What we've been reading: January 2026

Welcome to our monthly reading-round-up for January 2026.

This is the place where we gather highlights from what the Lighthouse team have been reading each month. You can check out round-ups from previous months and years amongst our book lists.

January is always a quiet month for us - time to get bookseller admin done, give elaborate book recommendations to our customers and catch up will all the reading we didn't get round to during the holiday period. We have been a little lax with sharing what we've been reading with you in the last few months of 2025, but we must start the new year with renewed energy, and so...this is what we read in January!

Christina

• Content by Elias Hitschl (not available in translation yet, boo!)
• Middlemarch by George Eliot

Pao

• Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino
• Determination by Tawseef Khan
• When the Museum is Closed by Emi Yagi
• The Correspondent by Virginia Evans
• Wants & Needs by Roxy Dunn
• she will need a stable boy by Jamie Lock

Mairi

• Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe
• Kill Billionaire by Anders Lustgarten
• Slags by Emma Jane Unsworth
• Yellowface by R.F Kuang

Noor

• Babylon, Albion by Dalia al-Dujaili
• Boundless by Jillian Tamaki
• My Grandfather the Master Detective by Masateru Konishi