Martin Chilton presents his carefully curated selection of the finest new book releases for May 2026, featuring a diverse array of genres from memoirs and historical analyses to captivating novels.
Notable Mentions
Dr Kate Lister's Flick: A History of Female Pleasure (Bantam) opens with a memorable dedication: "For all the men who didn't make me cum." This thought-provoking and intrepid account explores how women's pleasure has been controlled throughout history. Lister's sharp, spiky prose is a delight, and readers will discover why she insists that "nobody should ever have to learn about w***ing from a middle-aged piano tuner."
This month also features several valuable works by female historians. Nandini Das's This Little World: A New History of Tudor and Stuart England (Bloomsbury) tells Britain's story through the lens of migrants, merchants, pilgrims, and exiles often omitted from traditional accounts. Emma Southon's Servus: How Slavery Made the Roman Empire (Hodder) examines how Roman elites normalized brutality to control enslaved people, noting that "random violence against enslaved people remains a point of hilarity for the whole of Roman history."
Piers Blofeld's Master of Lies: How Anthony Blunt's Treachery Shaped Our World (Quercus) draws on fresh research and newly released documents to dissect the troubling story of Cambridge spy Anthony Blunt, analyzing the horrifying consequences of his treachery for the Soviets and the moral failings of the British establishment.
Two compelling life stories stand out this month. Deborah Lutz's This Dark Night: The Life of Emily Brontë offers the first biography of the Wuthering Heights author in two decades. David Scott's Caroline Aherne: Rebel in Disguise (Manchester University Press) pays tribute to the comedian and actor who died a decade ago, including her classic moment as Mrs Merton undercutting Bernard Manning with the question: "Bernard, who do you vote for now Hitler is dead?"
Douglas Stuart, author of the Booker-winning Shuggie Bain, returns with John of John (Picador), set on the Hebrides islands, an unflinching yet tender tale of a corrosive father-son relationship. Séamas O'Reilly's Prestige Drama (Fleet) is a rollicking novel about the mysterious disappearance of an actor starring in a Troubles drama, featuring caustic wit and original put-downs, including the simile of a character's lazy eye "buffering in its socket like a boiling egg."
Memoir of the Month: True Crime: A Memoir by Patricia Cornwell
Patricia Cornwell, creator of forensic pathologist Dr Kay Scarpetta, is self-deprecating about her early journalism career at The Charlotte Observer in the 1980s. She cheerfully admits mixing up NFL teams, printing the typo "Daffy F***" for Daffy Duck, forgetting designers' names at a fashion show, and penning an obituary for the wrong person. "The next day he called me to say he wasn't," she writes.
Born in Florida on 9 June 1956, Cornwell recounts her life in a simple, staccato style. Her dysfunctional parents left her to fend for herself, eating raw hamburgers from the freezer, and she describes her early life as "a string of failures" in spelling, ballet, sewing, arithmetic, and cheerleading.
She is candid about her parents' mental health problems and her own struggles. Her father left on Christmas morning in 1961, and she notes that "absenting himself and ghosting were his special weapons." Sexual predators are a recurring theme, from a security officer who tried to assault her at age seven to a Miami detective who drugged and raped her. She even faced unwelcome attention from George H.W. Bush, witnessed by Barbara Bush who called him "a dirty old man." Larry King is depicted as a complete sleazebag.
The book covers her hysterectomy, bisexuality, a horrific car crash, pilot training, eating disorders, and addiction to chocolate laxatives. Cornwell describes encounters with OJ Simpson and others, but the most affecting moments detail how she overcame obstacles to sell 120 million books and "create the forensic thriller genre." She attributes her success to working in morgues and a natural inclination for snooping. A good amateur tennis player, she lists five rules for winning, including "Hate your opposition" and "Never Say Sorry."
True Crime: A Memoir is published by Sphere on 5 May, £25.
Non-fiction Book of the Month: Weimar: Life on the Edge of Catastrophe by Katja Hoyer
The Nazi Sieg Heil salute apparently originated in Weimar, a city Hitler visited over 40 times, usually staying at the Hotel Hohenzollern run by Jewish hotelier Rosa Schmidt. In the mid-1920s, he gave a speech blaming "n****r and jazz music" for being "soul poisoners of the German people."
Historian and journalist Katja Hoyer tells the chronological story of Weimar's role in Hitler's rise, analyzing how far-right ideologies took hold in a fatalistic city. She uses anecdotes effectively, including one about actor Emmy Sonnemann, who dated Herman Göring. When she presented flowers to Hitler in 1933, she was baffled as he "fell into one of his monologues" and "slowly walked out as Hitler continued to mumble to himself." She later enjoyed a fabulously wealthy lifestyle funded by Göring's corrupt military contracts.
The book includes striking photographs, such as Hitler staring jealously at a bust of Nietzsche, and tells the story of Kurt Nehrling, a social democrat who resisted Nazism. Hoyer's important work shows how far-right leaders used propaganda and culture, not just terror, to control the population. Weimar was a microcosm of Germany, where people looked the other way as the Nazi regime murdered at nearby concentration camps.
Weimar: Life on the Edge of Catastrophe is published by Allen Lane on 7 May, £30.
Novel of the Month: I Want You to Be Happy by Jem Calder
During a family Christmas, 23-year-old barista Joey tells her grandmother she has met someone "very nice." The wise old gran replies, "Let's just hope he stays nice." Over the course of Jem Calder's splendid debut novel, readers side with naive Joey as her relationship with Chuck, a 35-year-old copywriter on the rebound, becomes increasingly frayed. Calder says he was "interested in the idea of a romantic comedy where, in the margins, one of the characters is basically having a complete nervous breakdown," referring to Chuck's drinking and insecurity.
Calder delivers a sharp portrait of our diminished age of WhatsApp, Wordle, climate anxiety, commitment phobia, AI, ghosting, online stalking, and wasted "non-refundable life minutes" on phones. Chuck and Joey are well-drawn protagonists, with sharp humor like Joey's friend Laurel telling her after a boozy night, "Babe, you look like Beetlejuice." The novel dissects modern phoniness, as when a woman claims to love the blues but only listens to "Spotify playlists."
Set-pieces include a disastrous romantic weekend in the country and a disconsolate Christmas with Chuck's elderly parents, where he endures "drinkies" at a neighbor's with "stout, thyroid-disorder-eyes Graham Bradshaw." Chuck's alcoholism implodes his work life, while Joey deals with her vulnerabilities and the grind of making ends meet. "There was no other way of living in the city," she says, a sentiment that will ring true for many twentysomethings. Both panic about their life trajectories, and Joey reflects on the daily toll "of simply trying to be undepressed."
The novel explores their shared ambition to write, deftly showing who has talent. It left me musing on whether we are all choosing a way to lose, and the tale suggests that not ending up where you want to be is a guaranteed condition of life. Fiction lovers will be engrossed in I Want You to Be Happy.
I Want You to Be Happy is published by Faber on 21 May, £16.99.
