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This week, our picks for fans of Wuthering Heights, as well as some of the best Booker-nominated coming-of-age novels; plus, a preview of February’s Monthly Spotlight
Foreboding fiction with a gothic edge
Things are pretty busy with us right now, as the International Booker Prize 2026 judges work towards their final decision on this year’s longlist, and we make plans to celebrate 10 years of the prize in its current shape. The office is buzzing and the book piles keep growing.
But – swept up in all the hype surrounding Emerald Fennell’s provocative new adaptation of Wuthering Heights – we’ve still found time to scour the Booker shelves for stories featuring obsessive love, devastating revenge, and, of course, ghostly apparitions.
Fennell first read Wuthering Heights when she was 14, telling the Brontë Women’s Writing Festival, ‘It cracked me open’. The Oscar-winning film director described Emily Brontë’s novel as ‘completely singular. It’s so sexy. It’s so horrible. It’s so devastating.’
Which, of course, got us thinking about the sexy, singular and devastating books that have been nominated for the Booker and International Booker Prizes. And about just how influential some classic novels can be.
Fennell’s love of Wuthering Heights isn’t unique. Many of us have found ourselves enthralled. When asked about the fiction that inspired her career the most, International Booker Prize shortlisted author Maryse Condé, who died in 2024, said, ‘Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, because she touched my heart and mind when I was a child in Guadeloupe, thus proving the force and magic of literature.’
Brontë’s book spoke to a young Natasha Brown, too. In a recent interview, the International Booker Prize 2026 Chair of judges told us that Wuthering Heights was the novel that made her fall in love with reading: ‘When I was about 12, I decided to read Wuthering Heights because I couldn’t sleep and it looked really boring. I ended up not sleeping at all that night. I’d found my first “unputdownable” book.’
If you, too, are a Brontë fan, and like unputdownable fiction with a foreboding atmosphere and a gothic edge, this list of eight Booker-nominated books is for you.
The best coming-of-age fiction
Wuthering Heights could be called a coming-of-age novel, of sorts. It certainly charts Cathy and Heathcliff’s turbulent journey from adolescence to adulthood, in its distinctively wild and haunting way.
Our childhoods and teenage years are nearly always life-defining, shaping the adults we become. It’s perhaps not surprising, then, that coming-of-age stories are some of our most beloved.
‘Coming-of-age’ is often used interchangeably with ‘bildungsroman’, a German phrase that translates to ‘novel of education’ or ‘novel of formation’. It’s a literary genre that focuses on the formative years of life, where psychological growth and self-development are key aspects in a character’s arc.
Bildungsroman novels have been a regular feature of the Booker and International Booker Prizes over the years, and for this reading list we’ve picked out 11 of the best. These books follow the moral and psychological growth of an array of young characters, as they deal with the aftermath of traumatic events, shifting identities and ever-changing family dynamics.
Discover our Monthly Spotlights for January and February
Our Monthly Spotlight pick for January has seen us immersed in My Name is Lucy Barton, Elizabeth Strout’s Booker-longlisted novel, nominated in 2016.
Head over to our website to find an interview with the author, an extract from the opening chapter and a reading guide. You also have a few more days left to enter our competition to win a copy of the book and a limited-edition Booker Prizes tote – it closes on Monday at 12pm GMT.
If you’d like to read ahead, our February pick is going to be At Night All Blood is Black by David Diop, translated by Anna Moschovakis, which won the International Booker Prize in 2021. More next week!
Are you a Wuthering Heights fan? Do you love a coming-of-age story? Have you read or revisited My Name is Lucy Barton over the last few weeks? We love hearing from you – let us know about your latest reads, rereads and to-reads in the comments.
I read Purple Hibiscus recently and loved it. So well written and powerful. My first book by Adichie. Have more of her works on my tbr stack to read.
Yes, I re-read "My Name is Lucy Barton" after you mentioned it because I own a hardcover copy, but first I ordered as many of Strout's books as I could get from our local rural library. Pretty much all of them. My husband re-read them all too. So we're in Elizabeth Strout land. I got so much more from re-reading "My Name is Lucy Barton." For one thing, I've met that character in other books now. But I also paid attention to what Lucy's mentors tell her about writing and copied them into a little Moleskine notebook. The kind doctor reminded me of Olive's love for her doctor in "Olive, Again." The parental relationships broke my heart - and how Lucy just keeps loving them, tending them even in death, really.