The best holiday reads for summer 2026
Whether you're packing for a beach holiday or staying closer to home, these engrossing novels and fascinating non-fiction picks are the perfect summer escape.
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Whether you're packing for a beach holiday or staying closer to home, these engrossing novels and fascinating non-fiction picks are the perfect summer escape.
(RRP £18.99, Bloomsbury Publishing)
De Tores tells the story of misfit Alexander Selkirk (the inspiration for Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe), marooned on a remote island – his fight for survival, his isolation. Thank heavens for a feral cat he names Sleek, and a pious goat, the Reverend Vicarious Cronch, who once ate an entire Bible.
They may be figments of a lonely man’s imagination, but they’re excellent company. A book that’s by turns brutal, lyrical and hilarious.
(RRP £9.99, One More Chapter)
Bukola Obanile’s 65th birthday party is going to be lavish, and everyone who is anyone in Lagos will be there. But, as the big day approaches, Bukola and husband Wale, their four adult children and the kids’ cousin Anjola are all hiding secrets, and despite their best efforts those skeletons are about to come clattering out of the closet. The perfect family?
Sun, fun, fashion – and twist on twist to keep you guessing.
(RRP £18.99, Bloomsbury Publishing)
Hilo, Hawaii. A paradise island. Jane and Kenjo embark on a summer fling. By luck, he is with her on the Honolulu campus where she is studying architecture when a tsunami sweeps their homes and families away. Kenjo returns to rebuild; Jane can’t face it.
This incredibly powerful debut novel follows them over a decade, through estrangement and anger, before love finds a way.
(RRP £16.99, The Borough Press)
Hester, too, lost beloved parents to the sea. Now, as she turns 60, she takes refuge from the dominating husband she plans to leave, in the Dorset beach hut of her childhood.
Still haunted, after 47 years, by a cruel prank she played on her dearest friend Elias, Hester believes she forfeited the chance of love. But, just maybe, it isn’t too late to love again.
A smiling-through-tears read.
(RRP £9.99, Profile Books)
A man vanishes from the back seat of a speeding car. In the idyllic Isles of Scilly a picnic basket holds the key to a murderer. In Egypt a tourist buys treasure looted from a grave. Two cousins go fishing in the Lake District; only one returns.
A collection of wickedly good stories by Ruth Rendell, Val McDermid, John Dickson Carr and others, edited by Cecily Gayford, aficionado of golden-age detective stories.
(RRP £16.99, Hodder & Stoughton)
A young archivist travels from Washington to document the contents of a mansion in the Tuscan hills for eccentric nonagenarian Baroness Lisebetta (Coco). He is co-opted into unblocking cisterns, driving the ‘Mitsu-bitchy’ and hunting stone martens, while a lifetime’s clutter – ‘both like the British Museum and a child’s bedroom filled with beloved trash and treasures’ – sits waiting.
There is love interest in the shape of cousin Giacomo-Giacomo, but the real adventure is the discovery of deep Tuscany, free of tourists, explored in a whirl of madness in the company of geriatric delinquents. Pure, unalloyed joy.
(RRP £16.99, Elliott & Thompson Limited)
Since creating an apothecary garden in Cumbria, Bennett and her family have taken a leap of geography and faith to establish themselves on Orkney and to create another garden, inspired by island folklore and the elemental landscapes.
Spanning a year from the dark days of winter through luminous summer, she mixes memoir and herbal lore with advice on planting a garden of our own.
(RRP £18.99, Dorling Kindersley Ltd)
We so take for granted an annual break that it has come to seem like a right, but for ‘ordinary’ people the great getaway is a recent phenomenon.
From Elizabethans taking the waters, forward to Butlin’s, Blackpool and Benidorm, budget airlines and virtual travel, journalist Thorpe traces the history of holidays and urges more mindful travel, because cheap package deals shouldn’t cost the Earth.
Click below for your chance to win a 15-night cruise to the Canary Islands on board Saga's Spirit of Adventure, worth more than £8,300.
Saga offers escorted tours throughout Europe and as far afield as South Africa, Japan, Canada and Australia, plus hotel stays in popular European hotspots including Spain, Portugal, Croatia and Greece.
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The TV historian on overcoming a difficult childhood and what it was like to appear on Celebrity Traitors.
The wildlife filmmaker on his close call with a polar bear and why hanging out with lions is less scary than driving in the UK.
The Irish author, 62, on escaping the news through writing, staying sober and scrolling the internet for pretty things.
The actress opens up to Jenni Murray on Saga's podcast Experience is Everything.
