Barnes & Noble Picks Maggie O'farrell's Land for June 2026
maggie o'farrell's new novel Land has landed one of Barnes & Noble’s June 2026 Book of the Month picks, putting the Irish historical fiction title in front of shoppers before its summer release. The selection gives the book a prominent retail push at a moment when O’Farrell already has a strong award profile behind her name.
Land and the Great Hunger
Set in Ireland in 1865 shortly after the devastation of the Great Hunger, Land follows Tomás and his 10-year-old son Liam as they travel across a windswept Irish peninsula mapping terrain still scarred by famine and political turmoil. The novel centers on the Ordnance Survey project, with a mysterious encounter in the woods changing Tomás and leaving Liam to finish the journey home while trying to understand what happened to his father.
Barnes & Noble’s June shelf space
Barnes & Noble said the book is a sweeping story about human resilience and a deep connection to the natural world, and its featured edition will include special endpapers and a reading group guide. That extra packaging matters for a novel still weeks away from release: it gives Land a built-in retail identity before it reaches stores and puts O’Farrell’s name in front of book-club buyers as well as general fiction readers.
O’Farrell’s award trail
In 2020, O’Farrell’s Hamnet won the Women’s Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and earlier this year the film adaptation brought her an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. She has also written The Hand That First Held Mine, This Must Be the Place, The Marriage Portrait, and the bestseller I Am, I Am, I Am, which gives Land a rare advantage: it arrives with both literary credibility and a recent screen credit that can widen its audience fast.
Louise Kennedy called the novel "Simply the best novel I've read in years," while Daniel Mason described it as "a breathtaking hymn to the sanctity of natural spaces," and said he was moved by "the thrumming, gorgeous presence of its mosses, waters, winds, and skies." Ferdia Lennon called it "haunting and elemental." With that kind of early praise and a June retail slot already in place, Land is positioned to open as one of the more visible literary releases of the summer.
