31 March 2026
As we head into the Easter weekend, it’s the perfect time to pick up a new book or two. From epic family sagas to genre-blending short-stories, from the streets of London during the Blitz to India’s sacred Saraswati river, dive into a new Serpent’s Tail read this Spring.
Which books do you plan on reading? Let us know on Instagram @SerpentsTail or BlueSky @serpents-tail.bsky.social
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☎️ Intelligence by Robert Newman
From the beloved comedian and writer comes an irresistible novel about love, secrets and WWII espionage. Can two young philosophers capture the attention of London’s spymasters and save thousands of lives before it’s too late?
‘A wonderfully feisty and beguiling novel’ William Boyd
🌊 Saraswati by Gurnaik Johal
Shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, this is a masterpiece debut novel from one of the UK’s most exciting young writers. When the waters of the Saraswati, a river of Indian legend, start to rise, seven scattered descendants of a forbidden marriage are unexpectedly swept up in its current.
‘An ambitious, stylishly delivered novel … Reminiscent of Salman Rushdie’ Observer
🍂 Like Family by Erin White
What if everything you wanted is no longer enough? After a long-held family secret is exposed, tensions that have long been buried begin bubbling to the surface and three couples must confront truths they’ve never shared.
‘Warm, joyful, smart and nuanced’ Curtis Sittenfeld
💗 This is a Love Story by Jessica Soffer
Abe and Jane have been together for fifty years, two among thousands of lovers in Central Park. Now, Jane is seriously unwell, and together she and Abe look back on their marriage. This is a Love Story is a homage to New York, to pleasure, loss and love that endures.
‘Unapologetically romantic: complicated, colourful and includes many tales that tug at the heartstrings’ New York Times
💚 Discipline by Larissa Pham
Christine is a young writer touring her debut novel – a thinly disguised account of an affair she had with a professor. When the professor reaches out, Christine is drawn back into his orbit. A taut, provocative novel about creativity and sex, coercion and control, with shades of Rachel Cusk and Katie Kitamura.
‘Lush and precise, Discipline reads like a taut thriller even though it is really an elegant exploration of creativity’ Roxane Gay
🐔 I Am Agatha by Nancy Foley
Alice and Agatha are in love. Freewheeling, hilarious, moving and entertaining, I Am Agatha is a brilliant debut novel, combining the sideways humour of Big Swiss with the heart and strong female characters of Olive Kitteridge.
‘Surprising and spellbinding … a beautiful love story and meditation on grief, memory, art, and the deepest secrets we hold to keep living’ Angie Kim
🐦⬛ The Pelican Child by Joy Williams
Lauded as the best story writer of our time, Joy Williams returns with a taut collection that responds to our modern dilemmas with her signature dry wit and deftness of touch. Meet souls lost and found: from the twin heiresses of a dirty industrial fortune, to the pelican child who lives with the ill-tempered Baba Yaga in a little hut on chicken legs.
‘Williams hopes to reignite our sense of wonder in the world, so that we might be rallied to protect it. Here, at the height of her powers, she may just triumph‘ Financial Times
🦌 Stag Dance by Torrey Peters
Trans life past, present and future is explored in this kaleidoscopic follow-up to Torrey Peters’s bestselling debut, Detransition, Baby. Acidly funny, provocative and inspired, this quartet of tales focuses in on the rough edges of desire.
‘Adventurous, mind-expanding and provocative’ Bernardine Evaristo
🍳 One Sun Only by Camille Bordas
In this prismatic new collection, Camille Bordas’s complex, wry, sometimes dark and always self-aware stories open a window onto the truths and misapprehensions of our shared, flawed humanity. A young woman takes stock following a burglary. A teenager becomes obsessed with the obituaries in a weekly magazine. Some win the lottery. Some don’t.
‘Camille Bordas is an invaluable new voice’ George Saunders
In addition to the slew of fantastic works already on bookshop shelves, we have many brilliant books coming out in the coming months. Here are a few highlights from our upcoming spring and summer publishing.
🪽 Song For Another Home by Bora Lee Reed
Bora Lee Reed’s debut novel follows one family’s struggle for survival during the Korean War. Full of heart and rich in history, Song For Another Home is an unforgettable portrait of resilience, courage, friendship and love, perfect for readers of Pachinko and Homegoing. Coming 6th August.
‘Timely, wide-ranging, immersive historical fiction and a magnificent debut’ Laurie Frankel
🐚 The End of Everything by M. John Harrison
A slyly satirical and unsettling post-apocalyptic adventure from a master of the surreal and one of our best contemporary novelists. It’s been years since the crisis changed everything. Government barely functions, the seas are full of new creatures, Europe has been mislaid. It feels like the end. Coming 18th June.
‘At once surreal, seductive, shrewdly funny and wholly terrifying’ Julia Armfield
🪟 Air by Christian Kracht, translated by Daniel Bowles
Two men venture through strange landscapes towards unknowable destinations. Inventive, enigmatic and chromatically resonant, Air is a haunting journey through a layered universe that may be a dream, the afterlife or reality’s inverted twin, from the author of the International Booker longlisted novel, Eurotrash. Coming 16th July.
‘In Kracht’s nominal realism, a dreamlike air insistently prevails. You read him and wonder’ Nell Zink