The Books Behind the 2026 Academy Award Nominees

A Ship Without a Sail: The Life of Lorenz Hart

The lyricist who, with composer Richard Rodgers, penned “Blue Moon,” “The Lady Is a Tramp,” and other standards is a figure worthy of his own bittersweet songs in this graceful biography. A squat gay man who lived with his mother and had the kind of “laughable... unphotographable” looks he toasted in “My Funny Valentine,” Hart is a jaunty, cigar-chomping bon vivant with a secretly wounded soul, an extraordinary poetic facility—his greatest verses seem to have been dashed off on half an hour’s deadline—and a ruinous thirst for booze. Journalist Marmorstein (Hollywood Rhapsody) resists the temptation to psychoanalyze and instead explores Hart’s personality mainly through shrewd readings of his lyrics as they veer between “enthralling new romance and a lonely, unforgiving desolation.” He holds to a middle-distance perspective, organizing the narrative around lively accounts of Rodgers and Hart’s Broadway and Hollywood musical projects, with Hart’s self-destructive excesses surfacing in matter-of-fact vignettes amid the showbiz swirl. Along the way, he paints a vivid panorama of pre-WWII musical theater and the efflorescence of Jewish-American tune- and word-smithing that created it. Marmorstein’s take on his subject’s life feels like a Rodgers and Hart show, nicely balanced between exhilarating spectacle and pithy revelations of character. Agent: Dan Conaway, Writers House. (July)

In Search of Mary Shelley

To mark the bicentennial of Frankenstein’s publication, poet Sampson (Limestone Country) has created an incisive and emotionally resonant portrait of Mary Shelley, the brilliant woman who wrote that dark masterpiece. In an often speculative but persuasive portrait of Shelley’s inner and outer life, Sampson takes Shelley out of the shadow of her prodigious, radical parents, Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, and her husband, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Wollstonecraft died soon after giving birth to Mary, and Sampson argues that the search for a mother figure never ended for Shelley, who maintained an antagonistic relationship with her stepmother, and drew close to female friends of her mother later in life. Themes of birth, death, and creativity permeated both Shelley’s writing and her life. She experienced loss on an almost unimaginable scale, including the deaths of three of her four children in their youth, and yet persevered in her dream of being a writer. Because so much of Shelley’s early correspondence was lost, Sampson often relies on conjecture to get inside her subject’s mind and feelings. This approach may not be to everyone’s taste, but it creates an almost cinematic picture of long-ago events and succeeds in bringing an unconventional woman to vivid life. Agent: George Lucas, InkWell Management. (June)

Hamnet

O’Farrell (This Must Be the Place) concocts an outstanding masterpiece of Shakespearean apocrypha in this tale of an unnamed bard’s family living in Stratford-upon-Avon while his star is rising in London. In 1596, 11-year-old Hamnet’s twin sister, Judith, comes down with a sudden, severe illness. Hamnet searches urgently for help, and is treated cruelly by his drunken grandfather, John, a glove maker. Hamnet’s mother, Agnes, known and feared for dispensing mysterious homeopathic remedies, is at Hewlands, her family’s farmhouse. When she returns home, Judith shows undeniable signs of the bubonic plague, and the diagnosis is confirmed by a doctor. O’Farrell then tells of Agnes and her husband’s passionate courtship, and of Agnes’s stepmother banishing her from Hewlands after she becomes pregnant. The couple moves into a small, drafty addition to his parent’s house, where Agnes’s husband grows restless and melancholic in his overbearing, volatile father’s presence, and she schemes to send him to London to expand John’s business. Throughout, Agnes possesses keen premonitions and is deeply troubled when she gives birth to twins after their firstborn daughter, which contradicts a vision she’d had that the couple’s two children will stand by her deathbed. More disturbing, and unbelievable to her, is Hamnet and Judith’s sudden trading places on the sick bed. O’Farrell brilliantly explores the married couple’s relationship, capturing Agnes’s intuition that her husband is destined for great things in London, along with her frustration that his world is unknown to her. The book is filled with astonishing, timely passages, such as the plague’s journey to Stratford via a monkey’s flea from Alexandria. This is historical fiction at its best. (July)

Paradise: One Town’s Struggle to Survive an American Wildfire

Journalist Johnson debuts with a brutal account of the 2018 Camp Fire, the deadliest wildfire in California history. Drawing on firsthand accounts and 911 dispatch reports, Johnson follows a cast of residents, officials, and fire department workers as the fire ravaged their town and their lives changed. Outlining the factors that set the stage for the blaze, Johnson notes that fire management practices are not as straightforward as they seem: by the time the Camp Fire broke out, “a century’s worth of colonial fire suppression policies... had allowed the woods to become diseased and overgrown,” compared to Indigenous practices that historically cleared out debris with low-intensity burns. This, coupled with neglect on the part of the Pacific Gas and Electric company, whose equipment sparked the inferno, primed Paradise for disaster. Johnson’s attention to grisly detail can be overwhelming (the list of victims, along with how they were found, for instance)—but she balances the horror with compassion: “Maybe someday the town she had known would... rise strong and whole again under the tall pines.” This devastating history may be tough to read at times, but those who stay the course will find it crucial, comprehensive, and moving. Agent: Larry Weissman, Larry Weissman Literary. (Aug.)

Train Dreams

Readers eager for a fat follow-up to Tree of Smoke could be forgiven a modicum of skepticism at this tidy volume—a reissue of a 2003 O. Henry Prize–winning novella that originally appeared in the Paris Review—but it would be a shame to pass up a chance to encounter the synthesis of Johnson's epic sensibilities rendered in miniature in the clipped tone of Jesus' Son. The story is a snapshot of early 20th-century America as railroad laborer Robert Granier toils along the rails that will connect the states and transform his itinerant way of life. Drinking in tent towns and spending summers in the wilds of Idaho, Granier misses the fire back home that leaves no trace of his wife and child. The years bring diminishing opportunities, strange encounters, and stranger dreams, but it's not until after participating in the miracle of flight—and a life-changing encounter with a mythical monster—that Granier realizes what he's been looking for. An ode to the vanished West that captures the splendor of the Rockies as much as the small human mysteries that pass through them, this svelte stand-alone has the virtue of being a gem in itself, and, for the uninitiated, a perfect introduction to Johnson. (Sept.)

 

Turgenev

Ivan Turgenev was a misfit. Although Russian to the soles of his feet, he was happy only when living abroad. For decades he passionately pursued a stoop-shouldered soprano who responded only with kind words. He drew close to Tsar-hating conspirators, mistrusted revolution and was scorned by conservatives and leftists alike. This engrossing, brisk biography by the French biographer of Tolstoy, Gogol and Chekhov offers no major personal revelations or stunning literary insights. Troyat's achievement in this down-to-earth, concise narrative is to take the measure of a sensitive man torn between literature and love, between Slavophile longings and an attraction to Western liberal ways. There are unforgettable scenes: Turgenev showing Tolstoy how the can-can is danced in Paris; young Ivan, a dandified student in Germany, watched over by a male secretary who is actually his bastard half-brother; Dostoyevsky goading the rootless aristocrat into a towering rage. Troyat seamlessly interweaves Turgenev's letters and journal entries to pin down his enigmatic subject. Photos not seen by PW. (Nov.)

Vineland

Set in Northern California in 1984 and peopled with quirky characters, Pynchon's latest is a series of brilliant set pieces eventually overwhelmed by its own frenzied exuberance. 200,000 first printing. (Feb.)