This weeks Literary Ledger 12 to 19 June 2026

Welcome to your weekly roundup of all things books! We’re keeping it short and sweet, just five stories to keep you in the loop without overwhelming you. Think of this as your quick fix for staying connected to the book world.

I) Your Fault: London Released

Your Fault: London (the second film in the My Fault series) was released this week and I did indeed get to watch it.

Now, is the premise a bit strange? A young woman, Noah, moves from America to London with her mother and wealthy stepfather, where she meets her stepbrother and falls in love with him. Yes. Did I have to work quite hard to ignore the fact they are step-siblings? Also yes. But once you push that to the side, it’s actually a really enjoyable film (I’m aware how ridiculous that sounds).

The film is based on the bestselling novels by Spanish author Mercedes Ron, which already had a Spanish adaptation called Culpa Mía, also on Prime Video. Although I much preferred the London version. They made a few tweaks here and there that made it more palatable, such as not constantly referring to each other as “step-brother” and “step-sister” (a creative choice that truly ruined the experience).

The male lead also has anger issues in both versions, but in the Spanish film his behaviour is far more controlling and aggressive, directed at the female lead in a way I couldn’t abide by. The London version softens that dynamic slightly. That’s not to say the relationship in Your Fault is healthy, because it really isn’t, but both characters are flawed and messy, rather than it feeling like one person is mistreated the whole time. That, to me, is at least a small improvement.

Overall, I think the casting works really well. It’s fun, easy to watch, and a definite improvement on the Spanish version.

II) The King’s Birthday Honours List: Notable Authors Make the Cut

The King’s Birthday Honours List, awarded annually on the monarch’s official birthday in June, recognises individuals for their contributions to public life. It celebrates well-known figures, civil servants, and everyday people who have made a meaningful impact in their communities. Recommendations are made by the Prime Minister and senior government ministers, although members of the public can also nominate individuals for consideration.

Two recognisable authors who appeared on the list this year (and are now dames) are Julia Donaldson, best known for her children’s book The Gruffalo (and recently announced new title Gruffalo Granny, due for release in September 2026), and Malorie Blackman, known for her YA series Noughts & Crosses, which tackles racism and social injustice in an alternative 22nd-century Britain.

III) Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize 2026 Shortlist

Waterstones has announced its six novels shortlisted for the 2026 Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize, voted by Waterstones booksellers.

The shortlisted books are:

• Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash – A story about a dysfunctional family, an open marriage, and three chaotic, unusual children, whose lives are pulled into a criminal conspiracy when they become entangled with Paul Alabaster, a billionaire shipping magnate.

• Honey in the Wound by Jiyoung Han - Spanning generations of a Korean family marked by magical gifts, we follow a gifted young woman who joins a resistance movement against Japanese imperialism and, decades later, confronts her family's buried past with her granddaughter.

• Under Water by Tara Menon - After losing her mother and then her closest childhood friend during a formative childhood in Thailand, Marissa returns to New York years later and is forced to face the memories that have shaped her life as another disaster looms.

• May We Feed the King by Rebecca Perry - A curator designing immersive historical rooms becomes so fixated on a little-known medieval king that his story starts to blur into her own life, linking her present-day emotional escape with his troubled, uncertain reign.

• A Private Man by Stephanie Sy-Quia - Set between postwar Rome and London and later decades in the present, the story follows a newly ordained priest and a woman drawn toward the Church and forbidden love, whose choices ripple forward into a family history only fully understood generations later.

• The Infamous Gilberts by Angela Tomaski - At Thornwalk, a fading English manor awaiting conversion into a luxury hotel, an observer guides us through the crumbling history of the Gilbert siblings, revealing how their family story, spanning wartime upheaval to modern decline, unfolds alongside the house’s slow transformation and loss.

IV) Major Publishers Sue WeLib Over Alleged Piracy

Publishers such as Hachette, HarperCollins, and Macmillan (among many others) have brought a lawsuit against pirate site WeLib, a digital library made up of two platforms: an educational school library system and a public file-sharing site for e-books and academic articles.

The publishers are accusing it of large-scale piracy, claiming it distributes copyrighted books without permission. It’s what’s often referred to as a “shadow library”, where both new releases and older backlist titles are made available for free.

Like most piracy sites, it’s being targeted because of the obvious harm it causes to authors and rights holders. But enforcement is notoriously difficult, similar to streaming piracy, because these platforms tend to shift domains or operate across multiple countries, making it hard to actually shut them down completely. So how successful this lawsuit will be is anyones guess.

V) The Correspondent Sales Jump After Virginia Evans’ Women’s Prize Victory

After Virginia Evans won the Women’s Prize for Fiction on 11 June 2026, there’s been a noticeable surge in sales, as you’d expect. These kinds of awards tend to boost visibility significantly.

The Correspondent follows a lifelong correspondent who has made sense of her world through writing letters, but is forced to revisit a painful chapter from her past when an unexpected message arrives.