she discusses what is trending in LGBTQ+ content on Wattpad.

At Wattpad, we operate at the intersection of raw ideation and audience validation. Because our creators are able to write without the constraints of traditional mass-market expectations, the result is that LGBTQ+ romance and storytelling isn’t a fleeting trend on our platform—it’s an evergreen powerhouse that consistently drives a lot of engagement.

We often say Wattpad acts as an early cultural radar. Traditional entertainment is currently seeing mainstream hits like Heartstopper or Heated Rivalry. But online communities like ours have been refining these exact emotional archetypes and building stories like these for over 20 years.

Seeing a success like Behind the Camera—which took home a Watty Award—shows us that when you give creators a digital stage, there is a voracious audience there excited to find them.

The beauty of a creator-led ecosystem is that there is no pressure to fit a specific mold. Instead, there is open permission to lean into your most unique taste and specificity as either a creator or a reader.

And as media and trends continue to be influences and draw from these non-traditional spaces, the future of pop culture, and what we see on screens and on bookshelves, won’t be dictated top-down by people in boardrooms; more and more it will be co-created from the ground up by the creators and the audiences who love them.

We’re making your Book Riot All Access subscription even better with a brand-new feature: Collections!

Think of Collections as your ultimate digital bookshelf. Now you can:

We’ve even put together a handy guide so you can make the most of this new feature right away.

Not an All Access member yet? Join today to unlock Collections, full access to the complete Book Riot archive, and our curated book discovery tool, The New Release Index.

👉 Join All Access today for only $6/month!

Looking for a fresh, shiny new LGBTQ+ audiobook to put in your ears? These titles are included as part of your Audible+ membership!

Tia Williams is the bestselling author of novels including Seven Days in June and A Love Song for Ricki Wilde. Her newest romance, The Missed Connection, is out now from Grand Central Publishing. Below, she recommends three of her favorite romance reads.

Aphrodite and the Duke by JJ McAvoy: My mom’s 80s historical romances introduced me to the genre (shout out to Judith McNaught). But since they always starred white people, I’d recast the characters as Black. Tween-me is loving that today’s regency fans have zillions of multi-ethnic stories to choose from. This sultry saga stars Aphrodite, an aristocratic beauty who fled London after her fiancé, Duke Evander, married someone else. Now widowed, he’s desperate to lure her back. What’s hotter than a lovesick duke?

Honey and Spice by Bolu Babalola: There’s much to love, here—sizzling chemistry, endearing characters—but I especially love the role that music plays. It’s a love letter to R&B, truly. Honey and Spice stars a UK university student, Riki, who hosts a radio show—which gives her an outlet to be vulnerable in ways she can’t be in real life. Until she becomes embroiled in a “fake relationship” with Malachi, a love interest so dreamy I (almost) wanted to go back to college.

Act Your Age, Eve Brown by Talia Hibbert: Hibbert has one of the wittiest, freshest voices in romance! All her novels are delicious, but my favorite is easily Act Your Age, Eve Brown. This one follows a simply adorable free spirit’s surprising romance with a buttoned-up B&B owner—and it’s brimming with delicious wish fulfillment and breath-of-fresh-air representation.

Grow your TBR in Pride Month and beyond with the Our Queerest Shelves newsletter!

Our Queerest Shelves delivers a mix of new releases, themed best-of lists, and exclusive author interviews directly to your inbox. Whether you are looking for major new titles or niche indie gems, join thousands of fellow readers and subscribe to Our Queerest Shelves today. 

Did you know? Lidia Yuknavitch was in a graduate writing class taught by Ken Kesey at The University of Oregon in which Kesey challenged the class to write, together, a novel in one year. They did: Caverns by O.U. Levon (U.O. Novel, spelled backwards).

🏒 Find out which hockey romance is headed to Netflix with a little help from a top podcaster.

🏆 Celebrate the finalists for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize.

🧳 Pack your bags for a literary vacation.

🍽️  Liven up your kitchen with these cookbooks from around the world.

✉️ Explore all of Book Riot’s newsletters to get recommendations for every kind of reader.

Written by Rebecca Schinsky, Danika Ellis, and Jeff O’Neal. Thanks to Vanessa Diaz for copy editing.

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