NYT Best Books of 2026 So Far: Fiction & Story Picks

Ben Lerner turns transcription into a literary problem: voice, record, mediation, and what gets lost when experience becomes text.

A Cat Sebastian romance with genre sparkle, built for readers who want wit, longing, and a love story with speculative lift.

A satire of curated tradition and online domestic fantasy, where nostalgia becomes a product and a trap.

A memoir of marriage that treats intimacy as an unsolved story: two people close enough to love and still partly unknown.