Fall 2026 – Most Anticipated Books for Christian Readers!

As we move into the second half of the year, we’re looking ahead with great anticipation to a slate of wonderful new books. In this list, we’re highlighting our Most Anticipated titles publishing between August and December 2026 (with a few bonus selections for early 2027). This list includes a wide selection of titles from diverse authors in genres like theology, history, fiction, and poetry. The titles here engage some of the deepest challenges of our time, while helping to orient thoughtful Christian readers toward faithful living and the common good.

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[ TOP 10 – Part 1 ]   [ Top 10 – Part 2 ]
[ Theology ] [ Church / Formation ] [ Literature ]
[ NonFiction ] [ History / Biography ]
[ Young Readers ] [ Coming in 2027! ]

Page 2: TOP 10 – Part 2

(In Alphabetical Order by Author’s Last Name)

Freedom’s Daughters: How a Generation of Black Women Resisted Oppression Through Literacy and Education

by Celeste Headlee

(Flatiron, October 6) 

From bestselling author Celeste Headlee, an urgent and eye-opening story of the women who risked everything to ensure a generation of Black Americans had the right to read.

In the waning days of the antebellum South, millions of African Americans were suddenly released from enslavement. But they soon realized that “freedom” was not free; they were subject to hundreds of laws aimed at preventing them from voting and, in many cases, learning. Were it not for the work of an exceptional group of women―activists, educators, mothers, organizers―the foundations for Black education might never have been laid.

With Freedom’s Daughters, Headlee set out to write into the record book the untold stories of these remarkable women. As a journalist who spent her career in public media, Headlee has long championed unheard voices and sought to tell the stories of those whose contributions have gone unacknowledged. But this project was fueled by an even deeper connection: Carrie Still Shepperson―one of the most important figures in this fight―is Headlee’s great grandmother and one of the biggest influences in her life.

Now, after a decade of research spanning personal diaries to public records, Freedom’s Daughters paints a vivid portrait of figures intentionally erased from history, recognizing the work of a generation of Black women who believed freedom was inextricably linked with learning and free expression, and who worked tirelessly to secure access to literacy and education for a generation of children born into freedom.

By turns shocking, inspiring, and deeply moving, Freedom’s Daughters is Headlee’s impeccably researched journey to better understand her family history and herself, and a timely examination of the influence and power of unfettered access to schools, libraries, and higher education.
 

American Hagwon: A Novel 

by Min Jin Lee

(Cardinal, September 29)

The National Book Award finalist and New York Times bestselling author of Pachinko returns with a breathtaking contemporary epic: a masterpiece by turns sweeping and intimate, that reckons with ambition and moderation, lust and loyalty, personal dreams and familial duty.

Min Jin Lee brings grand ambition, fierce heart, and the tenderest hope to a novel I didn’t want to end.” ―Roxane Gay, bestselling author of Bad Feminist and Hunger

In schools and churches, hotel rooms and nail salons, law firms and fried-fish shops; in cramped, dingy apartments and luxury, gated communities, the men, women, and children in American Hagwon struggle to find satisfaction and meaning in a world that seems to grow less forgiving with each passing year. Once comfortably middle class in Korea, John and Helen Koh and their three children―Bo, DH, and Mido―find their lives upended, first by a shocking betrayal by John’s oldest friend, then by the 1997 Asian financial crisis.

Desperately striving to regain their footing, they leave Seoul for Sydney and eventually settle in Southern California―where new vistas of opportunity open up for the children as their parents, strangers in a strange land, must adjust to a new life in which their experience and education mean little, and they set their sights on whatever it takes to provide for their children’s futures. The Kohs, their friends, relatives, and even their foes move in and out of each other’s lives as they navigate new courses across the years, always nursing the almost all-consuming faith that education will lead the next generation to success and security.

In American Hagwon, Min Jin Lee has crafted an unforgettable, panoramic novel where the smallest of gestures can have enormous repercussions, where the bonds of family and of memory twist and fray but rarely break, and where willful self-sacrifice―for the benefit of loved ones and even strangers―is a kind of prayer.
 

The New Dark Ages: The Death of Reading and the Dawn of the Post-Literate Society
by James Marriott 

(Doubleday, October 6)

A provocative argument about how an increase in literacy jumpstarted modern civilization, and how its decline threatens democracy and the future of humanity

The beginning of the modern era saw the widespread adoption of new printing technologies that allowed the written word to spread far and wide. It’s not by chance this period also saw the rise of revolutions and the decline of the aristocratic order. For the first time, a critical mass of people could share and debate ideas about individual rights, the purpose of government, and scientific truth. With rising literacy came the world we recognize today.

Now, around the world, the number of people who read is in free fall. Literacy is declining or stagnating in most developed countries. University students are unable to read the books assigned in their classes. The golden chain of knowledge linking reader to reader through the centuries is breaking for the first time since the collapse of the Western Roman Empire ushered in the Dark Ages. In The New Dark Ages, London Times columnist James Marriott argues that this is the most important cultural shift of our time. The age of print is giving way to the age of the screen. The world we knew is passing away and nothing will ever be the same again.

Marriott gives an impassioned attack on the trivial culture of the screen and a defense of the written word and long-form argument. Drawing on history, media theory, and sociology, The Dawn of the Post-Literate Society argues that reading and writing are essential for innovation, creativity, and complex thought. Above all, the culture of print is critical to the functioning of modern democracies, which require their citizens to grapple with ideas at length and in depth. As print dies we risk returning to the chaos, tribalism, and rage of the world before widespread literacy. hawks along the highway, this book is an invitation to wonder and awe. It only takes paying attention.
 

Provisions: Finding Home Through the Food Folklore of the Appalachian Table
by Amanda Held Opelt

(HarperOne, November 10)

A sensory celebration of Appalachian culinary traditions, and a call to reclaim the lost rituals, recipes, and food folklore of the places you call home.

Amanda Held Opelt’s childhood was shaped by the shared, multi-generational table that brought everyone at her Granny’s 100-acre farm to breakfast over buttered biscuits, fried brook trout, wild honey, and blackberry jam. But as she came of age at the peak of the nineties’ diet culture, her relationship with her body became fraught, and she began to resent the culinary culture of her Appalachian heritage. It wasn’t until her own daughter was born that she realized another body depended upon her nourishment. That was when she set out to learn how to cook and reclaim her ancestor’s food traditions.

In Provisions, Opelt devotes herself to attending local sorghum boil parties and apple festivals, interviewing farmers, foragers, and herders, and recreating the meals she remembers her Granny serving at her own table. She confronts the false food narratives that dominated the religious landscape of her Southern, conservative roots. Along the way, she rediscovers the joy of eating, and with newfound faith learns to love her body again and the places it calls home.

A love letter to Appalachia as much as a corrective to the mountain culture “hillbilly” and “tradwife” tropes, Provisions is a heart-forward exploration of the ways food draws us all into sustenance, healing, community, and delight. Opelt charts our broken relationship with food through body image, consumer culture, political stereotypes, and forgotten history, as well as the vitality that can be ours again as we:
– reconnect with our roots and learn to cook from our ancestors’ recipes and table traditions,
– unlearn our individualism and take our place at the table of nourishing community,
– and come home to joyful embodiment.
 

Vulnerable God: How Jesus Upends Our Assumptions About God―and Shows Us How to Be Human
by Kenneth Tanner

(Brazos Press, September 29)

The mystery of God made flesh isn’t just doctrine. It’s an invitation to reimagine both God and ourselves.

In Vulnerable God, pastor and theologian Kenneth Tanner offers a rich meditation on the incarnation. Tracing the events of Jesus’s life as told in the Bible and the rhythms of the church year, Tanner invites us to recapture our wonder that God has become human–to discover what Christ’s vulnerability reveals about the heart of God and how the full humanity of Jesus transforms our lives. This book explores

● how vulnerability is not a flaw but the very glory of divine love;
● what it means to be fully human the way God is human; and
● how Jesus shows us God’s true character through service and surrender.

Full of poetic depth and pastoral warmth, Vulnerable God is for those looking to recapture a gentler, more human faith rooted in humility and wonder. Including a foreword by Brian Zahnd, this thoughtful companion is ideal for seasons of reflection and rediscovery.

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