The 2026 First Novel Prize longlist

collage of covers of books nominated for the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize

Created in 2006, the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize “recognizes the best debut novel of the year, and supports emerging voices in fiction.”

Past winners include a who’s-who list of It Book Authors—Viet Thanh Nguyen, Tommy Orange, Raven Leilani, Marisha Pessl, and De’Shawn Charles Winslow, just to name a few.

This year‘s longlist features several books that we’ve already read and loved (Whidbey, Upward Bound, and Kitten, specifically).

The list is fairly diverse and features a range of themes. There’s everything from messy family sagas to the everyday lives of a disabled community in an adult daycare center in L.A.

One thing that really stands out, though? The covers. Some of the covers are absolute fire. (In case you didn’t know, we kind of have a thing for cover design.)

Among the 19 books on the shortlist:

Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash Whidbey by T Kira Madden 200 Monas by Jan Saenz Upward Bound by Woody Brown Should the Waters Take Us by Stephanie Soileau Kitten by Stacey Yu

🏆 See the full longlist and learn more about the award. —EE

READING PATHWAYS

Read your way into Colson Whitehead

covers of three books by Colson Whitehead

The Underground Railroad turns ten this year, Colson Whitehead’s award-winning work of speculative historical fiction in which the Underground Railroad is an actual railroad used by enslaved people in the South to escape to freedom.

We covered this powerful novel this week on Zero to Well-Read, discussing its use of magic realism to highlight the horrific reality of slavery, and making the case for Colson Whitehead as our best living American novelist.

The author already had several fantastic books under his belt by the time The Underground Railroad made him a household name, and he’s written several more knockouts since. If you’ve been looking for a way into his impressive catalog but don’t know where to start, we have a few suggestions to help you out.

The Intuitionist – Whitehead’s debut about the first black female elevator inspector in a major metropolitan city. She also happens to be an “intuitionist”: she can sense what’s wrong with an elevator simply by riding in it. Sag Harbor – In this charming, semi-autobiographical novel set in the ’80s, one of the few Black students at an elite Manhattan prep school spends his summers in the Hamptons, among a small community of Black professionals who’ve carved out a space of their own. The Underground Railroad – This one’s a must, those are the rules. The Nickel Boys – If you thought Whitehead was done fictionalizing American history, guess again. Based on the real story of a reform school in Florida that terrorized its inhabitants for over 100 years, this novel won the author a second Pulitzer.

Read more about each title in this reading pathway. —VDiaz

TOGETHER WITH UNDERLINED

Promotional image for Paint me Like Your Dead Girls

A twisty art mystery with a touch of romance.

When Fliss Keller, the aspiring crime journalist at the heart of Cynthia Murphy’s Paint Me Like Your Dead Girls, attends an estate sale and uncovers a long-lost but disturbing painting of a woman, she wants nothing to do with it. Unfortunately for her, her dad—an art history professor—buys it immediately to complete a set of four mysterious paintings.

But when a series of gruesome crimes rocks the community, Fliss discovers that the paintings may hold the key to a killer’s identity. In a world where every brushstroke hides a sinister secret, can she unravel the clues before she becomes a killer’s muse?

CLASSIC RETELLINGS

Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy, and a little blood?

covers of three recent little women retellings

What could make a classic like Little Women take on new life? Perhaps a retelling with a horror twist. At least, that’s what two books published for young readers have done this year with Louisa May Alcott’s beloved tale.

🔪 Beth Is Dead by Kate Bernet, a YA novel published in January, takes the story of four sisters and turns it into a murder mystery. Beth’s found dead in the woods near her home, and her sisters are going to find out who did it. Yes, they begin to suspect one another. Bernet’s debut spent weeks atop the bestseller lists earlier this year. 🧌 Little Monsters by Máire Roche, a middle grade novel releasing August 18, goes supernatural. In this take, the four sisters are monsters, keeping their fangs, fur, and wings a secret from everyone around them. But when a monster begins showing up in the local forest, Meg fears that she or her sisters will be blamed for its dastardly deeds.

Respinning classics is nothing new. There’ve been countless takes on Little Women over the years, offering unique insights and perspectives on Alcott’s story—Bethany C. Marrow’s So Many Beginnings and the collaborative efforts of Joy McCullough, Caroline Tung Richmond, Tess Sharpe, and Jessica Spotswood in Great or Nothing, to name two YA titles from the last few years.

But it is always neat when the same classic gets a genre twist, and with two within a few months, you start to wonder if there’s a microtrend of these clever takes still to come.

It’s also fun to imagine what other classics might be ripe for some monstrous spins. – KJ

CLASSICS

Give us full-cast unabridged edition of The Odyssey, you cowards

Sales of The Odyssey are up more than 76% over 2025, and that’s just in the new (i.e. non-used, non-public domain) market. The people crave substance (and monoculture tie-ins)!

Exhibit A: Project Hail Mary has been a perennial seller on audio since publication, and the film’s success (and Ray Porter’s excellent narration of the audiobook) is now a cash-making rocket.

So why in the name of Samantha Morton is there not a star-studded, full-cast audiobook of The Odyssey anywhere to be found!?! Could someone not have brought a Røde podcasting mic to Italy or Scotland or wherever? During the intense and interminable set-ups for gargantuan set pieces and wardrobe fittings, could we not have had Damon and Hathaway and Zendaya and the rest rattle off a few lines? I know Nolan had a dog-eared copy somewhere in that tank-sized IMAX gear. (You listening, Gerwig?)

The recent news of a Jonathan Bailey-led production of Dracula from Audible makes this even more confounding. You can get stars to do this. We have technology that is good enough in almost every home office in the world. If a full this-cast recording came out tomorrow, there is no mast you could strap me to strong enough to keep me from listening to it immediately.

(If you are really hurting, there is an abridged, 3+ hour BBC production you get on some platforms, with Benedict Cumberbatch as Telemachus, somewhat oddly. That man is an Antinous.) — JO

TOGETHER WITH THRIFTBOOKS

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We at ThriftBooks always love an excuse to celebrate books. In honor of National Paperback Book Day enjoy 30 bonus points with your purchase! Shop now, only at ThriftBooks.

AUDIOBOOKS

The latest and greatest on Audible+

Wondering what audiobook to cue up next? Here are three listens available now for Audible+ subscribers.

Heads Will Roll: Heir Apparent by Kate McKinnon and Emily Lynne – Follow Queen Mortuana’s quest to find an heir before she turns (gasp!) 40 in this fantasy sequel, read by a star-studded audio cast that includes Richard Kind, Laurie Metcalf, Jimmy Fallon, Megan Mullally, Carrie Coon, and the authors themselves. The Wedding Lies by Jade Lee Wright – When a bride-to-be arrives at her future in-laws’ luxurious country estate, she opens her luggage and realizes what’s in there isn’t just not hers: it’s the outfit of a woman who recently went missing. You in danger, girl. Reconstruction: The Unfinished Promise by Malcolm Gladwell and Barack Obama – An eight-part audio documentary from some guys you might have heard of exploring this pivotal moment in post-Civil War America: what Reconstruction was, what it could have been, and what our country might have looked like had it truly succeeded.

NONFICTION

Must-read books about colonialism

photo credit: Jasmin Valcarcel

Edna Bonhomme is the author of Tending To Our Wounds: A Diasporic Memoir, out now from Haymarket Books. Below, she recommends three must-read books about colonialism.

All empires are obsessed with the prospect of their own decline.

For marginalized people born and raised in the heart of empires, some plot and hope for their demise. As someone who is part of multiple diasporas forced to leave their lands, I often turn to theorists and scholars who not only grapple with colonialism’s chains but also make sense of how it shaped the psyche, family, or rebellions.

There are so many books to choose from, texts that nourish my spirit and inspire me to work toward building a better world. The texts I have chosen are not only case studies of the psychological cost of colonialism but also testaments that the colonized are not passive victims. Hopefully, they provide some hope in these times.

The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon: Fanon’s text is a revolutionary pamphlet and a psychiatrist’s diagnosis of French colonialism in Algeria, and it also makes a firm case that colonialism can psychologically impair the minds of colonizers. Wretched of the Earth has inspired anti-colonial movements, largely for its thorough analysis of imperial violence and for the ways that class is produced in the colonial context. This is a polemical text precisely because of imperialism’s attempts to degrade and discredit the colonized. Nevertheless, Fanon shows that freedom is possible when people resist through collective struggle and socialism.

Imperial Intimacies by Hazel V. Carby

Insurgent Empire: Anticolonial Resistance and British Dissent by Priyamvada Gopal

👉 Find Edna Bonhomme’s full recommendations on Book Riot!

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