Highlights of the Season
Emma Bastow The Art of Walking HQ, 7 May, hb, £10.99, 9780008768560
Through small, achievable adjustments – to your focus, your rhythm, your environment – this aims to help you gently reframe the daily habit of walking into a powerful ritual, with the benefits of less stress, better sleep and a happier outlook on life.
Gilly McArthur The Beauty of Cold Welbeck, 21 May, hb, £25, 9781035435395
In this photographic guide, cold-water coach McArthur shares her passion for icy water and wild places; from daily cold-water dips in January, to swimming in Scottish caves and rescuing wildlife.
Dr Emily Leeming Fibre Power Michael Joseph, 21 May, hb, £22, 9780241804520
“One nutrient could transform your health and how you feel – yet 96% of Brits are missing out. Fibre is the quiet hero of nutrition, and it’s time to get loud about it.” So says the author of this four-week plan and recipe book.
beauty dystopia. From the rise of new treatments framed as “self-care” and the industries profiting from our insecurities, to the toxic messaging passed through generations, she looks at how we can break the cycle.
Sports & Gaming
Stuart Barker Win, Lose Or Die Blink Publishing, 7 May, hb, £22, 9781785128967
Through a host of interviews with riders, mechanics, team bosses, and race organisers, this takes readers behind the scenes of the lethal sport of motorcycle road racing, revealing the triumphs and tragedies, the blood, the guts, the sweat and the tears.
James Witts Dope Blink Publishing, 7 May, hb, £22, 9781785129742
Through the lens of case studies, this examines the landscape of sport and of doping in the modern era. It uncovers the common methods of cheating and what tricks the authorities have up their sleeves to identify and catch those who cross the line.
Music
Julia Boyd There Is Sweet Music Here Elliott & Thompson, 21 May, hb, £30, 9781783969463
Mona Chollet, Emily Boyce (trans) How to Resist Guilt
Picador, 28 May, hb, £16.99, 9781035077595
In this “powerful” feminist manifesto about finding the courage to say no and replace ideas of duty with those of desire, Chollet argues that we should protect our boundaries, demand what we deserve and enjoy the profound simplicity of just being.
Mind, Body & Spirit
Alex Light The Price of Pretty HQ, 7 May, hb, £16.99, 9780008716158
Author and podcaster Light investigates the forces behind today’s
Spring/Summer 2026
The “surprising and enthralling” story of cherished London concert venue Wigmore Hall and its cast of extraordinary characters. “The story of Wigmore Hall is the story of music in the 20th and 21st centuries – and of London itself.”
Stephanie Phillips We Were Here Faber & Faber, 21 May, hb, £20, 9780571381104
This “reclamation of rock’n’roll for the Black artists” promises to rip up our received history of both rock and alternative music and repopulate it with the extraordinary Black artists and influential figures who steered its course from the 1930s to the present day.
Poetry
Daljit Nagra Yiewsley Faber & Faber, 21 May, hb, £14.99, 9780571396559
This autobiographical new collection explores Nagra’s experiences
Bill McGuire The Fate of the World HarperNorth, 21 May, hb, £20, 9780008806545
From the UCL climate scientist and author of Hothouse Earth, this 4.6-billion-year history of the earth shows the deep roots of our current climate crisis and explores what past climate change can tell us about our future climate.
Geography
Lia Leendertz A Year in Nature Gaia Books, 7 May, hb, £10, 9781856755993
growing up in the white, working-class suburban town of Yiewsley, close to Heathrow airport in Outer London, from the 1960s to the 1980s.
Sophie Hannah Work Experience Carcanet Poetry, 28 May, pb, £15.99, 9781800175556
Hannah’s new collection contains “maverick, irreverent poems that rhyme and scan and will make you laugh aloud”, together with the librettos of her two musicals.
Conservation & Environment
John Bailey Lifelines Mudlark, 21 May, hb, £20, 9780008715366
Exploring the flora, fauna, fish and other riverbank delights, Bailey sets out to provide a deep insight into the lives of the UK’s waterways, taking in the contributions of friends, including Paul Whitehouse and Feargal Sharkey.
Chris Sperring Ghosts of the Night William Collins, 21 May, hb, £25, 9780008659202
This nature guide aims to provide “wonderful” insights into every element of our British owls, including Barn and Tawny and their even more enigmatic cousins the Short-eared, Long-eared and Little.
Drawn from Leendertz’s bestselling The Almanac, a beautifully packaged look at the countryside that surrounds us and the wildlife that inhabits it; from spring’s first blossoms dancing in the breeze to winter’s quiet hush beneath a blanket of snow.
Natural History & Pets
Simon Barnes How to Fly Bloomsbury Publishing, 7 May, hb, £22, 9781526687548
Bringing together all aspects of aerial life - evolution, technology, mythology, religion, nature and imagination, an exploration of the wonders of flight and how different species have evolved different solutions to the problem – including humans.
Julia Rosen Grassroots Headline Press, 19 May, hb, £25, 9781035407866
“The story of grass is bigger than grass itself; it is the story of us and our place in the natural world.” Rosen explores how grass spread across the planet, and how its rise to dominance enabled our own.
Travel Guides
Eva zu Beck The Wilder Way Century, 7 May, hb, £20, 9781529965902
After hitting rock bottom, YouTube adventurer and National Geographic TV host Zu Beck bought a one-way ticket to Nepal. This is her travel memoir of one woman’s solo adventures around the world and her pursuit of freedom.
Travel Writing
Lucy Shepherd Into the Wild Michael Joseph, 7 May, hb, £25, 9780241775530
Explorer and presenter Shepherd tells the “riveting” story of her trek across an untouched swathe of the Amazon rainforest.
Business & Economics
Rupal Patel, Jack Leslie, The Bank of England How to Make Money Cornerstone Press, 14 May, hb, £18.99, 9781529934885
Where does money come from? What gives a £1 coin its value? And
whose job is it to print banknotes? Experts from the Bank of England explain how money really works, and what happens when it does not.
Specialist, Technical & Medical
Robert Macfarlane, Jackie Morris The Book of Birds Hamish Hamilton, 7 May, hb, £35, 9780241404737
From the creators of the most marvellous The Lost Words comes a dazzling celebration of birdlife in Britain, reimagining the classic field guide for a new generation of nature lovers. I cannot wait to get my hands on it.
charts a year in the life of her Nibbie-winning independent bookseller, Storytellers Inc.
Yeganeh Torbati, Bozorgmehr Sharafedin Stolen Revolution
Viking, 4 June, hb, £20, 9780241744017
This “gripping” new narrative traces the lives of Iranians and the promise of revolution across five decades, from the Iranian Revolution to the inspiring Woman Life Freedom protests.
June
Catherine Mayer Divide and Rule: Royal Women and Their Battles
Biography & Memoirs
Howard Cunnell Sun Country Bloomsbury Publishing, 4 June, hb, £16.99, 9781526691606
The author of the wonderful Fathers & Sons describes his return to the Sussex of his boyhood following the death of his mother in this “beautifully written, courageous and deeply moving journey from sorrow to acceptance, from loss to hope”.
Gary Mead Montgomery: Unbeatable, Unbearable Bloomsbury Publishing, 4 June, hb, £25, 9781408878583
Fifty years since his death, this “balanced, accessible and fresh” new biography of Field Marshal Montgomery looks beyond the battlefield to delve into his belligerent Victorian boyhood, his family’s legacy of financial precariousness, his love- hate relationship with Winston Churchill and his dubious romances.
Katie Clapham Receipts from the Bookshop
Phoenix (Orion), 4 June, hb, £20, 9781399629508
Clapham chronicles life at the seaside bookshop she runs with her mother in a weekly Substack newsletter. This book of the same name
HQ, 4 June, hb, £20, 9780008730178
“Globally famous and yet universally misunderstood” – Mayer brings us the “complex and utterly engrossing” stories of Britain’s royal women behind the public facade.
Jayne Anne Phillips Small Town Girls Fleet, 4 June, hb, £20, 9780349725482
This “masterfully written” memoir in vignettes from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author evokes her vanished childhood world of “stoic matriarchs, rural poverty and the incomparable Appalachian landscape”.
Carlos Barragán The Yahoo Boys Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 11 June, hb, £22, 9781399632188
Following four romance scammers in the Lagos neighbourhood of Ikotun, this debut reveals the human face behind a global phenomenon, and shows how isolation in the West and poverty in Nigeria are two sides of the same screen.
Emma-Lee Moss My Cantopop Nights Jonathan Cape, 11 June, hb, £22, 9781787334540
A story of pop music, identity crisis and Hong Kong, from the acclaimed singer-songwriter Moss (aka Emmy the Great). “It’s about falling in love with a city, a country, its
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