Nonfiction selection Spring 2026

This spring’s nonfiction highlights offer sharp insights into familiar experiences, uncover overlooked histories, and offer grounded insight into the crises shaping our present. From intimate essays that rethink motherhood to journeys through threatened landscapes; from portraits of moral courage in dark times to new ways of understanding inherited pain; from a fresh look at Europe through the legacy of Yugoslavia to the long, surprising influence of the Flemings in Britain — each title invites readers to pause, reconsider and discover something essential.

In this sharp, intimate essay collection, Van Beek dismantles the persistent myths that shape how we view mothers and motherhood. With a lucid, literary voice, she interlaces her own experiences with wider social and cultural narratives, revealing how inherited expectations continue to define, constrain and haunt women’s lives. The result is an insightful and resonant work that invites readers to rethink what motherhood means - and why its stories matter.

Philosopher Alicja Gescinska offers a thoughtful contemporary counterpart to Hannah Arendt’s seminal work. Through the lives of ten women who brought integrity and moral clarity to some of history’s bleakest moments, she explores how goodness endures even when confronted with profound darkness. This richly textured book illuminates the resilience of the human spirit and invites readers to reflect on the quiet forces that sustain our shared humanity.

Tine Hens goes in search of what is gradually slipping away from us in a rapidly changing world. She travels to landscapes under pressure – melting glaciers, depleted fields – and observes the animals and plants that are losing their habitats, such as the once so familiar lark. Along the way, she submerges herself in her own memory, where the old abundance still resonates. This book is both a recipe for wonder and a bulwark against forgetting.

If traumatic memories are handed down from one generation to the next, then we surely must have generations of consolation in our bodies as well. Can we move on from trauma to solace? And if we can, then how? Sabi focuses on what can be achieved within healing. She investigates the idea that trauma pain is prelingual and that healing needs to take place at a physical level too.

Yugoslavia began as an aspiration, as the noble ideal of uniting the southern Slavic peoples. What followed was a meandering and often turbulent history: from kingdom to socialist republic, from tourist paradise to warzone. In this book, Yugoslavia becomes a fractured mirror held up to Europe: the problems the continent struggles with today emerged years earlier in the Balkans. In a Europe that increasingly seems to dance to a thousand tunes, the tale of Yugoslavia has taken on renewed relevance.

Els Snick reopens the doors to De Visscherie, the once‑thriving venue where generations marked life’s celebrations. Yet behind its convivial façade lies a more complex history. It turns out there is a link with priest and poet Cyriel Verschaeve, once a leading figure of the Flemish Movement but sentenced to death after the war for collaboration. With measured attention, Snick brings these layered legacies into view, offering a poised and resonant portrait of a place shaped equally by communal warmth and the darker undercurrents of its past.

Did you know the first Queen of England was of Flemish descent? Or that a knight from the Low Countries saved the life of William the Conqueror during the famous Battle of Hastings? In this sweeping narrative, the author describes the lasting influence of the Flemings (people who ventured across from Flanders to England in the early Middle Ages and settled there) in Britain, from the early Middle Ages right up to the present day.