Top Ten Books on My Fall 2026 To-Read List

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl.

There are a lot of books on my Goodreads TBR, but I know that I cannot realistically read them all in one season. So, I chose books that were either books I will be reading for the book clubs that I’m in, books I received for review purposes, books that I’m excited to read, and a few indie author purchases I’m excited to get in the mail. Each book cover will take you to the book’s page in case you want to read more about each book.

Darcy Moore is tired of death. Which would be fine and good … if she wasn’t a Grim Reaper. Determined to outrun her designation as the villain, Darcy decides she won’t be dragging her next assignment to the underworld. She’ll be saving him instead.

Unfortunately for Darcy, there’s a complication in her plan. Guardian Angel Gabriel Aetos doesn’t tolerate threats to his little corner of the world, and a Grim Reaper showing up at his bar is as deadly as it gets. But when he realizes Darcy is not as she seems, Gabriel must decide if he can trust his growing feelings or hold on to his long-standing grudge.

But magic doesn’t come without consequences. And the Department of Hauntings & Spirits will eventually come calling for their missing Reaper.

What happens when a romance author agrees to test romance tropes in virtual reality?

Following divorce number two, Zoe Woods is jaded, bitter, and unable to write her latest novel. For an author whose brand is all about finding true love, that’s kind of a problem.

Desperate to revive her romantic optimism, Zoe accepts an offer from an unlikely place to beta test virtual reality romance tropes. Unfortunately, Zoe jumps in too fast, and instead of a fun romp in virtual Romancelandia to rekindle her creativity, she finds one debacle after another.

Regretting her choices, Zoe realizes nothing is ever what it seems when it comes to love and romance and fantasy vs real world. The only thing she does know for sure is that virtual reality definitely bites.

When I was a little girl, I dreamed a handsome knight would come and rescue me from my wretched mother. He’d ride up on his white steed and break the curse I’ve been fated to carry since the day I was born.

Funny how things changed over time. How the fairy tale twisted into something far more crooked, darker than I ever imagined.

In reality, my knight is scarred and broken, living alone in a castle of bones that overlooks the sea. He isn’t searching for me. He never was.

Lucian Blackthorne is as cursed as I am, and equally shunned by the locals, the fishers of men, who believe him to be the devil in the flesh.

Perhaps he is, with the way his amber eyes draw me in, ignite me like an infernal blaze. And the sins he whispers in my ear are as wickedly intoxicating as the man himself.

Yet, his touch is heaven and his will is my weakness.

He calls us forbidden, an unsalvageable tragedy, with no happy end. Maybe we are. But in this story, he’s the one who needs saving.

Once, Marella belonged to the sea.

She and her family were emissaries, not monsters, swimming the borders between sea and land, keeping peace between the merfolk and the human city of Rossaia. But when the humans turned on them, the mermaids sought salvation from The Stone Witch.

She kept her word, but she also damned them.

Now, Marella and her family exist trapped in stone at the heart of a dried-up city, freed only on the night of the new moon.

And with that freedom comes thirst. To survive, they must drink human blood before dawn seals them back into statues.

Garrett is living an unmoored life.

Looking for something to anchor him, he arrives in Rossaia haunted by emptiness. There, he joins the Fratelli di Sangue, an ancient brotherhood sworn to cleanse the city of the monsters haunting its streets.

Monsters like Marella.

When a chance encounter turns into a dangerous rescue on a moonless night, both hunter and hunted find their certainties unraveling. Drawn together by blood, secrets, and a forbidden pull neither can deny, they stand on opposite sides of a war older than memory, and to choose each other may mean betraying everything they believe in.

Six roses. Six vials of blood. Six visits to a vampire who could be her salvation… or her damnation.

Lilith has been dying since the day she was born. But while she long ago came to terms with her own imminent death, the deaths of everyone she loves is an entirely different matter. As her town slowly withers in the clutches of a mysterious god-cursed illness, she takes matters into her own hands.

Desperate to find a cure, Lilith strikes a bargain with the only thing the gods hate even more than her village: a vampire, Vale. She offers him six roses in exchange for six vials of vampire blood—the one hope for her town’s salvation.

But when what begins as a simple transaction gradually becomes something more, Lilith is faced with a terrifying realization: It’s dangerous to wander into the clutches of a vampire… and in a place already suffering a god’s wrath, more dangerous still to fall in love with one.

In Saltwater Hollow, summer always feels temporary.

Tourists come and go. The boardwalk quiets after Labor Day. And eventually, everyone leaves.

Then Logan Hayes meets Merrick Calloway.

She’s chaos and kindness wrapped in ocean air and late-night laughter. He’s spent so long taking care of everyone else that he barely remembers how to want anything for himself anymore.

What begins as chance encounters around town slowly becomes something deeper — built through carnival nights, handwritten letters, quiet conversations, and the kind of love that feels inevitable long before either of them are ready to admit it.

But some stories become memories before we realize we’re living them.

Tender, nostalgic, and heartbreakingly human, Wildflower Summer is a story about first love, grief, healing, family, and the people who leave fingerprints on our hearts long after summer ends.

Sticks and stones may break their bones, but he’ll just resurrect them.

Four years ago, Sikras ‘Catseye’ Nikabod had it all: a beautiful wife, friends and family, and the endless luxuries that came with being the all-powerful necromancer to the queen.

Now, his brother-in-law is a walking corpse, he’s wanted for tax evasion, his oldest friend, Vessik, has slaughtered thousands of the queen’s people with a skeleton army, and his wife is dead. Sort of.

With the kingdom under threat, it’s only natural for the queen to task Sikras with the totally normal, not-at-all-cruel chore of brutally murdering his dearest friend. Sure. Great. It’s not like he already failed to stop Vessik’s reign of terror twice or anything.

Turns out, it’s hard to kill a monster when you can’t stop remembering the good man he used to be. Harder still when you’re pretty sure his descent into madness is kind of, sort of, hypothetically … all your fault.

Raise a glass. Raise the dead. Just don’t raise your hopes.

Evelyn Graymore is dead—murdered by one of Seattle’s most powerful men. Dumped into the waters of Washington’s Puget Sound, lost to the undertow of corruption, but instead of sinking into the abyss, Evie is reborn as a siren. She makes a bargain with Layne Murrows, an enigmatic man made of shadows who seemed to rise from darkness itself.

With nothing left to lose, Evie takes the offer of cursed power for the chance at revenge on Preston Willows, the man who murdered her. Armed with a deadly glamour, a voice that bends will, and the power to control water itself—Evie isn’t just a monster of the deep now, she’s a weapon. But everything comes with a cost, and the bargain’s rules are ironclad. She must feed on the darkness that festers in men’s hearts or die.

The catch? She can never fall in love, or the curse will slowly chip away at her lover’s mind and body, inevitably drowning them from the inside out. A small price to pay and not much of a concern for Evie—until she meets Ethan Ward, a paralegal who works right alongside Preston. Now, Evie must decide between the mortal who makes her feel like a human again, stoking the embers of forbidden love, and the enticing monster who created her.

Advertising executive Nick Wong enjoys living in Toronto. He loves late nights partying and taking women back to his penthouse. And so it is with great reluctance that he returns to his boring hometown of Mosquito Bay for Thanksgiving.

This year, however, is even worse than usual. His interfering parents and grandparents, frustrated with the lack of weddings in the family, have invited blind dates for him and his three siblings. Nick’s brother Greg has been set up with Lily Tseng, who just so happens to be Nick’s latest one-night stand, the one he can’t get out of his mind.

Although Nick has never been interested in settling down, Lily has him reconsidering. Perhaps he’s good for more than a single night of sex, dumplings, and bubble tea after all. But first, he has to get through this painful weekend with his family and convince her that she should be with him, not Greg…

Samantha Bevans is having the best sex of her life … but it’s not with her husband. Fortunately for her marriage, the affair is all in her mind. Or is it? As an empath, Sam senses other people’s emotions, and her connection to the beautiful man with the haunting eyes seems so real.

However, Sam has no time for her own emotional baggage with a serial killer loose in Pittsburgh. The killer is targeting dancers at a strip club where she used to bartend, back when drugs were the only cure for the torment her abilities caused. Now, as a member of a special task force, Sam uses her talents to sense the victims’ final memories. Just when she thought the case was complex enough, she discovers one of the victims saw her fantasy man before she died.

With each new revelation, Sam spirals more out of control. Death emotions call to her, wanting to share their secrets, but when she finally discovers the truth, will Sam have lost herself completely? Or will she figure out who she was all along?

What books are you most excited to read this fall?

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