Barnes & Noble has named Maggie O’Farrell’s new novel Land one of its June 2026 Book of the Month selections, putting the historical fiction title in front of readers ahead of its summer release.

The retailer described Land as a sweeping story about human resilience and a deep connection to the natural world with a sense of wonder. Its pitch for the novel also promises buried treasure, overlapping lives, ancient woodland, persistent ghosts, a particularly loyal dog and the idea that, when it comes to both land and history, nothing ever goes away.

Set in Ireland in 1865, shortly after the devastation of the Great Hunger, the novel follows Tomás and his 10-year-old son Liam as they travel across a windswept peninsula mapping terrain still marked by famine and political turmoil. The father and son are working on the vast Ordnance Survey project, but a mysterious encounter in the woods changes Tomás forever, leaving Liam to try to make sense of what happened while also trying to finish the journey home.

The selection arrives as O’Farrell extends a run of acclaimed historical fiction that has made her one of the most closely watched novelists of the moment. Her 2020 novel Hamnet won the Women’s Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award, later becoming a major film adaptation that she co-wrote with director Chloé Zhao. That adaptation brought her an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay earlier this year.

O’Farrell has also written The Hand That First Held Mine, This Must Be the Place and The Marriage Portrait, while her memoir I Am, I Am, I Am became a bestseller. Barnes & Noble said its exclusive edition of Land will include special endpapers and a reading group guide, adding a collectible layer to a book already being sold on the strength of its atmosphere and its setting.

Early praise has been strong. Louise Kennedy called it “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 the book “haunting and elemental.”

Land is scheduled for release this summer, and Barnes & Noble’s June selection gives it a timely launch pad as readers head into the season with a new O’Farrell novel already framed as one of the year’s notable literary bets.