Can't-Wait is a weekly meme hosted by Wishful Endings that spotlights exciting upcoming releases that we can't wait to be released!
The Mulai by Munir Hachemi, trans. Julia Sanches
Publication: July 14th, 2026
Coach House Books
Paperback. 176 pages.
"Interstellar via Invisible Cities: spec-fic translated from Spanish imagines a utopian way of life on another planet.
Years after the climate wars on Earth, the Mulai have settled into their new home on an unnamed planet. Supplies stopped arriving from Earth many years ago, and the Mulai have found a way to live. But now the people of Earth want to know what happened to the settlers, so they send The Archaeologist.
He finds that they have become a different people: uncannily similar to us but with something radically Other about them. Their language has become more about change than stability, and the ways they eat, reproduce, bury their dead, and understand gender have all transformed into something almost unrecognizable. The Archaeologist feels like his trip is one extended misunderstanding.
With fragments from The Archaeologist’s notes and the stories of Flukeh and Faida, who map both their world and their language, The Mulai offers a glimpse of a world adjacent to ours – one that just may be a model for how to better our own.
From one of Granta’s Best Young Spanish-Language Novelists and author of the celebrated Living Things, and translated by the award-winning Julia Sanches, comes a bold new Borgesian reimagining of what ‘civilization’ might look like.
Drawing on Borges, Le Guin, and Calvino, The Mulai is a mind-bending work of metafiction whose interlocking puzzles resound with Munir Hachemi’s singularly playful and eclectic style."
I wasn't able to fit this one into my June CWW posts, so I'm squeezing it in here because it sounds so good! The concept slightly reminds me of Michel Faber's The Book of Lost Things, which I loved, and I am just always captivated by ideas like these, so I'm excited to read it!
Reliquary by Hannah Whitten
Publication: August 11th, 2026
Orbit
Hardcover. 300 pages.
"A young woman is lured to her late fiancé's remote island estate—only to uncover eerie family secrets, a haunting past, and a monstrous hunger stirring beneath the sea in this deliciously atmospheric horror debut from New York Times bestselling author Hannah Whitten.
When Claire’s fiancé mysteriously dies of an unknown neurological illness, she’s prepared to sink back into the lonely life she lived before. Orphaned by a freak boating accident in her childhood, she never expected to find connection like she did with Elias, anyway. Their relationship wasn’t perfect—his coldness, his secrets, his strange aversion to the ocean—but what relationship is?
When Elias’s family reaches out—his incredibly wealthy family, from whom he was estranged—and invites Claire to a three-day wake at Harrow Point, their family home on a private island, Claire is given the chance to find family again. To belong to something, just like she’s always wanted. Just like Elias knew she was desperate to have.
Even if that family is a little strange. Even if their coastal home stirs up memories of the accident that killed her parents and sister. Even if Ash, Elias’s older brother, seems insistent on Claire leaving as soon as possible.
As she dives deeper into the world of Harrow Point, she will uncover the nature of her own traumatic connection to the ocean. There is something swimming in the bowels of Harrow Point, and it is hungry…"
A "traumatic connection to the ocean" is very captivating, as is much of the rest of this premise, so I'm eager to check it out.
Etna by Paul Yoon
Publication: August 4th, 2026
Scribner
Hardcover. 208 pages.
"Beloved author and winner of The Story Prize, Paul Yoon, is back with the unforgettable story of a working dog, Etna, who, after a devastating war, embarks on an odyssey in the hopes of returning home.
Set in a fictional country in the present day, this is a story told through the eyes of an ex-military dog, Etna. After surviving years of a devastating war, Etna decides one night to leave the men he has fought alongside for years and return home—to the place where he was taken from when he was young, in the thin but persistent hope that if a home exists for him, it might be there.
Thus begins an exhilarating odyssey told through the eyes of a dog as he traverses across ruined landscapes and fights to survive in a world that, even in peacetime, proves to be just as precarious. Along the way, he encounters other animals and humans who are attempting to figure out how to start again. What makes a life when there is no home to go back to? How do we begin to trust each other again after such profound loss?
This is a novel about the power of an idea, about never giving up, and ultimately a novel about finding hope in the most dire of times."
This sounds fantastic, but... if anyone reads it/has read it and wants to let me know if the dog suffers in any way/shape/form, that's going to be the make or break deal of whether I can actually read this one or not, lol. So definitely reach out to let me know if you have!
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