Archives de catégorie : Frankfurt 2026 Adult Fiction

IT COULD BE WORSE de Claire Frances

The Wedding People meets Beth O’Leary! A warm, funny and life-affirming novel about grief, terrible decisions, unexpected friendship, and why sometimes the worst night of your life is exactly what you need.

IT COULD BE WORSE
by Claire Frances
One More Chapter, February 2027
(via Mushens Entertainment)

Maggie May has a lot going for her.

A house in Cornwall. A fiancé. A sister.

Unfortunately, her fiancé is sleeping with her sister. In her kitchen. Over her table.

Ben Jones has his own problems. A lot of them. And a very questionable plan to fix them.

When Ben and Maggie meet unexpectedly, they make a deal: five weeks to turn their lives around. And neither of them will do anything stupid in the meantime.

Except one of them has been keeping a secret the whole time…

Claire Frances has a masters in Professional Writing, specialising in fiction, a diploma in Print Journalism and Radio, and studied Creative Writing at university. She has worked as a journalist and freelance feature writer for BBC Countryfile Magazine and Devon Life and was a host blogger for The Huffington Post UK. She lives on Dartmoor with her husband and two children. She finds her inspiration to write flows most freely when she’s roaming the moors with Charlie, her Chocolate Labrador.

THE BOOK OF LOST CHANCES de Jennifer Lundquist

« If you’d once held a book that contained a whole other world in your hands―a world where you’d found a beauty and a love that has always eluded you in this one―and then you lost it, wouldn’t you try to find it again? Wouldn’t you always keep searching? »

THE BOOK OF LOST CHANCES
by Jennifer Lundquist
Wildthorn, March 2027
(via KT Literary)

As children, three wayward sisters―wandering the grounds of the family’s mysterious seaside hotel in Northern California, on the day of an annual masquerade auction―discover (and steal) a highly desirable and expensive book. . . and accidentally fall into another, more magical world.

At least, Agatha and Ellery do―Margery, the eldest Ellison sister, stays behind.

At first too cautious, then panicked and furious with regret, she’s the only witness to her sisters’ disappearance as well as the only one to miss them during their absence. . . and when the two younger reappear, they are alternately terrified and awestruck at the fantastical, dangerous years they’ve spent in another world.

Determined to protect them, Margery gets rid of the book so none of the sisters could ever be tempted to return. . . .

As grownups, the Ellison sisters are separated by distance and disappointments. Agatha is wayward and searching for magic denied, while Ellery has taken her penchant for storytelling and become a bestselling author―with a book that echoes the fantastical story of another world. . . and a love that was lost forever. Margery has thrown herself at the joys of motherhood, and the mundane disappointments of her marriage―though now empty nesting, it’s harder to pretend she doesn’t still yearn for adventures, and the chance she hadn’t taken.

But all three will be drawn together again as their secrets spill out in the face of a threat: a dangerous, enigmatic group is looking for a magical book that was stolen decades ago. And they are willing to kill to get it back. . .

« An exquisite read! Thick with the magic of past secrets, tangled memories, and stories that have claws, The Book of Lost Chances is the kind of fantasy that seeps into your bones and leaves an impression on your soul, staying with you even after you’ve left the book behind. » ―Stephanie Garber, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Alchemy of Secrets

Jennifer Lundquist is the author of multiple middle grade and young adult titles including Seeing Cinderella as well as The Library of Curiosities, which was a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection. Jennifer holds an MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University and lives in Northern California with her family and their rescue dog, Ollie. The Book of Lost Chances is her adult debut novel. Find Jennifer online at Instagram and Substack.

THE MOUSE d’Amy Talley

A comedic thriller about an office worker who’s determined to kill her insufferable coworker, only to discover he might be an infamous murderer himself.

THE MOUSE
by Amy Talley
Minotaur Books/St. Martin’s, January 2028

Margaret Ingraham is an introverted, hyper-meticulous thirty-year-old administrative assistant who wants nothing more than to be left in peace. But when the office golden boy, Patrick McMahon, targets her job for AI replacement, then steals her apple slice, something inside Margaret snaps. She makes a calculated decision: Patrick must die.

Margaret’s initial murder attempts—such as leaving a peanut butter muffin on her desk for the allegedly-allergic Patrick to find—are unsuccessful, but as she zeroes in on her target, she begins to notice some suspicious behavior. Soon, she realizes that, beyond being a public nuisance, Patrick might just be the Silver Lake Strangler, a serial killer who has been menacing local women.

Unfortunately, Margaret can’t go to the police. With a past tainted by a mother who cried wolf and Margaret’s own failed homicide attempts, she’s anything but a reliable witness. Instead, she engages Patrick in a dangerous game of cat and mouse, using anonymity and her underestimated persona to out-maneuver a killer. Margaret must risk her safety, her sanity, and the emotional stability she’s fought so hard for to stop the murderer and maybe, for the first time in her life, become the hero of her own story.

“Deftly plotted and deliciously unpredictable, THE MOUSE is everything you want in a thriller. This one is a wild ride from start to finish!”—Ashley Elston, #1 New York Times bestselling author of First Lie Wins

Amy Talley is a USA Today bestselling author of over thirty novels (under the name Liz Talley). She has been nominated for both RWA’s Golden Heart and Rita awards. She has had three novels in the Amazon First Reads program and two Amazon “Best Books of the Month” in Romance. Amy is a member of The Author’s Guild, Novelists Inc, and Your Book Escape.

SPLIT SECOND de Janet Evanovich

Stephanie Plum’s life is never boring, not even for a split second, in the adrenaline-fueled new novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Janet Evanovich.

SPLIT SECOND: THIRTY-TWO SWITCHEROO
(Stephanie Plum Book 32)
by Janet Evanovich
Atria Books, November 2026
(via Park, Fine & Brower)

In a now-or-never moment, Stephanie Plum made the decision of a lifetime. But some lifetimes are shorter than others and Stephanie will be lucky if she makes it to the end of the week.

Over the years, Trenton’s best-known bounty hunter has acquired a long list of enemies. It’s an occupational hazard as a bond enforcement agent. The problem is that she now has a mysterious enemy whose name isn’t on any list. Disturbing packages, threatening notes, and near misses are keeping Stephanie in the dark and her anonymous tormentor, who wants her dead, in the shadows.

Bond jumper Greb Tusi also wouldn’t mind getting rid of Stephanie. He’s wanted for going on a three-hour rampage—one that he swears “wasn’t his fault”—that included mugging an old lady and stealing a hearse.

And if adjusting to being newly married isn’t enough to take a few years off Stephanie’s life, working for her ex-fiancé and mentor, Ranger, might do the trick. Ranger has taken a security job for a powerful political figure, and Stephanie is in charge of babysitting one of the figure’s family members.

The clock is ticking for Stephanie to find bail-jumper Greb Tusi and the invisible stalker who is sending her increasingly menacing messages. If she lets her guard down for even a split second, her time will be up.

Janet Evanovich has written a staggering forty-seven New York Times bestsellers over the last thirty years. In addition to her #1 New York Times bestselling Stephanie Plum novels and many other popular books, Janet is the author of the New York Times bestselling Recovery Agent series, Lizzy and Diesel series, Fox and O’Hare series, Knight and Moon series, the Alexandra Barnaby novels, and the graphic novel Troublemaker (with her daughter, Alex Evanovich).

IN ANOTHER LIFE de Stephanie Merry

A funny and heartfelt high-concept commercial women’s fiction novel with the book club appeal of Rebecca Serle and JoJo Moyes and an irresistible « what if? » premise built around an irresistible hook: how much of a life can turn on a seemingly inconsequential choice?

IN ANOTHER LIFE
by Stephanie Merry
Zibby Books, January 2028
(via Nancy Yost Literary)

Mary Louise O’Shaughnessy is in trouble. Or, more accurately, two versions of her are.

In one life, she’s Polly: a single mother to a seven-year-old daughter, struggling with mysterious chronic pain and accustomed to handling everything on her own. Then, after another exhausting day, a stranger materializes in her house claiming to be Guy, her husband from another world. He desperately needs to get home, and Polly may be his only way back.

In another life, she’s Goldie: 9 months pregnant and increasingly frantic because her husband hasn’t come home. As the hours pass, every possible worst-case scenario begins unfurling in her mind — including the prospect of giving birth to their daughter without him…and the possibility that the secretive technology he’s been working on has sent him into the multiverse without a way back.

Polly and Goldie’s lives diverged after one night in a bar years ago. But when Goldie develops pregnancy complications in her world and Guy becomes unexpectedly sickened in Polly’s, both women are forced to admit that whether you’re raising a child or trying to get home across the multiverse, sometimes it really does take a village, in this case one made up of Polly’s annoying but increasingly attractive Nordic neighbor, Guy’s science nerd colleagues, and Cat, the women’s fiercely-protective older sister. IN ANOTHER LIFE combines lovable characters, warmth, humor, and a story grounded in a universal question. It’s the fantasy of seeing the life you might have lived; the mistakes and successes that shape us; and, ultimately, the communities we build when we finally allow ourselves to need other people.

Stephanie Merry is currently on the wellness team at The Washington Post. She previously spent eight years as deputy editor of the Post’s books section and, before that, covered film, television and culture.