The It Books of October 2026

Book Riot

The hosts of Book Riot evaluate the most anticipated book releases for October 2026, using a knockout-style competition to select the month'

Key takeaways

• Michael Lewis's new book 'Blockers' provides an inside look at the early days of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
• The hosts note that publishing lacks the 'surprise drop' culture of movies, but social media can unexpectedly revive backlist titles.

Main topics

• October 2026 book predictions
• Publishing industry trends

Notable quotes

Hindsight is 2024.

Conclusion

A comprehensive guide for readers looking to navigate the heavy-hittin

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:04) This is the Book Riot Podcast. I'm Jeff O'Neill. Speaker 3 (0:06) And I'm Rebecca Shinsky. Speaker 1 (0:08) It's time, Rebecca, for the It Books of October 2026, our last real big book month of the year. November, there's a few things. Nonfiction holds up a little bit better, kind of to Thanksgiving. But October is our last real salvo in the year of 2026. And we just recorded with Sharifa and Laura our... final selections for our 2026 Fantasy League. So I can see the end of 2026 from here, Rebecca, like a glimmer Speaker 3 (0:40) coming towards us. Speaker 1 (0:42) It is Speaker 3 (0:42) feeling like we are really wrapping up 2026 now. Like a month ago, we were waiting for all the big books of the fall to hit. Most of them, yeah, most of them have already hit. There might still be some surprises, but like, we'll see. Speaker 1 (0:59) Right. We'll see. Speaker 3 (1:00) That's the nature of surprises. The big stuff, you know, publishing doesn't very often get the just like really surprise drop in title. It's not like in movies where two weeks ago they're like, hey, guess what? There's a Nathan Fielder documentary about Elizabeth Holmes and it's coming out on October 16th. Like you just don't get the one month notice kind of release thing. So I think we have a pretty good sense of the landscape of the year. We'll do November. Then usually in December, we do like an abbreviated version of the books and we'll do some year, some whole year in review and looking at how we're doing. I meant to tell you, I get the notifications about our Spotify comments on the show. And someone who's really mad at us went all the way back to the books of like February 2024, where I failed to pick a Sarah J. Maas title as the book of the month. And they wanted to let us know how wrong we are. And I said, we know. Literally, Speaker 1 (1:55) hindsight is 2024. Speaker 3 (1:58) We know. I may have culpid that almost two years ago. But we'll do our own, what we got right, what we got wrong. It's been a really fun year. Speaker 1 (2:08) It's pretty rare, Rebecca, to use the movie analog, which is always dangerous to compare books. It's like compare books to movies and comparing books to food. Everyone's done it and everyone knows the utility thereof. But not even the drop-in title, but something like, say, Obsession or Backrooms, which goes gangbusters and surprises people from the box office. You generally don't see that in books right away. Like in movies, it tends to be the opening weekend. You're like, oh my God, a billion people wanted to see this. It's more like Crawdads or Theo of Golden or The Correspondent, which builds, we're just not going to have time for one of those to happen for the rest of the Speaker 2 (2:43) movie. Speaker 3 (2:43) Right. And in retrospect, like it shouldn't have been that surprising that Backrooms and Obsession did so well because those creators had large established YouTube audiences that. you know, we're plugged in to go see them. Like, no, it's not like Virginia Evans or the Alan Levy, the Theo of Golden guy, right? Like, like they got book deals and people were just shocked. They didn't come with pre-existing audiences. So yeah, publishing, we really don't get. that kind of like when something comes out of nowhere, it really does seem to come out of nowhere. And you get something like a powerful TikTok creator with a big following likes something and boosts Speaker 1 (3:20) it Speaker 3 (3:20) in a way that Speaker 1 (3:20) plucks it out of the backlist is more common than a new title. Speaker 3 (3:23) Right. Like what's happening with Salt by Mark Kurlansky right now, like a 20 year old. Speaker 1 (3:28) Which made the New Yorker. I know. That story made the New Yorker this week. Speaker 3 (3:30) great profile, but a 20-year-old TikTok star pulls out a 20-year-old nonfiction book and talks about it and is back on the bestseller list. And that's a uniquely publishing thing that also movies don't get. Speaker 1 (3:43) No. All right. So it's It Books of October. That's a long preamble to say It Books of October. If it's your first time, I have picked a cadre of books to put forward to Rebecca as we try to decide, pick, predict what the It Book of the month will be. What does It Book mean? I'm glad you asked. We don't know. But it's something like the following. Speaker 3 (4:03) It Speaker 1 (4:03) could be an award winner. It could matter. It could discourse. It could sell. All of the things in the soup together. Generally speaking, we don't want it to be just one. And if we make mistakes, if we ever were to make mistakes, say such a thing were to happen, it will be along the lines of this book sold a bunch of copies. And yet there's just not that much going on around it. Like, I think that's. It was a mistake probably not to pick the mosque, but the nature of the mistake is the one we're kind of more interested in making, which is something that's going to sell 100,000 and kind of stay with its universe. We're looking for something that has some potential upside for the future, for the long future of humanity. It's Speaker 2 (4:47) like a Speaker 1 (4:47) breakout Speaker 3 (4:47) into a more mainstream publishing conversation. Speaker 1 (4:51) Right. So often the third installment in a huge series. We're generally less interested in that than, you know, other kinds of things. But sometimes they can get big enough. Speaker 3 (5:03) Yeah. Like right now we're not doing a lot of, hey, there's a new Dungeon Crawler Carl. That's the it book of the month. Those are huge and they are pretty contained in their big fandom universe. Speaker 1 (5:13) And the story of that is Dungeon Crawler Carl, not that particular title. I have also instituted sometime over the last year. I've made more work for myself as part of this where we have. As you're wont to do. We have 10 spots, but for two of the spots, there's a play in, one for nonfiction and one for debut works. And I will get to those in a second. We go one by one and it's knockout style. And by the end, we will have something that is the input for the month. I should tell you this, Rebecca, I did not mess with the order. I just put them in as they came. And it could be that I made a mistake in something at the beginning, just sort of steamrolls its way all the way through. But that's something that's happened there. Anything else people need to know before we get into it? Speaker 3 (5:53) No, I think that covers it. Let's get into it. Speaker 1 (5:55) First sponsor break, then we'll do debuts. No, we'll do nonfiction first because that's what I have. 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Right now, buy one pair of glasses and get 20 % off any additional pairs at warbyparker.com slash bookriot. That's 20 % off any additional pairs when you purchase one pair at warbyparker.com slash bookriot. Speaker 1 (10:03) Michael Lewis, over the last couple of books, has been very interested in what's going on with the government. And I appreciate that for Michael Lewis. I am less interested in this particular version, in my ostriching about what's going on in the American political discourse right now. His new book, Blockers, comes out October 6th from Norton, his longtime publisher. An inside look at the early days of Trump's Department of Government Efficiency, otherwise known as D. Doge because we live in hell, as told by the public servants as it targeted in one of America's best storytellers. So that's Lewis and then these public servants. I think this is a fascinating historical project. I'm glad he's doing it. And I am not that interested in reading it myself, Rebecca. So Blockers is up first. Speaker 3 (10:47) You know, this is definitely a different vein than the like old school Michael Lewis of Moneyball and the Big Short. I really liked Who Is Government? I found it to be uplifting and affirming of like there are really good people working in the government who want to do good work. This book is specifically about the people who tried to stand in the way of Doge and prevent them from doing as much damage as they did. And I think there's a... possibility that this is kind of a good shot in the arm if you're a reader who wants it. But I think also a lot of folks are in the same position you are where they just don't want to spend any more time in that space. It's an open question for me because we are rolling into midterm season and there has been. more appetite for political books and for like Trump Vance administration analysis than I had expected, especially in the form of Regime Change by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, still selling very well. And Bob Woodward's big memoir is coming out next week, I believe. And I'm sure that will have a lot of like this is his. reporter's memoir, but one of the cornerstones of his late career has been reporting on Trump. And I think we can expect to see that do well. So I'm curious about what Michael Lewis is going to be competing against here in the play-in round, but I understand this one. Speaker 1 (12:07) I can imagine this making a really good movie in the big short vein of which you take sort of multiple perspectives of various levels of power. And you get that narration to explain everything that went on. One of the things that's happening is things are moving so quickly and then are discarded, forgotten, or swept under the rug that we definitely need these kinds of documents. It may come down to, I don't know, I will maybe have to hear it after the fact. Is it a good read? I mean, honestly, is it like compelling enough? Is there a character, a storyline? John carry you bad blood or something like that where I don't really care about Elizabeth Holmes at this time, but it was such a compelling story reported well and framed with a real professional's eye to what's going on and making it approachable. If anyone could do it, it's Michael Lewis. But I kind of find myself wanting him to be like. doing something about these, you know, the people that want to live forever. That's why I find myself like, what do I want Michael Lewis? I want to be one of these guys that's doing like blood doping with the 20 year old that they're paying. Like that's where I kind of want, I want Michael Lewis's story, but he's taking where his passion and his, I believe his morality believes as he thinks he's necessary. Speaker 3 (13:21) I think so too. I will probably read this. I have a lifetime subscription to Michael Lewis, so I'll report back. Speaker 1 (13:27) I thought I did, but I wonder now. I wonder now. For this particular. All right. So that's one. Up next, anytime there's a Lawrence Wright book, it automatically comes up. This is Redemption, Faith, Justice, and a Sisterhood on Death Row. Lawrence Wright wrote The Magisterial Looming Tower, also the book about Scientology, which I can't remember the name of. Thank you. Going Clear. And this is about a group of nuns in rural Texas who minister to women on death row. Speaker 3 (13:53) Put it in my veins. I know this is Speaker 1 (13:56) going to be something fascinating for you. I would think there's amazing movie potential here down the road. I think that's a little bit of book water. But then I remembered we already have nuns on death row in the form of Dead Man Walking, Susan Sarandon, Sean Penn. That was very well regarded a million years ago, which I also was believed was based on a true story. So I don't know. We're Speaker 2 (14:17) going Speaker 1 (14:17) to get another one of those from a movie point of view. But Lawrence Wright is a one of one. Three hundred sixty eight pages. So not enormous, tough subject matter. But nuns, death row, Lawrence Wright. I don't know, Rebecca, is there something? What do you make of that combination? Speaker 3 (14:32) Yeah, Speaker 1 (14:32) I Speaker 3 (14:32) mean, Lawrence Wright is no stranger to the Pulitzer finalist sections. So we can expect this to generate press. Maybe it will sell. I don't know. But he'll be out on NPR, that kind of like highbrow nonfiction promotional circuit. And certainly a candidate for best books of the year for a Pulitzer kind of. nomination. I also don't know that