Hello and a very warm welcome to damppebbles. It’s Tuesday which means it’s time for this week’s Top Ten Tuesday post. I’ve decided to take part in That Artsy Reader Girl’s Top Ten Tuesday meme to mix things up a little here at damppebbles. Add a little bit of variety to our bookish weeks.

The meme was originally created by The Broke and the Bookish but has lived with Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl since January 2018. It was created to encompass a love of books, of lists and to bring readers together. If you would also like to take part then you’re very welcome: the more, the merrier. Just make sure you link back to Jana’s post every week. If you don’t have a blog, then no problem, just add your list to the comments below.

This week’s theme is Most Anticipated Books Releasing in the First Half of 2026. I’ll give you fair warning, I’m pretty rubbish at this type of post. I rarely find out about new releases more than a week or two before they’re due to be published. I’ll give it a go though. Keep everything crossed for me…

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1. The Hollow Boys by Tariq Ashkanani (May 2026)
Two children lost. The wrong one found.

It’s a warm evening in September when nine-year-old Danny Yates comes back from the dead. He walks into town half-starved and silent, ten months after he and his best friend Will Keefe were presumed drowned. And when Danny does finally speak, he swears that he’s not Danny. He’s Will.

Danny’s mother is convinced that her boy has come back wrong. More than that, she thinks the town itself is now at risk from whatever dark force returned her son. Chief of Police John Deacon is more interested in how the sinister disappearance of two boys could have been written off as a tragic accident, and who was responsible. What happened to Danny to make him take on his friend’s name, his personality? And does Danny’s return mean there’s a chance that Will is still alive?

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2. Last One Out by Jane Harper (April 2026)
He had been here, that was clear from the marks in the dust. And he had been alone.

In a dying town, Ro Crowley waits for her son on the evening of his twenty-first birthday.

Sam never comes home. His footprints in the dust of three abandoned houses offer the only clue to his final movements. One set in. One set out.

Five long years later, Ro returns to Carralon Ridge for the annual memorial of Sam’s disappearance. The skeletal community is now an echo of itself, having fractured under the pressure of the coal mine operating on its outskirts.

But Ro still wants answers. Only a few people remain. If the truth is to be found in that town, does it lie among them?

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3. Dead in the Water by John Marrs (January 2026)
When Damon survives a near-drowning, his life flashes before his eyes. Every memory is crystal clear―except one. A dead boy. A face he can’t place. A moment he doesn’t remember living. At first he tells himself it’s a trick of the mind. But everything else he saw was real. So why not this?

With his waking life stalked by the disturbing scene, confusion quickly turns to obsession. Desperate for answers, Damon digs into his fractured past, and becomes convinced that the only way to remember…is to die again. And again. And again. When he meets a perfect stranger who’s all too willing to help, the stage is set for his dice with death.

But if this is what it takes to uncover the truth, maybe some memories are better left buried…

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4. The Hive by Ronald Malfi (April 2026)
The residents of Mariner’s Cove are changing…

In the aftermath of a violent storm, a collective obsession is rapidly developing among the people of this quaint suburban neighborhood. Random, everyday items left scattered upon the lawns, the streets, and the shoreline all seem to call out to them. There is an item for almost everyone, and each item has a certain hold over the person who finds it—a hold that soon turns into unwavering infatuation. They hide their items from each other, obsess over them, and they will do anything—anything—to protect them.

The collective hum of bees’ wings…

A young boy finds himself the possessor of a strange and inexplicable power. Is the arrival of this power linked to the increasingly odd and dangerous behavior of the residents of Mariner’s Cove? Has he been granted this power in order to thwart whatever is about to happen in this small, bayside community, or is there a more sinister purpose?

All hail the Dragon…

All eyes are on him now.

The residents of Mariner’s Cove are watching.

They move as one, like a solitary organism, and will do anything to succeed in their single-minded purpose.

They will not be stopped.

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5. The Killer in Room Five by Sam Holland (May 2026)
A terrible confession

In an isolated room in Hollowpines, an infamous psychiatric hospital, Joe Sinclair is confessing to a violent murder.

An impossible crime

Locked away, Joe couldn’t possibly have killed the man, so how does he know so many of the horrifying details?

A detective at her limits

Suspended after a colleague was stabbed on her watch, DC Abby Fox has only just returned to work. But at Hollowpines, she must find out what really happened and how exactly Joe is involved.

Is he to blame, or the only one who can stop the killer?

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6. I Did a Bad Thing by Louise Jensen (April 2026)
Oh, God. There’s so much blood.

Panic skitters around every cell in my body. I can’t breathe.

I need to hide the evidence. From everyone.

What have I done?

When Mia Finch begins documenting her daughter’s battle with a rare blood disorder, she never expected to become a popular social media influencer. And she never expected that fame to turn into a nightmare …

One year later, a true crime documentary airs looking into the case of the Finch family tragedy. As the documentary uncovers more about what really happened to the Finches, public interest in the case reaches fever pitch. In a world where everyone is watching, how can you keep your darkest secrets hidden?

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7. The Truth about Ruby Cooper by Liz Nugent (March 2026)
If my sister hadn’t been beautiful, none of it would have happened.

Ruby Cooper and her sister, Erin, live an idyllic life in their close-knit church community in Boston. But when Ruby is sixteen, she is involved in an incident that causes her family’s world to implode.

Across decades, the fallout leaves a wake of destruction behind Ruby in Dublin and Erin in Boston.

Not that Ruby wants to think about the past.

But it can’t stay a secret forever.

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8. The Secrets We Hide by Karin Slaughter (June 2026)
Welcome back to North Falls―a small town with big secrets.

Sheriff Emmy Clifton and her sister, ex-federal agent Jude Archer, investigate a brutal attack that shatters their town’s fragile peace.

But the deeper Emmy digs, the more dangerous it gets…

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9. The Last Place You Look by Nikki Smith (July 2026 🤷‍♀️)

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10. Wasteland Girls by Anna Bailey (July 2026)
Wasteland Girls is a collection of lyrical, incisive and luminous stories by the Sunday Times bestselling author of Tall Bones and Our Last Wild Days.

In ‘Long Way to Come for a Sip of Water’, which was shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award, Texan man Ready drives through a divided US to see his dying brother. Wasteland Girls, the title story, is a powerful tale of a family of hoarders, of magic and revenge. In Yukon 1940, a woman sits beside the body of her husband in a remote cabin, trapped by the frozen sea. The Girl in the Ground follows a woman who suddenly reappears after twenty years of absence, but for whom the past is a void.

Deeply atmospheric and soulful, the stories in Wasteland Girls are inspired by the author’s experience of living amid the beautiful but often ferocious remote landscapes of the US, and among the wild and secretive people who inhabit them.

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All I’m doing by including titles due to be published in July is limiting my selection. You know, when I have to compile a second list of books ‘releasing in the second half of the year’? Still, I’ve already got a couple of books for that list (M.W. Craven, Riley Sager, and eek a new Janice Hallett featuring the Fairway Players!!!). Are you taking part in Top Ten Tuesday this week? Let me know in the comments.

So there we have it! If you fancy joining in next week then head on over to That Artsy Reader Girl’s blog to find out what the next topic is!