AARP’s Favorite Books of 2026 (So Far)

In Sickness and in Health: Love Stories from the Front Lines of America’s Caregiving Crisis by Laura Mauldin

If you’ve ever had to care for an ill or injured loved one or are concerned about how your own caregiving needs might affect your marriage or partnership, you’ll likely relate to much of Mauldin’s story. She was a graduate student when she suddenly became her boyfriend’s caregiver as he battled leukemia. Mauldin details the heartbreak and strain that came with that unexpected role, explores how the caregiver-patient dynamic affects romantic relationships, and proposes ways our health care systems and public policy could ease some of the burdens. “At the heart of this book,” the sociologist and professor of disability studies writes, “is my belief that we must talk openly about the private pain we carry when it comes to caregiving, whether we are giving care, receiving care, or both.”

“The Midnight Train” by Matt Haig takes readers on a mystical, revelatory train ride.

Penguin Random House

The Midnight Train by Matt Haig (May 26)

This is another poignant novel by the mega-bestselling author of The Midnight Library. At the moment of his death, the protagonist, Wilbur, 81, is given a chance to revisit and reassess his life by boarding a ghostly train that transports him through the highs and lows of his past. Among his missteps is his all-consuming devotion to his bookselling business at the expense of his marriage. What if he had done things differently? What if it’s not too late to find out? There’s a whiff of A Christmas Carol in the premise, which could feel clichéd in unskilled hands, but Haig pulls it off nicely.

“Land” by Maggie O’Farrell explores an Irish family's anguish in the aftermath of the potato famine.

Penguin Random House

Land by Maggie O’Farrell (June 2)

The author of the 2020 novel Hamnet, the basis for the 2025 movie (winner of the AARP Movies for Grownups Award for Best Picture), sets her latest story in Ireland in the wake of the potato famine. It’s centered around a struggling family and each member’s trauma and dreams of escape. That includes the patriarch, Tomás, a cartographer who experiences a kind of psychotic break while he and his young son, Liam, are working to create detailed maps of Ireland for the British, who have dominated (and devastated) the country for centuries. Tomás’ children are left to grapple with how to live in or leave their diminished homeland. As in Hamnet, O’Farrell uses evocative, vivid prose to bring the era, atmosphere and characters to life. She’s a master.

The Typing Lady and Other Fictions by Ruth Ozeki (June 2)

I’m not usually drawn to short stories — I like a nice, meaty novel — but this is another recent collection that mesmerized me. Ozeki is the author of, among other works, two fantastic novels, 2013’s A Tale for the Time Being, which was a finalist for the Booker Prize, and 2021’s The Book of Form and Emptiness. This new collection of 11 eclectic stories includes the tale of a widow who secretly creates a dating profile for her granddaughter as a way, it seems, to work through her own unprocessed grief. In “The Typing Lady: An Author’s Note,” the narrator becomes fascinated by a woman at the library typing on her laptop, who may or may not be Ozeki herself.

“Whistler” by Ann Patchett details a chance reunion that resurfaces warm memories and old traumas.

HarperCollins Publishers

Whistler by Ann Patchett (June 2)

In the absorbing latest from Patchett (Tom Lake, The Dutch House), Daphne, 53, a high school writing teacher in Manhattan, encounters her beloved former stepfather, Eddie, by chance while wandering the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They joyfully reconnect after decades apart, which forces Daphne to reckon with the car accident from her childhood that tore him from the family and affected her more deeply than she’d ever realized. It’s a thoughtful, tender story about memory and regrets, love and family. I loved it.

“Yahoo Boys: Love, Deception, and the Real Lives of Nigeria’s Romance Scammers” by Carlos Barragán investigates the lives and schemes of these charming young conmen.

MacMillan Publishers

Yahoo Boys: Love, Deception, and the Real Lives of Nigeria’s Romance Scammers by Carlos Barragàn (June 9)

I cover fraud as well as books, so I was immediately drawn to this eye-opening, behind-the-scenes look at the criminals who perpetrate the devastating romance scams we at AARP work so hard to help our readers understand and avoid. After Barragàn, a New York Times reporter and researcher based in Spain, saw his mother drawn in by an online suitor who pretended to be a handsome soldier, he set out to find the perpetrator. His quest brought him to the epicenter of romance scams: Lagos, Nigeria. He moved there for six months to interview the young men known as Yahoo Boys (“baby-faced teenagers with whispers of mustaches above their lips”), who spend hours on their phones catfishing victims around the world, eventually cajoling many of them into parting with their cash. While Barragàn makes it clear that these boys are mired in poverty and have few opportunities for legitimate work (and you do sense a bit of sympathy in his writing), he doesn’t make excuses for their crimes. Rather, he explores their motives and details their methods, which can only help in the fight against fraud.

“The Frenzy” by Joyce Carol Oates is a short-story collection that probes the dark side of human nature.

Penguin Random House

The Frenzy by Joyce Carol Oates (June 16)

Oates’ fiction tends to be dark — “I’m holding a mirror up to the world we’re in,” she explained to AARP last year — but it’s also brilliant, as evidenced by these engrossing short stories that dive into the minds of characters prone to cruelty or struggling with destructive desires. They include a seriously disturbed middle-aged man preying on a young woman, a family friend who both obsesses and infuriates him; and a widow who has a disconcerting visit with her late husband’s former colleague, an older man who’s ill. As she considers a painting the man loved, Pablo Picasso’s Night Fishing at Antibes, she thinks, “We are all fishing in dark waters, at night. Each in our own groping way.” Oates reminds us that monsters lurk in those depths.