Spring 2026 Book Preview with Catherine Gilmore | Ep. 221
Sarah's Bookshelves Live
Sarah Dickinson
4.7 • 785 Ratings
🗓️ 1 April 2026
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Welcome to the Spring 2026 Book Preview with Catherine of Gilmore Guide to Books!
Today, Catherine and Sarah share 12 of their most anticipated books releasing in April and May.
This post contains affiliate links through which I make a small commission when you make a purchase (at no cost to you!).
CLICK HERE for the full episode Show Notes on the blog.
Announcements
- A preview of changes to this year's Summer Reading Guide — now a team effort, with more info to come in a separate episode coming in early May.
- One of the many benefits to supporting the podcast through either our Patreon Community or our Substack Community (both for just $7/mo) is that you get access to several bonus podcast episode series, including Book Preview Extras! In these episodes, Catherine and Sarah share 4 bonus books (2 each) we are excited about that we did not share in the big show preview episode. Get more details about all the goodies available and sign up here for Patreon and here for Substack!
Highlights
- A lightning round of some big releases coming this spring that are not featured in our personal preview picks.
- Catherine's theme is spring, but Sarah's theme is summer.
- Looking for balance, Catherine chose books that are lighter and brighter, but not silly.
- Spring picks carry 4 debuts — 3 from Catherine and 1 from Sarah.
- Sarah's books cover 2 books about the world of comedy and 3 family dramas.
- Sarah has already read one of her picks — 4.5 stars!
- Plus, their #1 picks for spring.
Big Spring Releases
- The Midnight Train (The Midnight World, 2) by Matt Haig (May 26) | Amazon | Bookshop.org [3:04]
- The Shippers by Katherine Center (May 19) | Amazon | Bookshop.org [3:06]
- London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe (April 7) | Amazon | Bookshop.org [3:09]
- Last Night in Brooklyn by Xochitl Gonzalez (April 21) | Amazon | Bookshop.org [3:16]
- With a Vengeance by Riley Sager (June 10) | Amazon | Bookshop.org [3:22]
- Enormous Wings by Laurie Frankel (May 5) | Amazon | Bookshop.org [3:26]
- Seek the Traitor's Son (The Burning Empire, 1) by Veronica Roth (May 12) | Amazon | Bookshop.org [3:29]
Other Books Mentioned
- State of Wonder by Ann Patchett (2011) [3:59]
Spring 2026 Book Preview [4:38]
April
Sarah's Picks
- The Midnight Show by Lee Kelly and Jennifer Thorne (April 7) | Amazon | Bookshop.org [7:11]
- Into the Blue by Emma Brodie (April 7) | Amazon | Bookshop.org [15:49]
- Leave Your Mess At Home by Tolani Akinola (April 14) | Amazon | Bookshop.org [22:50]
Catherine's Picks
- American Fantasy by Emma Straub (April 7) | Amazon
| Bookshop.org [11:50]
- Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke (April 7) | Amazon | Bookshop.org [19:10]
- Like This But Funnier by Hallie Cantor (April 7) | Amazon | Bookshop.org [25:19]
Other Books Mentioned
- Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid (2019) [8:26]
- Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld (2023) [8:55]
- Diavola by Jennifer Thorne (2024) [11:08]
- All the World Can Hold by Jung Yun (2026) [14:39]
- Songs in Ursa Major by Emma Brodie (2021) [17:22]
- Me Before You by Jojo Moyes (2012) [17:38]
- Normal People by Sally Rooney (2018) [18:37]
- The Favorites by Layne Fargo (2025) [18:40]
- The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid (2017) [18:46]
- The House of My Mother by Shari Franke (2025) [22:03]
- August Lane by Regina Black (2025) [22:56]
- Seven Days in June by Tia Williams (2021) [23:06]
- Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors (2024) [25:07]
- Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane (2019) [25:09]
- The Most Fun We Ever Had by Claire Lombardo (2019) [25:10]
May
Sarah's Picks
- The Mediator (Max Ringo, 1) by Robert Bailey (May 12) | Amazon
- The Burning Side by Sarah Damoff (May 19) | Amazon
- Returns and Exchanges by Kayla Rae Whitaker (May 19) | Amazon | Bookshop.org [37:30]
Catherine's Picks
- The Liar's Playbook by Leslie Bradford-Scott (May 5) | Amazon | Bookshop.org [29:31]
- The Last Mandarin by Louise Penny and Mellissa Fung (May 12) | Amazon | Bookshop.org [35:11]
- The Tapestry of Fate (Amina al-Sirafi, 2) by Shannon Chakraborty (May 12) | Amazon | Bookshop.org [40:10]
Other Books Mentioned
- The Boomerang by Robert Bailey (2025) [27:52]
- Nowhere Girl by Cheryl Diamond (2021) [31:20]
- Family of Spies by Christine Kuehn (2025) [31:22]
- The Bright Years by Sarah Damoff (2025) [32:57]
- State of Terror by Hillary Rodham Clinton and Louise Penny (2021) [36:07]
- The Animators by Kayla Rae Whitaker (2016) [38:02]
- Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver (2022) [39:01]
- The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi (Amina al-Sirafi, 1) by Shannon Chakraborty (2023) [40:38]
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Sarah's Bookshelves Live. |
| 0:13.6 | I'm your host, Sarah Dickinson. |
| 0:15.6 | Join me every other week as we get real and sometimes a bit snarky about books and reading. |
| 0:23.0 | Let's get rolling. Welcome to the 2026 spring book preview. As usual for these quarterly previews, Catherine from Gilmore Guide to Books is |
| 0:29.3 | joining me. Hi, Catherine. Hello. Today we are highlighting the books we are excited about that are |
| 0:35.4 | coming out in April and May. But before we get there, |
| 0:39.5 | summer reading is right around the corner. Summer does follow spring, after all. We hope. |
| 0:46.1 | We hope. So I wanted to give you all a very brief heads up about our 2026 summer reading guide |
| 0:53.1 | because it's going to look different this year. |
| 0:55.9 | The guide will be available on Tuesday, May 12th. That timing is similar to a previous |
| 1:00.3 | years. That's one of the things that's not changing. But we have made a lot of changes to what |
| 1:06.4 | the summer reading guide will look like. So many that we are actually going to be dropping a podcast |
| 1:13.1 | episode on the main feed outlining all of those changes in detail. And all we will do in that |
| 1:20.2 | podcast episode is talk about the summer reading guide. So that will be coming in early May. |
| 1:24.2 | Keep your eyes out for that. In the meantime, here's what I'm going to tell you |
| 1:28.3 | about this year's summer reading guide. For the first time ever, it will be a team effort, |
| 1:32.7 | which means it will include picks from Catherine and Chrissy as well as me. We usually have |
| 1:39.1 | around 50-ish books in our summer reading guide, and this year, around 30-ish of those books will be |
| 1:47.8 | recommendations from me. And about 10-ish each will be recommendations from Catherine and from |
| 1:54.6 | Chrissy. And there will be some books in the guide that are co-signed by more than one of us, |
| 1:59.8 | which is exciting. The format and the |
| 2:02.3 | distribution methods will be changing a lot, and that is what I will cover in more detail in |
... |
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