May 2026 Books

What’s new and good to read? Dan Coombes has a look at what’s on offer from publishers in May and chooses Things We Never Sayby Elizabeth Strout; Shrink Solves Murder by Philippa Perry; and John of John by Douglas Stuart.

The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout

The world is unsettling and confusing, people are strange, unpredictable creatures, and life-altering curveballs are inevitable. However calm, content and happy we might appear, every one of us is frequently baffled by the inner workings of others, and not one human being is immune from being whacked around the chops by the cold wet haddock of existence and suddenly having to reassess everything we thought we knew about ourselves and those around us.

Elizabeth Strout won a Pulitzer prize for her examination of these and other fun existential facts with Olive Kitteridge in 2009, and is an expert crafter of charming, relatable characters making their way through life in…well, the world as it is.

Her new novel follows Artie Dam, a man with a good heart, a loving family, a seemingly tip-top existence and a deep-seated well of loneliness and isolation he hides from everyone. If this all sounds like a lot, (a) I promise the next book is much cheerier, and (b) she’s a great author and weaves plenty of compassion and humanity and joy into the mix.

Artie Dam spends his days teaching history to high schoolers, expanding their young minds, correcting their casual cruelties, and lending a kind word to those who need it most. He goes to holiday parties with his wife of three decades, makes small talk with neighbours, and, on weekends, takes his sailboat out on the beautiful Massachusetts Bay. He is, by all appearances, present and alive.

But inside, Artie is plagued by feelings of isolation. He looks out at a world gone mad—at himself and the people around him—and turns a question over and over in his mind: how is it that we know so little about one another, even those closest to us? And then, one day, Artie learns that life has been keeping a secret from him, one that threatens to upend his entire world.

Once he learns it, he is forced to chart a new course, to reconsider the relationships he holds most dear—and to make peace with the mysteries at the heart of our existence. With exquisite prose and profound insight, Elizabeth Strout captures the way grief reverberates through decades, the comfort found in deep friendships and the freedom that comes when we break free of our secrets.

The Things We Never Say; Author Elizabeth Strout

Shrink Solves Murder by Philippa Perry

Murder! Told you this one was cheerier. But it’s ok, this is cosy crime, the kind of murder it’s ok to enjoy in your favourite chair with a blanket, cup of tea and optional furry companion for company. Most excellent psychotherapist Philippa Perry, good egg and bestselling non-fiction author, turns her hand to a murderous mystery in a quirky and very English setting with a psychotherapist turned sleuth…

Yes, Richard Osman has a lot to answer for and there seem to be a lot of popular famous folk writing cosy crime with amateur detectives in villages with secrets these days, but when it’s this well observed, charming and fun there’s definitely room for one more celebrity author on the bookshelf.

A body is found near Beachy Head — local psychotherapist Patricia Phillips’ three o’clock patient, Henry Clayton. The cause of death is supposedly self-inflicted, yet Pat can’t shake the belief that someone wanted Henry Clayton dead. She spends her working life listening to histories and secrets, and she has a nose for when a story doesn’t quite ring true.

Drawn from the therapy room to the crime scene, Pat begins to notice what others appear to overlook. At her side is her best friend Prichard — a home-brewer of fearsome, stomach-turning concoctions, an excellent cook, and a man who seems to get along with everyone. Which makes him useful for infiltrating village life.

As Pat and Prichard look beneath the village’s thin veneer of normality — one that barely conceals its appetites — they discover a killer hiding in plain sight. Shrink Solves Murder is a warm, witty, and perceptive crime caper from the nation’s favourite therapist.

Author Philippa Perry; Shrink Solves Murder

John of John by Douglas Stuart

The third novel from the writer of the Booker Prize winning Shuggie Bain and its bestselling follow-up Young Mungo. A young gay man returns to his tiny home village and finds that both his father and the community of his childhood as a whole are, to put it mildly, a bit stuck in their ways.

He has changed, but the world he remembers has not, and all the simmering undercurrents, difficulties and tensions you might expect are soon rising to the surface. It could be really easy for a set up like this to be a bit clunky and ham-fisted, but while he’s pretty unflinching when it comes to humanity’s darker moments, Douglas Stuart has a deft touch and handles all kinds of weighty issues with ridiculous skill.

Out of money and with little to show for his art school education, John-Calum Macleod takes the ferry home to the island of Harris to find that not much has changed except for him. In the windswept croft where he grew up, Cal resumes his old life, caught between the two poles of his childhood: his father John, a sheep farmer, weaver, and pillar of their local Presbyterian church, and his Glaswegian grandmother Ella, who has kept a faltering peace with her son-in-law for decades.

While Cal wonders if any lonely men might be found on the barren hillsides of home, John is dismayed by his son’s long hair and how he seems unwilling to be Saved. As the seasons pass, everything is poised to change as the threads holding together the fragile community become increasingly entangled. John of John is the heartbreaking story of a young man’s return home and how the bonds of family life are torn by the weight of expectation. It confirms Douglas Stuart as one of the great British writers at work today.

John of John; Author Douglas Stuart

Dan Coombes can be found most days working at Chiswick independent bookshop Bookcase.