John of John by Douglas Stewart

NOTE: This title releases on May 5th, 2026. If preordering, you may select pickup or delivery. Pickups can occur any time during normal business hours, starting with the day the book is officially released. If you select delivery, books will ship ON release day, not FOR release day. Thanks for your understanding!

NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2026 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES, WASHINGTON POST, LOS ANGELES TIMES, TIME, OPRAH DAILY, AND VOGUE

“So immersive, so all-encompassing, that I felt like I was living in it.”—Ann Patchett

From the Booker Prize-winning and New York Times bestselling author of Shuggie Bain and Young Mungo comes a vivid, moving novel following a young man returning to his Hebridean island home, a portrait of a father’s expectations and a son’s desires

Out of money and with little to show for his art school education, John-Calum Macleod takes the ferry back home to the Isle of Harris in the Outer Hebrides to find that little has changed except for him. He returns to the windswept croft and the two pillars of his childhood: his father John, a sheep farmer, tweed weaver, and lay preacher in the local Presbyterian church, and his maternal grandmother Ella, a profanity-loving Glaswegian whose steady warmth helped Cal weather the sudden departure of his mother.

Cal privately wonders if any lonely men might be found on the barren hillsides of home, while John is dismayed by his son’s long hair, strange clothes, and seeming unwillingness to be Saved. But Cal isn't the only one in the croft house who is keeping secrets. As lambing season turns to shearing season, the threads holding together the community together become increasingly frayed, and nothing will remain as it was before.

John of John is a singular novel about duty, passion, and the transformative power of the truth. It is a magnificent literary work that cements Douglas Stuart's reputation as one of our greatest novelists working today.