What to read in 2019
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What to read in 2019

AUSTRALIAN FICTION

A long way from the barbecue, The Slap author Christos Tsiolkas shakes things up as his first novel in six years, Damascus (second half 2019, Allen & Unwin), leaves the streets of Melbourne and takes on the founding of the Christian Church, focusing on Saint Paul and the generations after Christ's death. Elliot Perlman (Seven Types of Ambiguity) is back with Maybe the Horse Will Talk (October, Vintage), a love story cross thriller that tackles sexual harassment, corruption and racism in the modern job market. Miles Franklin Award-winner Andrew McGahan, who sadly has terminal cancer, has continued work on his literary thriller The Rich Man's House (A&U) due late 2019.

If 2018 was anyone's year it was Gerald Murnane's – a New York Times profile, shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award and winning the Prime Minister's Literary Award. Text will release A Season on Earth (February) that unites Murnane's A Lifetime on Clouds, published in 1976, with two previously unpublished sections about teen sex-fanatic Adrian Sherd.

Author Heather Rose's latest novel is set in Tasmania.

Author Heather Rose's latest novel is set in Tasmania.Credit:Jim Rice

It's a family affair as Peter Goldsworthy publishes his first novel since 2008 (Minotaur, July, Viking) and his daughter, pianist Anna Goldsworthy, turns to post-World War II Adelaide in Melting Moments (July, Black Inc.).

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UN worker Astrid Coleman returns to Tasmania to help her brother, the Premier, after a $4 billion bridge is destroyed in Stella Prize-winner Heather Rose's new gem (second half 2019, A&U). A troubled marriage and a missing teenager kick-off Peggy Frew's Islands (March, A&U). Carrie Tiffany's Exploded View (March, Text) promises a "revelatory interrogation of Australian girlhood" traversing the roads of inland Australia in the 1970s. Tony Birch also turns to the past for The White Girl (July, UQP), which tells the story of a family torn apart by the government's policy of removing Indigenous children from their homes. Swallow the Air author Tara June Winch will release The Yield (July, Hamish Hamilton), which looks at the theft of Indigenous language and culture as her character August Gondiwindi returns to Australia for the funeral of her grandfather, who has compiled a dictionary of the language he was forbidden to speak as a child.

Tony Birch has a new novel in July.

Tony Birch has a new novel in July.Credit:Lee Besford

Graeme Simsion draws to a close his best-selling Rosie trilogy with The Rosie Result (February, Text), while Steven Carroll ends his Glenroy novels with The Year of the Beast (February, Fourth Estate).

Lucy Treloar follows her stunning debut with Wolfe Island (September, Picador) and Sue Woolfe will look at "dangerous motherhood" in her as yet untitled novel (November, Scribner). After The Last Painting of Sara de Vos(which sold more than 67,000 copies in Australia), Dominic Smith's The Electric Hotel (June, A&U) delves into the rise of the movie industry. Simon Cleary dissects the legacy of the war in Afghanistan in The War Artist (March, UQP) and Philip Salom's The Returns (August, Transit) is about a Melbourne book editor and kooky bookseller.

Expect story collections from Chris Womersley (A Lovely and Terrible Thing, May, Picador), Debra Adelaide (Zebra, February, Picador) and Josephine Rowe (Here Until August, September, Black Inc.).

Look for stalwarts Anson Cameron (Strange Blasphemy, June, Vintage), Kate Forsyth (The Blue Rose, July, Vintage), Andrea Goldsmith (Invented Lives, April, Scribe), Melina Marchetta (The Place on Dalhousie, April, Viking), Nikki Gemmell (The Ripping Tree, September, HarperCollins) and Wayne Macauley (Simpson Returns: A Novella, April, Text). Plus Text's rising stars Melanie Cheng (Room for a Stranger, May) and Jennifer Down (untitled, September).

Author Luke Carman's book will be published by Giramondo in 2019.

Author Luke Carman's book will be published by Giramondo in 2019.

Publishers are on the hunt for uplit after the success of Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine (Gail Honeyman, HarperCollins). You could try: The Time Is Now, Monica Sparrow (Matt Howard, March, Transit Lounge), The Aunts' House (Elizabeth Stead, April, UQP), The Other Half of Augusta Hope (Joanna Glen, HarperCollins, April) and Gravity is the Thing (Jaclyn Moriarty, April, Pan Macmillan).

INTERNATIONAL FICTION

Miles away from Eat Pray Love, Elizabeth Gilbert's City of Girls (June, Bloomsbury) focuses on the world of the showgirl in 1940s New York. "For years, I have wanted to write a novel about women who have lots of sex, and who like it, and whose lives aren't destroyed by it," Gilbert says. In a world with far fewer feathers, Margaret Atwood will publish The Handmaid's Tale sequel, The Testaments (September, Chatto & Windus), which picks up the story 15 years later.

Arundhati Roy's collection My Seditious Heart will be published in June.

Arundhati Roy's collection My Seditious Heart will be published in June.

Ian McEwan embraces science fiction in Machines Like Me (April, Jonathan Cape), set in an "alternative" 1980s London with synthetic humans. Jeanette Winterson also takes on technology in her retelling of Mary Shelley's classic, Frankissstein (May, Jonathan Cape).

Lanny (April, Faber), the second novel from Grief is the Thing with Feathers author Max Porter, is set in an English village haunted by "Dead Papa Toothwort" who has "woken from his slumber and is listening, and watching". Staying in the world of the fantastical, Man Booker winner Marlon James draws on African mythology in Black Leopard, Red Wolf (February, Michael Joseph), the first in his Dark Star trilogy. A strong new voice in African writing is Nigerian Chigozie Obioma who gives us An Orchestra of Minorities (January, Hachette), which adds an Igbo twist to Homer's Odyssey. The Freedom Artist by Ben Okri (February, HarperCollins) is bound to pack a punch, questioning the nature of truth and justice in an all-too-relevant story.

Marlon James has started a new trilogy.

Marlon James has started a new trilogy.

Mark Haddon (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time) looks to Pericles, Prince of Tyre for his first novel in seven years, The Porpoise (May, Chatto & Windus). Irish writer Paul Lynch's Beyond the Sea (November, Oneworld)is his first novel to be set outside of his home country and follows two South American fisherman drifting in the ocean. After the acclaimed Lullaby, Leila Slimani's Adele (March, Faber) takes a sex-addicted journalist in Paris as its subject. Ali Smith releases the third in her seasonal quartet (Spring, March, Hamish Hamilton) and Zadie Smith will publish her first short story collection Grand Union (October, Hamish Hamilton). Look out for Siri Hustvedt (Memories of the Future, March, Hachette), T.C. Boyle (Outside Looking In, April, Bloomsbury Circus), Helen Oyeyemi (Gingerbread, March, Picador) and Joan Silber (Improvement, March, Atlantic).

On the more commercial side, there's Bea's Hive (October, Bantam) by The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul author Deborah Rodriguez, Daisy Jones and the Six (Taylor Jenkins Reid, March, Hutchinson), which has received a rave review from Reese Witherspoon, David Nicholl's Sweet Sorrow (July, Hodder & Stoughton), Joanne Harris has the fourth in her series that started with Chocolat (The Strawberry Thief, April, Orion) and The History of Bees author Maja Lunde offers The End of the Ocean (September, Simon & Schuster).

Jill Abramson, former executive editor of The New York Times.

Jill Abramson, former executive editor of The New York Times.Credit:Andrew Harrer

NEW VOICES

Prizes for emerging writers have provided a bumper crop of Australian debuts including Banjo Prize winner Tim Slee (Taking Tom Murray Home, August, HarperCollins), PRH Literary Prize winner Kathryn Hind (Hitch, June, Vintage) and Michael Gifkins Prize winner Ruby Porter (Attraction, May, Text).

Jamaican-born Sienna Brown's Master of My Fate (May, Vintage) is based on the true story of William Buchanan who was born on a Jamaican plantation and transported to Australia. Transit Lounge has dubbed S.L Lim's Real Differences (June), a drama centred on young Asian-Australians in Sydney, as Sally Rooney-esque, and Felicity McLean's The Van Apfel Girls Are Gone (April, Fourth Estate) is "Picnic at Hanging Rock for a new generation". Alex Landragin's ambitious debut Crossings (June, Picador) can be read in two directions and covers hundreds of years and multiple lifetimes. Kate Richards, author of the stunning Madness: A Memoir, turns her hand to fiction with Fusion (February, Hamish Hamilton).

Chris Hammer, author of Scrublands, will release a new novel in 2019.

Chris Hammer, author of Scrublands, will release a new novel in 2019.Credit:Mike Bowers

New voices include: Elizabeth Bryer (From Here On, Monsters, August, Picador), Elizabeth Kuiper (Little Stones, June, UQP), Anna Krien (Act of Grace, October, Black Inc.), Molly Murn (Heart of the Grass Tree, February, Vintage) and Melissa Ferguson (The Shining Wall, April, TransitLounge). There will be collections from Joey Bui (Lucky Ticket, September, Text), Amanda O'Callaghan (This Taste for Silence, June, UQP) and Alice Bishop (A Constant Hum, July, Text).

Abroad, all eyes are on Kristen Roupenian, who scored a seven-figure publishing deal for her collection You Know You Want This (February, Jonathan Cape) after her short story Cat Person went viral. Other highlights include T.S. Eliot Prize winner and former refugee Ocean Vuong's On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (July, Jonathan Cape). Carolina Setterwall's autobiographical novel, Let's Hope for the Best (July, Bloomsbury), about a young mother whose partner dies, was acquired after a competitive auction. Elizabeth Macneal's The Doll Factory (Picador, May), set in London's art world in the 1850s, had a 14-way auction and will be translated into 28 languages. Look out for: Jonathan Carr's Make Me a City (March, Scribe), Deepak Unnikrishnan's​ Temporary People (February, UWA), Candice Carty-Williams' Queenie (April, Trapeze) and Dana Czapnik's The Falconer (March, Atria)

Stan Grant will publish Australia Day.

Stan Grant will publish Australia Day.Credit:Dallas Kilponen

THRILLS AND CHILLS

Two of the biggest success stories of the year will return: Chris Hammer (second half 2019, A&U) and Dervla McTiernan (The Scholar, February, HarperCollins). Mark Brandi, whose debut Wimmera won a Dagger, moves to urban crime in The Rip (February, Hachette). Christian White follows his blockbuster The Nowhere Child with The Wife and the Widow (July, Affirm). After focusing on feminist non-fiction, Tara Moss returns to crime with Dead Man Switch (October, HarperCollins), a fresh series set in the 1940s.

There are two from Candice Fox, Gone By Midnight (January, Bantam) and Hush Hush (with James Patterson, May, Century). David Warner's River of Salt (April, Fremantle Press) is set in the 1960s surf music scene, Tony Jones will pick up from The Twentieth Man (second half 2019, A&U) and Rohan Wilson will release his third novel, Daughter of Bad Times (May, A&U). Susan Hurley's Eight Lives is about a drug trial gone wrong (April, Affirm) and Terry Hayes (I Am Pilgrim) is back with The Year of the Locust (October, Bantam).

Melbourne writer Peggy Frew.

Melbourne writer Peggy Frew.Credit:Josh Robenstone

In true crime, gangster Carl Williams' letters are collected in The Last Eighteen Months of My Life (second half of 2019, A&U). Dan Box has turned his podcast into a book (Bowraville, July, Viking), while riding the wave of interest in the Teacher's Pet podcast is Rebecca Hazel's The Schoolgirl, Her Teacher and His Wife (February, Viking). Journalist Ava Benny-Morrison covers the murder of Karlie Pearce-Stevenson and her daughter (The Lost Girls, ABC, May), Helen Thomas looks at the Melbourne murders of Suzanne Armstrong and Susan Bartlett (Murder on Easey Street, March, Nero), Matthew Condon examines killer Vincent O'Dempsey (The Night Dragon, March, UQP) and Kate McClymont is onto the murder of Michael McGurk in Dead Man Walking (June, Vintage).

Beyond Australia, Silence of the Lambs author Thomas Harris will publish his first novel in 13 years and his first standalone thriller since 1975 (untitled, May, Heinemann). James Ellroy publishes the second in his second LA Quartet (This Storm, May, Heinemann), Nicci French has The Lying Room (September, S&S), James Delargy's 55 (August, S&S) is set in outback western Australia and Alafair Burke's The Better Sister (May, Faber) dives into dark family secrets. Reliable releases from: Harlan Coben, Ann Cleeves, Jo Nesbo, Jeffery Deaver, Catherine Coulter, Alexander McCall Smith and David Baldacci. For your Scandi fix try, The Killing scriptwriter Soren Sveistrup's The Chestnut Man (January, Michael Joseph).

Elizabeth Gilbert's City of Girls will be one of the biggest releases of 2019.

Elizabeth Gilbert's City of Girls will be one of the biggest releases of 2019.Credit:Marco Del Grande

MEMOIR/BIOGRAPHY/HISTORY

Women writers exploring bodies, identity, feminism and gender dominate memoirs. Appearance activist Carly Findlay will release Say Hello (January, HarperCollins), Lee Kofman examines the concept of physical perfection in Imperfect (January, Affirm), Caro Llewellyn shares her experience of living with multiple sclerosis in Diving into Glass (March, Hamish Hamilton), Nicola Redhouse's Unlike the Heart (March, UQP) reflects on postnatal anxiety, Chloe Higgins' The Girls (Picador, September) looks at sex, sisterhood and grief, and musician Clare Bowditch launches a call to arms with Your Own Kind of Girl (second half 2019, A&U). Surgeon Joan Arakkal examines the boys club of the medical world in Slice Girls (February, Ventura) and former Olympic swimmer Casey Legler details her struggles outside the pool in Godspeed (March, Scribe).

Women will be written back into history with a biography, by Anne-Louise Willoughby, of the first Australian woman to become an official war artist and to win the Archibald Prize (Nora Heysen: A Portrait, April, Freemantle). Mary Hoban has brought to life Julia Sorrell, a Tasmanian "colonial belle" who refused to follow gender expectations (An Unconventional Wife, April, Scribe).

Peter Sagan's book, My World, will be released in October.

Peter Sagan's book, My World, will be released in October.

Media types with a yarn include The Checkout's Kirsten Drysdale (I Built No Schools in Kenya, January, Vintage), presenter Jessica Rowe (Diary of a Crap Housewife, April, A&U), journalist Kumi Taguchi (Belonging: A Daughter's Story, May, S&S), former correspondent Sophie McNeill (We Can't Say We Didn't Know, May, ABC) and Catherine McGregor (second half of 2019, A&U).

In the arts, Hannah Gadsby will release Ten Steps to Nanette (June, A&U). Director Jocelyn Moorhouse reflects on her life in film in Unconditional Love: A Memoir of Filmmaking and Motherhood (April, Text). Derek Reilly has a biography of Indigenous actor David Gulpilil (Gulpilil, second half of 2019, Pan Macmillan) and Matthew Lamb takes writer Frank Moorhouse as his subject (Frank Moorhouse: A Discontinuous Life, December, Vintage).

Dervla McTiernan is back with The Scholar.

Dervla McTiernan is back with The Scholar.Credit:JULIA DUNIN

Biographer Jacqueline Kent turns the scalpel on herself in (Beyond Words: A Year with Kenneth Cook, February, UQP). Jane Sullivan revisits her favourite childhood books in Storytime (August, Ventura). Two Giramondo authors look at the writing life: Fiona McGregor in her photo essay, A Novel Idea (April), and Luke Carman in Intimate Antipathies (first half of 2019).

For music lovers, the big one will be Elton John's autobiography (S&S). We'll also hear from Archie Roach (November, S&S).

Toni Morrison's The Source of Self-Regard will be released in February.

Toni Morrison's The Source of Self-Regard will be released in February.Credit:AP

For a political fix, there are books from former Border Force boss Roman Quaedvlieg (Tour de Force, March, MUP), Scott Ludlam (September, Black Inc.) and activist and academic Dennis Altman (Unrequited Love: A Political Memoir, July, Monash). Margaret Simons has a biography of Penny Wong (October, Black Inc.). A key title will be the first biography of Robert Menzies in 20 years by Troy Bramston (Robert Menzies: The Art of Politics, April, Scribe).

In sport, look out for cyclist Peter Sagan (My World, October, Yellow Jersey), swimmer Libby Trickett (second half 2019, A&U), AFL's Neale Daniher (second half 2019, Macmillan), Dusty Martin's father, Shane Martin (Shane "Kiwi" Martin, April, Hardie Grant) and NRL's Paul Gallen (Heart and Soul, second half 2019, A&U).

Disability advocate Carly Findlay's book will be released in January.

Disability advocate Carly Findlay's book will be released in January.Credit:JAMES ROWE

BIG ISSUES

Writing about feminism, power, gender relations, race and activism are driving non-fiction publishing beyond the memoir. Jane Caro looks at her generation's gender politics in Accidental Feminists (February, MUP), Sam George-Allen explores the power of female collaboration in Witches (March, Vintage), and Emily Maguire studies the Australian feminist movement in This Is What A Feminist Looks Like (October, NLA). Ruby Hamad​ expands on a viral opinion piece in White Tears/Brown Scars (July, MUP), Ginger Gorman covers online hate in Troll Hunting (February, Hardie Grant), and Jess Hill's See What You Made Me Do (June, Black Inc.) will shine light on the epidemic of domestic violence. Phil Barker confronts Australian masculinity in The Revolution of Man (February, A&U) and Jamil Jivani examines men who fall into violence and extremism in Why Young Men (May, Pantera). Collections include: #MeToo: Stories from the Australian Movement (ed. Natalie Kon-Yu, Christie Nieman, Maggie Scott and Miriam Sved, May, Picador); The Age of Consent?: Young People, Sexual Abuse and Agency (ed. Catharine Lumby and Kate Gleeson, June, UWA) and Choice Words (ed. Louise Swinn, March, A&U).

The banking royal commission is a hot topic with Adele Ferguson's Banking Bad (July, ABC), Dan Ziffer's A Wunch of Bankers: A Year in the Hayne Royal Commission (July, Scribe) and Michael Roddan's The People vs The Banks (April, MUP).

Stan Grant has two books in the pipeline: his follow up to Talking to My Country, Australia Day (May, HarperCollins) and On Identity (May, MUP). There's a truckload on Australian politics including The Rise of the Right (Greg Barns, February, Hardie Grant), Political Troglodytes and Economic Lunatics: The Hard Right in Australia (Dominic Kelly, March, La Trobe), The Fairness Agenda (Van Badham, June, Hardie Grant) and How to Defend Australia (Hugh White, July, La Trobe).

Ben Eltham offers a much needed examination of Australian arts and culture in The Culture Paradox: Why The Arts Are The Best Thing Australia Has Going For it But No One Really Cares (August, NewSouth).

Eleanor Gordon-Smith's Stop Being Reasonable (May, NewSouth), developed out of a segment on cat calling broadcast on This American Life and explores the philosophy of changing one's mind. Julia Baird's Phosphorescence: On Awe, Wonder and Things that Sustain You When the World Goes Dark (September, HarperCollins) is a meditation on maintaining joy. Also look out for Mandy Ord's diary comic, When One Person Dies The Whole World is Over (Brow Books, February), and Sophie Cunningham's City of Trees: Essays on Life, Death and the Need for a Forest (Text, April).

Internationally, French journalist Frederic Martel's Power and Corruption: Inside the Vatican (Bloomsbury, February) is bound to cause ripples. Former New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson will release Merchants of Truth (February, Bodley Head) about the changes in the news media industry. Comedian Lindy West considers American culture in The Witches Are Coming (May, Hachette) and American Psycho author Bret Easton Ellis publishes his first book in a decade and first non fiction book examining freedom of speech (White, April, Knopf). There will be collected works from Toni Morrison (The Source of Self-Regard, February, Doubleday), Rachel Cusk (Coventry, August, Farrar, Straus & Giroux), Arundhati Roy (My Seditious Heart, June, Hamish Hamilton) and the final writings of Oliver Sacks (May, Pan Macmillan)

POETRY

Giramondo has collections from Gerald Murnane (Green Shadows and Other Poems, February), Emma Lew (Crow College: New and Selected Poems, March), Joanne Burns (Apparently, April), Norman Erikson Pasaribu​ (Sergius Seeks Bacchus, May), Lisa Gorton (Empirical, June) and PiO (Heide, September).

At UQP, Omar Sakr follows his impressive debut with The Lost Arabs (May) and Anna Jacobson releases Creatures in My Attic (September). Puncher & Wattmann's list includes Geoff Page's sequence about the late jazz guitarist Emily Remler (Elegy for Emily, April), John Jenkins' first volume in more than a decade (Poems Far and Wide, April) and MTC Cronin's quirky and provocative God is Waiting in the World's Yard (June). Caitlin Maling's third collection Fish Song and Nandi Chinna's elegies in The Future Keepers (both June, Freemantle) are interested in the environment and the effect humans have had on it.

Tricia Dearborn's Autobiochemistry (February) and Stuart Cook's ecological volume Lyre (June) will be published by UWA. The Collected Poems of Christopher Brennan (September) edited by John Kinsella will also be released as part of UWA's Classic Australian Poetry series.

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