Can't-Wait Wednesday: After the Fall by Edward Ashton, The Renovation by Kenan Orhan, & The Pohaku by Jasmin 'Iolani Hakes

   

 Can't-Wait is a weekly meme hosted by Wishful Endings that spotlights exciting upcoming releases that we can't wait to be released

After the Fall by Edward Ashton
Publication: February 24th, 2026
St. Martin's Press
Hardcover. 288 pages.
Pre-order: Bookshop.org | Amazon

From Goodreads:
"Part alien invasion story, part buddy comedy, and part workplace satire, After The Fall by Edward Ashton, author of Mickey7 (inspiration for the film Mickey 17), asks an important question: would humans really make great pets? Humans must be silent.

Humans must be obedient. Humans must be good.

All his life, John has tried to live by those rules. Most days, it’s not too difficult. A hundred and twenty years after The Fall, and a hundred years after the grays swept in to pick the last dregs of humanity out of the wreckage of a ruined world, John has found himself bonded to Martok Barden nee Black Hand, one of the "good" grays. Sure, Martok is broke, homeless, and borderline manic, but he’s always treated John like an actual person, and sometimes like a friend. It’s a better deal than most humans get.

But when Martok puts John’s bond up as collateral against an abandoned house in the woods that he hopes to turn into a wilderness retreat for wealthy grays, John learns that there are limits to Martok’s friendship. Soon he finds himself caught between an underworld boss who thinks Martok is something that he very much is not, a girl who was raised by feral humans and has nothing but contempt for pets like John, and Martok himself, whose delusions of grandeur seem to be finally catching up with him.

Also, not for nothing, something in the woods has been killing people.

John has sixty days before Martok’s loan comes due to unravel the mystery of how humans wound up holding the wrong end of the domestication stick and find a way to turn Martok’s half-baked plans into profit enough to buy back his life, all while avoiding getting butchered by feral humans or having his head crushed by an angry gray. Easy peasy, right?"

Edward Ashton always has some fascinating premises, and I'm so intrigued by this one. I can't wait to see what Ashton does with this one.

The Renovation by Kenan Orhan

Publication: February 10th, 2026

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Hardcover. 256 pages.

Pre-order: Bookshop.org | Amazon
From Goodreads:

"A woman discovers that her bathroom has been remodeled into a prison cell―where she is an unlikely inmate―in this surreal novel of exile, grief, memory, and migration.

In Salerno, Italy, Dilara spends her days caring for her aging father and her hypochondriac husband. Since leaving her native Istanbul, she’s been unable to find a job―adrift, she becomes increasingly fixated on domestic improvement, specifically on the renovation of a second bathroom. When the work is completed, she enters and finds herself not in a bathroom but in a prison cell, and a Turkish one at that.

As she tries and fails to conceal the unfortunate discovery from her husband, she confronts the prison’s other inhabitants―the buffoonish guards who refuse to believe her conundrum; the other women who begin filling the cells beyond hers―and the strange things that drift through it: the smell of the Bosporus, her mother’s voice, calls to prayer . . .

Has she gone mad? Is she the victim of a terrible prank? Is it a portal, a dream, a simulation? As she burrows deeper into her cell, her life beyond it begins to fall apart―her husband disappears, her father’s grip on reality loosens, political dictatorship threatens to destroy everything worth keeping.

In his slender, disquieting first novel, Kenan Orhan tells a story of modern migration like no other. The Renovation is a tragic comedy of displacement, a story that remodels its own form to the dazzling inevitable end."

This sounds incredibly weird in the best literary fiction way possible, and I can't wait to read it.

The Pōhaku by Jasmin 'Iolani Hakes
Publication: February 3rd, 2026
HarperVia
Hardcover. 320 pages.
Pre-order: Bookshop.org | Amazon

From Goodreads:
"From the award-winning author of Hula, a dazzling saga about the generations of women tasked with protecting the history and place that made them.

A young woman lies comatose in a hospital, watched by her estranged grandmother. Mystery surrounds the woman’s fall—did she jump off the cliff, or was she swept away by a wave? Her grandmother suspects it is linked to the pōhaku, an ancient stone that their family was tasked with protecting.

In this novel spanning generations across Hawai`i and California, it soon becomes clear that the pōhaku’s story must sur­vive if there is to be any hope of the fam­ily’s reconciliation with their home, with nature, and with each other.

Reminiscent of Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing, Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko, and Tommy Orange’s There, There, The Pōhaku is an immersive and bold novel about the his­tory, perseverance, and resilience of the Hawaiian people."

I really liked Jamin 'Iolani Hakes' previous book, Hula, and I'm curious to read more about this historical period and setting!