Hey there, I’m Jess ✨. On The Signature, I share reflections on beauty, routines, travel, wellness, culture, and everyday life. For those drawn to a calmer, more intentional way of living, I send a free newsletter each month on the 7th. You're welcome to join.
With little to no success, I have been trying to go through my reading list by reading the 50+ books (!) that I already own. I am human and I love something new... and I just cannot resist new launches. I have been trying to alternate older unread books I own with new releases.
Jess
Repeating the 2025 book launches roundup format, here are a few 2026 book launches that caught my attention. Do not hesitate to share if you cannot wait to read any or have any other recommendation.
All synopses were sourced from Goodreads
Peck & Peck - Bonnie Garmus
Batter Gray is worried about his future. Even when he was eleven, his classmates seemed to have settled on a goal: doctor, lawyer, broker, engineer. Good jobs that automatically command respect, security, 401Ks. Now Batter is in his early twenties, living in New York City, and he wants something different; something that alienates some readers and bores most. Poetry. And yet—to him and exactly thirty-nine editors at a company called Peck & Peck—poetry not only represents the power of humanity but holds the key to its survival.
Batter is named after his mother’s heroic dog. An identical twin who lost his brother at birth, he finds himself confronted by the everyday dualities that make up life: right vs. wrong, truth vs. lies, rejection vs. acceptance. It’s almost as if his dead brother is a reminder: there are always two sides to every story.
No, wait. Make that three.
Release date: October 27
The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman - Deesha Philyaw
From the moment Scharisse Freeman ditched her humble roots and married a megachurch pastor fifteen years her senior, she’s been labeled too brash and too “of the world” by church folks who grudgingly accepted her into their fold, and too holy by her estranged childhood bestie Petra. Schar doesn’t have many allies, but that hasn’t stopped her from building an enviable business empire spanning books to clothing to branded products, and living the comfortable life her husband's power affords her.
On the eve of her 40th birthday, Schar gets the final bit of validation she’s always dreamt of: a coveted invitation to participate in the First Lady USA pageant. This is her chance to be accepted by the other pastors’ wives—First Ladies—who are “like Jesus’ disciples if they had been a group of mean girls.” Finally, blissfully, the ice between Schar and the other First Ladies begins to thaw.
But as the pageant nears, a sensational scandal breaks with Schar at its center, and her carefully curated life implodes. Schar faces down shame and terrible secrets from her childhood and is reminded that in the eyes of the church, optics can matter more than the truth.
Release date: September 30
The Housewife - Natalie Barelli
Jodie always dreamed of being a housewife. And after a whirlwind romance, she marries renowned psychologist Dr. Roy Davies and moves into his perfect Beverly Hills home. But the fairy tale fades fast. Roy is distant, his friends view her as a gold-digger, and the house still reveres his late wife, Deborah, whose presence still looms over everyone and everything.
When Jodie learns Deborah became a recluse before death, she begins to suspect Roy was behind it. And the deeper she digs, the darker Roy's past appears―obsessive, controlling, unfaithful. Increasingly convinced he had something to do with Deborah's death, Jodie knows she should go to the police, but that would require revealing her own secret. A secret that could destroy her.
But Jodie won't be silenced. Because the truth about Roy is worse than she imagined―and now, trapped in a house built on lies, she must find a way out before she becomes the next perfect wife to vanish.
Release date: June 30
The Original Daughter - Jemimah Wei
Before Arin, Genevieve Yang was an only child. Living with her parents and grandmother in a single-room flat in working-class Singapore, Genevieve is saddled with an unexpected sibling when Arin appears, the shameful legacy of a grandfather long believed to be dead. As the two girls grow closer, they must navigate the intensity of life in a place where the urgent insistence on achievement demands constant sacrifice. Knowing that failure is not an option, the sisters learn to depend entirely on one another as they spurn outside friendships, leisure, and any semblance of a social life in pursuit of academic perfection and passage to a better future.
When a stinging betrayal violently estranges Genevieve and Arin, Genevieve must weigh the value of ambition versus familial love, home versus the outside world, and allegiance to herself versus allegiance to the people who made her who she is.
Release date: May 6
Enormous Wings - Laurie Frankel
At seventy-seven, Pepper Mills is too old to be a stranger in a strange land. She didn’t choose the Vista View Retirement Community of Austin, Texas—that would be her three grown children—but when she grudgingly moves in, she not only makes new friends, she falls in love. Then the exhaustion, vomiting, and confusion start. Her children and grandchildren worry it’s cancer, dementia, a stroke. But a raft of tests later, the news is even more shocking: she’s pregnant.
Once word gets out, everyone wants a piece of her: the press and the paparazzi, activists and medical researchers, all descending on Vista View as Pepper tries to determine her next move. Soon Pepper has some hard decisions to make—and some she’s not allowed to make.
Release date: May 5
The Encore - Juliet Izon
In 2003, at the prestigious Brookfield Conservatory in Boston, a chance encounter sparks an inimitable friendship between driven pianist and singer Anna Buckley and composer wunderkind Will Pendleton. Over the next four years, as they strive toward careers as professional musicians, their bond deepens both from shared prodigious skill and the inexplicable sense that they’re kindred souls. But on the precipice of graduation, one night forever alters the trajectory of their lives, destroying their relationship in the process.
Twenty years later in New York, 16-year-old piano virtuoso Lottie Thomas is grappling with the rigors of her elite prep school and the confounding disappearance of the woman who gave her up at birth. When Lottie suddenly discovers the startling truth of her identity, the revelation catalyzes a chain of events that not only reunites Lottie with her birth parents, but forces them together on a careening, cross-country rock and roll tour-bus journey. And it is there, trapped in these tight confines, that the three must finally reconcile with the irrevocable choices made a decade-and-a-half earlier.
Release date: March 3
Room 706 - Ellie Levenson
Kate stretches her legs and turns on the TV while James washes away the traces of their morning. She watches in horror at the unfolding the hotel they are staying in has been taken under siege.
She should be making her way home, working on appearing normal, getting ready to re-enter family life with her loving husband Vic and their two adored children. Instead, she is trapped somewhere she shouldn't be, with a man she definitely doesn't love.
How will she begin to tell Vic what she is doing here? If her body is found, will it give up the secret of what she's been up to? She's been so careful hiding the evidence of her write nothing down, leave no trace. Will he begin to understand why?
For now, Kate can only hide, take a deep breath, and reflect on the series of choices she's made that have brought her to this moment.
What will her marriage and her life look like, if she makes it out?
Release date: February 10
Jess
Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage - Belle Burden
In March 2020, Belle Burden was safe and secure with her family at their house on Martha’s Vineyard, navigating the early days of the pandemic together—building fires in the late afternoons, drinking whisky sours, making roast chicken. Then, with no warning or explanation, her husband of twenty years announced that he was leaving her. Overnight, her caring, steady partner became a man she hardly recognized. He exited his life with her like an actor shrugging off a costume.
In Strangers, Burden revisits her marriage, searching for clues that her husband was not who she always thought he was. As she examines her relationship through a new lens, she reckons with her own family history and the lessons she intuited about how a woman is expected to behave in the face of betrayal. Through all of it, she is transformed. The discreet, compliant woman she once was—someone nicknamed “Belle the Good”—gives way to someone braver, someone determined to use her voice.
Release date: January 13
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