Fiction Has Never Been More in Tune With Music
Observer ·
Seven years after 'Daisy Jones & The Six,' novelists have returned en masse to the stage, the studio and the conservatory for their inspiration. This year’s strongest titles span nearly every genre and two centuries of musical history.
One could argue that since Ann Patchett ’s seminal novel Bel Canto was released in 2001, the world of music has captivated fiction fanatics. But the runaway success of 2019’s Daisy Jones and the Six , penned by Taylor Jenkins Reid , pushed that thematic material decidedly into pop culture zeitgeist territory. And while every year brings some books focused on the industry, we’ve probably never been more blessed with riveting works about music and musicians than in 2026—and I should know, as I wrote one myself. My debut novel, The Encore , takes place in both the rarefied air of conservatories and the rollicking excess of a rock tour bus, but the below titles cover every music genre from boy band to folk music, and are set as far back as the Romantic era all the way up to the present day.
Authors working in this space include recent Pulitzer Prize winners like Barbara Kingsolver and Yiyun Li , as well as fellow debuts such as Delphine Seddon and Benny B. Peterson . As a writer whose interest in words is probably only matched by my love of a live concert, I was delighted to research and read this year’s best titles that feature music, musicians or both. Below, you’ll find my top picks for this year’s best music novels.
Boy band nostalgia has been at an all-time high recently, due in no small part to the Backstreet Boys reunion tour at the Sphere in Las Vegas . But that band ran because New Kids on the Block first walked: for a dip into that fandom, check out Emma Straub ’s latest, which features a fictional band called Boy Talk that shares much in common with their real-life counterparts in NKOTB. Taking place over a four-day fan sailing on a cruise ship, American Fantasy plumbs thorny issues like the dark side of fame and reckonings with aging, all with Straub’s trademark humor, wit and richly painted settings.
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Lambda Literary Fellow Anna Dorn ’s latest centers on the (fantastically named) Blue Velour, a somewhat long-suffering performer whose latest album has suddenly catapulted her into a level of fame and exposure heretofore unknown to her. To cope with the pressure, she hires a new assistant, Rose, who also happens to be an obsessive fan. But when the pandemic forces Blue, Rose and her producer Sasha into close quarters in the woods while producing an album, the mix of personalities proves to be both exhilarating and dangerous for all three.
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Pitched as Daisy Jones & The Six meets Euphoria , Seddon’s dazzling debut book follows two young women attempting to navigate the murky waters of the music industry. Eva, an intern at a record label, finds the charismatic Alora while hunting online, but cannot convince her bosses of the singer’s potential. She makes a rash decision to represent her as her manager, experience be damned, but when Eva’s instincts prove correct and Alora explodes as a massive star, the latter’s past soon threatens to upend everything the two have built.
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Prolific author Winstead pivots to upmarket fiction with this title that follows the troubled yet brilliant lead singer of The Future Saints, Hannah, and Theo, the beleaguered record executive tasked with whipping the band into shape. As Hannah’s innate star power (and volatility) finally push the band into virality, however, it becomes clear that demons from her past may torch it all if she can’t learn to face them. What follows is a cinematic journey through grief, fame and what it means to love someone through time.
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This debut novel from journalist Peterson takes the “what if” question of your first, lost love and gallops away with it. Protagonist Jamie is working at a soul-sucking journalism job when her ex-girlfriend Mari arrives with an enticing offer: a chance to perform together on stage once again. But Jamie’s return to music and the reintroduction of Mari to her life means a confrontation of who she is now, and whether that’s where she wants to remain. This book is a generous love letter to indie music and a beautiful rendering of the fragility of first relationships.
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One of this fall’s most anticipated releases is this novel by Li, who won the 2026 Pulitzer Prize in Memoir for the shattering Things in Nature Merely Grow . For her next work, Li pivots to historical fiction, setting Music Against the Night both in Dublin and Pondicherry around 200 years ago. With characters based on the real-life musicians John Field and Adelaide Percheron , the story weaves in themes of loss, ambition and passion, all set against the backdrop of the Romantic era. And if that doesn’t sway you, take famed novelist Ann Patchett’s word for it: “Music Against the Night may well be the most perfectly constructed, moving and beautiful novel I’ve ever read.” Hard to beat that.
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Another literary world juggernaut, ’23 Pulitzer Prize winner Kingsolver also releases a book centered around musicians this year, though hers is more contemporary. Partita is told in a dual timeline, switching between main character Livia’s time at undergrad music conservatory in the late ’80s, and her relatively somber present-day life as a music teacher in a small town. But when a lover from her past erupts into her carefully constructed world, Livia must wrestle with the passion and grief she’s buried for decades.
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In this Sliding Doors -style work from bestselling Aussie author Emma Grey , frustrated classical composer Audrey’s first run-in with scientist Fraser is more awkward than awe-inspiring. But against the odds, the two tumble hard in love for one another, until tragedy forces them to confront the many, branching what-ifs that could have given their story another ending. With her captivating, trenchant prose, Grey takes some of life’s biggest themes—grief, love and uncertainty—and distills them into the technicolor history of just one couple.
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Burns tackles the world of folk and country music in this (literally) lyrical novel that’s told from the dual perspectives of Elle, a scrappy folk singer attempting to make it big in Nashville in the ’70s before vanishing suddenly, and Marijohn, a teenager with a talent for songwriting who’s searching, nearly two decades later, for the mother who abandoned her shortly after birth. What follows is a beautiful rumination on friendship, the creative process and second chances. Burns’s original song lyrics make this an especially immersive read (and superb audiobook experience).
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