Literary & Contemporary Fiction · December 2026
7 New Literary & Contemporary Fiction Books Coming in December 2026
A disputed conviction, inherited land, a damaged friendship and a decision about having a child. Seven books with very different lives at their centers.
The two sisters in Between You a River inherit a problem they did not know their mother had left them. In Preparing for Nothingness, a father’s last words leave his son wondering whether he understood the man at all. Both start with a loss, but one turns toward family land in the Philippines and the other toward a university’s attempt to talk about dying.
Winter Song returns to Minnesota in 1986, while Lina & June follows a friendship that begins at university in New York. Rabbit Rabbit gives its heroine two futures she cannot easily fit together. There is short fiction here too, and a small town where a cup of tea can do more than warm someone up. All dates below are scheduled US releases.
At a glance
Fiction arriving throughout December
Winter Song, Between You a River, Preparing for Nothingness and The Magic of Chamomile Cottage are scheduled for December 1. Lina & June follows on December 8, Rabbit Rabbit on December 15 and The Convert on December 22.
01 · Small-town literary fiction
Winter Song
By Rebeca Lee Morales
· US · Ecco
In Minnesota in the winter of 1986, Byron Lugo returns from prison to a town that still believes he killed a child in a hit-and-run. He insists he was wrongly convicted and wants his old life back. Gordon Trent, the police chief who arrested him, would rather Byron try to move forward.
Byron’s determination makes that position difficult to hold. His former fiancée has married someone else, local judgments have hardened and Trent has his own past to examine. The disputed conviction brings the two men back into contact with each other and with a community that has learned to live around its version of what happened.
Morales’s debut is a standalone novel. No earlier story is required.
02 · A family between Texas and the Philippines
Between You a River
By Kimberly Garza
· US · Henry Holt and Co.
After their mother Corazon dies, Hannah and Mari are called to the Philippines to deal with family land. The sisters have been living apart and know little about the life their mother left behind. What appears to be unfinished business about an inheritance becomes a search through her decisions.
The other timeline follows Corazon on Mindoro in the 1960s. Her family expects her to study, become a doctor in the United States and support those at home, until a fire disrupts that future. The daughters’ visit puts their own choices beside the ambitions and pressures Corazon carried before she became their mother.
An independent novel, not a sequel to The Last Karankawas.
03 · A novel about mortality
Preparing for Nothingness
By Alan Lightman
· US · Pantheon
Ludvig Bergsson cannot stop thinking about his father’s admission that he did not have a happy life. Nothing about the man’s eighty-seven years had seemed so plainly unhappy. To explore the question left behind, Ludvig proposes a university symposium about preparing for death.
The speakers include a psychologist, an astrophysicist, a philosopher, a Christian theologian, a hospice worker and a Buddhist monk. Each view gives Ludvig a different way to look at his father’s last words and his own life and family. The symposium is the framework for a fictional story about the people having to live with those questions.
A standalone work of fiction. It does not require Lightman’s novels or his nonfiction.
04 · Magical contemporary small-town fiction
The Magic of Chamomile Cottage
By Heather Webber
· US · St. Martin's Press
Sunny Callaway usually writes stories about other people, but a diagnosis and a breakup have made writing difficult. A discovery leads her to Woodnote, Alabama, a town struggling after its tea factory closes. There she finds family she did not know she had.
Her cousin Nova Frances Clark runs a tea shop and makes chamomile blends that can ease minor ailments. That gift does not tell her how to rescue the town. The cousins’ attempt to bring Woodnote back to life joins a practical community project to the story’s everyday magic.
An independent Webber novel. Midnight at the Blackbird Cafe and her other small-town stories are not prerequisites.
05 · A friendship formed at university
Lina & June
By Genevieve Wheeler
· US · St. Martin's Press
June has a carefully organized plan for her future. Lina is far more inclined to go where the next party takes her. A messy night at their New York university brings them together, beginning a friendship that makes their differences feel less important.
Then June becomes ill, and Lina leaves for Paris. The lives they expected to share start moving separately, leaving both women to decide what they owe one another and whether they can repair the damage. The central bond is their friendship, with distance and health changing how each understands the years they had together.
A separate novel from Adelaide, centered on Lina and June’s friendship.
06 · Motherhood, romance and incompatible futures
Rabbit Rabbit
By Jennifer E. Smith
· US · Ballantine Books
On New Year’s Eve in Florence, American film editor Billie decides that this is the year she will have a baby on her own. Soon afterward, she meets Arthur, a Scottish conservationist who does not want children. The attraction is there; the futures they want do not fit together.
Over the following year, Billie moves between fertility appointments and time away with Arthur, trying to make room for both possibilities. The appointments do not stop because she has met someone. As the months pass, she has to work out whether either future is one she is prepared to give up.
A standalone novel, with no earlier Smith book required.
07 · Five stories and a novella
The Convert
By Tova Reich
· US · Seven Stories Press
Tova Reich’s collection includes a son who writes his mother’s obituary before she has died, a widow whose generosity is turned against her, and a convert left to carry on after the death of her controlling mistress. Family devotion, charity and Jewish identity all come into question through these uncomfortable situations.
The title work is a novella, with five shorter stories around it. One imagines the Nazi doctor Josef Mengele in Jerusalem; another gathers Russian expatriates in Brooklyn. The collection changes characters and settings between these separate stories.
The stories stand on their own. Reich’s earlier novels and collections are not required.
Different forms, different problems
Winter Song has an old conviction to revisit; Between You a River follows an inheritance across two generations. Lina & June centers on friendship, while Rabbit Rabbit follows a woman trying to make room for both motherhood and a relationship. Preparing for Nothingness builds around a symposium. The Convert changes characters between stories, and Chamomile Cottage adds magic to a town’s attempt to start again.
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