#second novels

Discovering a promising debut writer is always exciting, since there is so much in store to relish. Here is a selection of second novels from terrific up-and-coming writers that will be published in 2018 and that I am excited about.

Amazing debut novels are a thing of joy, and lucky us, it seems like there are more of them than ever these days. But what about the follow-ups? How many authors survived the dreaded sophomore slump? And how many famous novels were actually an author’s second?

I was curious about this, but when I Googled “second novels,” there were a lot of articles about people trying to write a second novel, but not many on great second novels themselves.

So here’s a list of fantastic second novels that I hope will give people lots of new books to check out. There are literally hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of second novels in existence, so I went with the first 100 that popped into my brain.

Some of these are an author’s most famous work, and some of them are an author’s lesser known work, but all are wonderful.

There is perhaps no more fraught phrase in the book business than “second novel.” I think everyone wishes that these books could be skipped entirely and all novelists could progress directly from first to third.