Books of 2015: a preview of the highlights
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Books of 2015: a preview of the highlights

We might have stopped the boats, but we've barely started to see a flow of stories about fugitives from tyranny or hardship who have landed on our shores to make a new life. The experience of migrants and their descendants, or of people adopted into our culture, is a strong feature of Australian books for 2015, particularly in memoirs. It's a big year for local novels, especially from debut authors. Quite a few world authors are brought to us in translation through Australian publishers, and several of our prominent poets are turning to prose and fiction.

The past year has seen a stream of politicians' stories and Anzac memories, but there are still a few tales of life in the trenches and on the Parliamentary benches coming up in 2015. And there's a continuing trend towards non-fiction anthologies by women.

Local: Amanda Lohrey's A Short History of Richard Kline will be her first full-length novel in over a decade.

Local: Amanda Lohrey's A Short History of Richard Kline will be her first full-length novel in over a decade.Credit:Kate Geraghty

INTERNATIONAL FICTION

This is the year for a new Toni Morrison novel, The Wrath of Children (September), and a new title from John Irving (both from Random House). Kazuo Ishiguro has a novel, The Buried Giant (March), and so has Milan Kundera (both from Faber). There's a novel from Zadie Smith (Out of Place, Penguin UK, May); two novellas from Haruki Murakami in Hear The Wind Sing (Random, September); and novels from Andrew O'Hagan (The Illuminations, Faber, February); Anne Enright (Random, May); Jane Smiley (Early Warning, Pan Macmillan, April); Sebastian Faulks (Random, September); Amitav Ghosh (Flood of Fire, Hachette, June); Kate Atkinson (A God In Ruins, Random, May); Elizabeth Knox (Wake, Constable & Robinson, April); Irvine Welsh (A Decent Ride, Random, April); and Daniel Handler – better known as Lemony Snicket – writing for adults in We Are Pirates (Bloomsbury Circus, March).

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 International: Toni Morrison's new novel is The Wrath of Children.

International: Toni Morrison's new novel is The Wrath of Children.Credit:Lisa Poole

World literature, written in English or in English translation, is a notable feature of the 2015 list. Such books include Indonesian novelist Eka Kurniawan's Beauty Is a Wound (Text, September); Raj Kamal Jha's She Will Build Him a City, described as "Midnight's Children for the new millennium" (Bloomsbury, March); Dutch writer Gerbrand Bakker's June (Scribe, July); Marlon James' A Brief History of Seven Killings, based on an attempted assassination of Bob Marley (Oneworld, January); South African-born Australian resident Eben Venter's Wolf, Wolf (Scribe, February); and two books from the Mexican writer Guadalupe Nettel (Natural Histories and The Body Where I was Born, both UWA Publishing, May). Fans will welcome the fourth novel in Norwegian Karl Ove Knausgaard's My Struggle series (Harvill Secker, March).

On the blockbuster scene, look out for Before I Go to Sleep author S. J. Watson's Second Life (Text, March) and Water for Elephants author Sara Gruen's At the Water's Edge (Allen & Unwin, June). We'll have a book from Jeffrey Archer (Mightier than the Sword, Pan Macmillan, March); a new James Bond novel from Anthony Horowitz, Murder on Wheels (Hachette); Louis de Bernieres' The Dust that Falls from Dreams (Random, June); and fantasy phenomenon Samantha Shannon's second novel in her Bone Season series, The Mime Order (Bloomsbury, January). Sue Grafton has reached X in her Alphabet crime series (Pan Macmillan, September); and Justin Cronin has the last in his The Passage trilogy, The City of Mirrors (Hachette, October).

For a novel with inside literary gossip, try Muse (Text, June) by Jonathan Galassi, poet and publisher at Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

LOCAL FICTION

Eagerly awaited: James Bradley's new novel is Clade.

Eagerly awaited: James Bradley's new novel is Clade.

Australian authors with eagerly awaited novels include James Bradley with Clade (Penguin, February), his first for nine years; and Amanda Lohrey with A Short History of Richard Kline (Black Inc, March), her first full-length novel in over a decade. We'll also see the fifth novel in the Glenroy series from Steven Carroll (Forever Young, Fourth Estate, June).

Other novels are on the way from Rod Jones (The Mothers, Text, June); Marion Halligan (Goodbye Sweetheart, Allen & Unwin, April); Jane Messer (Hopscotch, Picador, May); Mark Dapin (Vung Tau, Penguin, August); S. J. Finn (Down to the River, Sleepers, March); and in the second half of the year, novels from Charlotte Wood and Susan Johnson (both Allen & Unwin); and from Geraldine Brooks (Hachette, November). Frank Moorhouse has a novel about the cross-dressing hero of his Grand Days trilogy, The Book of Ambrose (Random, November).

Politician: Peter Garrett's memoir is out in 2015.

Politician: Peter Garrett's memoir is out in 2015.Credit:Sahlan Hayes

Highly anticipated follow-ups include A Fraction of the Whole author Steve Toltz's Quicksand (Penguin, May); Tony Birch's Ghost River (UQP, October); Stephen Daisley's Coming Rain (Text, May); and The Cartographer author Peter Twohig's The Torch (Fourth Estate, July).

Australian poets turning to prose fiction include Philip Salom (Waiting, Puncher & Wattmann, August); Lisa Gorton (The Life of Houses, Giramondo, April); Alan Gould (The Poets' Stairwell, Black Pepper, January); and John Kinsella, with a short story collection, Crow's Breath (Transit Lounge, May).

Forthcoming: The fifth novel in Steven Carroll's Glenroy is Forever Young.

Forthcoming: The fifth novel in Steven Carroll's Glenroy is Forever Young.Credit:Paul Rovere

If you're after a lighter read, look for another novel from Di Morrissey (Pan Macmillan). Highlights for crime fiction fans include a new Michael Robotham novel (Hachette, August); Katherine Howell's Tell the Truth (Pan Macmillan, February); and Robert Gott's The Port Fairy Murders (Scribe, March).

BUSY BEES

Next: A new novel by Geraldine Brooks will be published in the second half of the year.

Next: A new novel by Geraldine Brooks will be published in the second half of the year.Credit:Randi Baird

The hard-worker prize goes to three totally different authors, each with a hat trick. John Birmingham has a science-fiction trilogy with Pan Macmillan, beginning with Emergence (February) and followed by Resistance (March) and Ascendance (May). Malcolm Knox has a novel about a trigamist, Wonder Lover (Allen & Unwin, May), but he's also written two nonfiction books: The Keepers, a history of Australian wicketkeepers (Penguin, October); and Supermarket Monsters: The Price of Coles and Woolworths' Dominance (Redback, June). From overseas, the reliably prolific Alexander McCall Smith brings us three titles: The Revolving Door of Life (August), Stories of Love (November) and Precious and the Zebra Necklace (July), all from NewSouth Publishing.

But the marathon busy bee is Peter Corris, whose 40th Cliff Hardy crime novel, Gun Control, is out with Allen & Unwin in March.

Anticipated: Kazuo Ishiguro's new novel is The Buried Giant.

Anticipated: Kazuo Ishiguro's new novel is The Buried Giant.Credit:Mike Segar

NEW VOICES

There's a big buzz about several Australian debut authors. In a heated international auction, Fourth Estate won Robyn Cadwallader's historical novel The Anchoress (March), about a woman who shuts herself away in a tiny cell; and also secured an international three-book deal with young talent Eliza Henry-Jones, beginning with her novel In The Quiet (July). Picador has high hopes for Rush Oh! (October), a first novel from screenwriter and director Shirley Barrett, about an alliance between killer whales and a family of whalers. And Perth writer Lili St Germain has a three-book deal with HarperCollins, starting with Cartel (February), a romance set in the world of bikies. Her self-published Seven Sons series has sold 250,000 copies since it went online.

Fiction: Flood of Fire by Amitav Ghosh will be published in June.

Fiction: Flood of Fire by Amitav Ghosh will be published in June.Credit:Jerry Bauer

Other debuts include Anchor Point by Alice Robinson (March) and Sing Fox to Me by Sarah Kanake (July, both Affirm Press); Fever of Animals by Miles Allinson (Scribe, September); The Bird's Child by Sandra Leigh Price (Fourth Estate, April); Relativity by Antonia Hayes (Penguin, July); Ilka Tampke's Iron Age saga, Skin (Text, February); A.S. Patric's Black Rock White City (Transit Lounge, April); and three thrillers: Amanda Ortlepp's Claiming Noah (Simon & Schuster, March); and with Scribe, Tania Chandler's Please Don't Leave Me Here (August) and J. M. Green's Good Money (November). Penguin has a debut collection of short stories, Abigail Ulman's Hot Little Hands (March).

Overseas, Penguin UK is excited about the book billed as the new Gone Girl – What She Left by debut author T. R. Richmond. Garth Halberg's City On Fire (Random, September) was sold in the US for $2 million. Chigozie Obioma's The Fishermen (Scribe, March) is being described as "the African Kite Runner". And Roxane Gay, well-known for her book of essays, Bad Feminist, has a first novel set in Haiti, An Untamed State (Constable & Robinson, January).

Life story: Kate Grenville's One Life: My Mother's Story is about her family.

Life story: Kate Grenville's One Life: My Mother's Story is about her family.Credit:Rodger Cummins

LIFE STORIES

We can't get enough of Australians' stories, whether told by themselves or others. Two formidable Catholics feature in major biographies: Brenda Niall's Mannix (Text, April) and Gerard Henderson's B. A. Santamaria (MUP, August). Two big art biographies are Nancy Underhill's Sidney Nolan (NewSouth, June) and Lesley Harding and Kendrah Morgan's Modern Love, about John and Sunday Reed (MUP, October). And Karen Lamb has a biography of Thea Astley, Inventing Her Own Weather (UQP, May).

Follow-up: A Fraction of the Whole author Steve Toltz's new book is Quicksand.

Follow-up: A Fraction of the Whole author Steve Toltz's new book is Quicksand.

Stories of immigrant Australians and their descendants include Cat Thao Nguyen's journey from Vietnam across the killing fields of Cambodia, We Are Here (Allen & Unwin, March); Abdi Aden's voyage from war-torn Somalia to Melbourne, Shining (HarperCollins, June); Osamah Sami's Good Muslim Boy (Hardie Grant, May); Latika Bourke's From India With Love (Allen & Unwin, May); and Maxine Beneba Clarke's The Hate Race (Hachette, September).

This year was a bumper one for politicians' stories, and they're still coming. We're promised memoirs from Anna Bligh (Through the Wall, HarperCollins, April); and Peter Garrett (Allen & Unwin). From MUP we'll get memoirs by Tony Windsor (April); Stephen Loosely (Machine Rules, August); Christopher Pyne (Lessons from My Father, August); Jenny Macklin (Making Change, September); and John Brumby (October).

David Day will bring us a biography, Keating (HarperCollins, February); Kerry O'Brien is also writing about the former PM for Allen & Unwin. There are books from Greg Combet's former chief of staff, Allan Behm (MUP, June) and Julia Gillard's former speechwriter Michael Cooney (The Gillard Project, Penguin, May). Chris Bowen will write about our 12 most notable treasurers in The Money Men (MUP, August).

Kate Grenville writes about her family in One Life: My Mother's Story (Text, April); as will Ramona Koval in Bloodhound: Searching for My Father (Text, May) and Barry Dickins in Dad: A Line Drawing of My Father (Black Pepper, April). Playwright Hannie Rayson shows scenes from her life in Hello Beautiful! (Text, March). Gerald Murnane writes about his love of horse racing in Something for the Pain (Text, October).

Ray Martin has a biography of Fred Hollows (HarperCollins, November); Stuart Coupe writes on music legend Michael Gudinski (Hachette, August); there are memoirs from fashion queen Carla Zampatti (HarperCollins, March), and journalists Ross Gittins (Allen & Unwin, June); Greg Sheridan (Allen & Unwin) and Richard Glover (ABC Books, September).

Ever-popular survival memoirs include Bambi Smyth's Bad Hair Year (Five Mile Press, April) about dealing with a brain tumour and breast cancer. And a memoir by Orry-Kelly, Australian costume designer for Hollywood (Women I've Undressed, Random, February), found in a pillowcase.

From overseas, we'll have memoirs from everyone's favourite neurologist, Oliver Sacks, and music phenomenon Brian Wilson (both Pan Macmillan, October); Richard Branson (Random, October); and Elvis Costello (Penguin UK, October. For fans of The Hare with Amber Eyes, author Edmund de Waal is back with The White Book (Random, October), about porcelain.

WARS, MILITARY AND CULTURAL

The recent World War I anniversary brought a bonanza of war books, and some are still coming. Harvey Broadbent looks at the Turkish story in Defending Gallipoli (MUP, March). Peter Rees has a biography of war correspondent C. E. W. Bean (Bearing Witness, Allen & Unwin, April). Black Inc. is publishing General Sir John Monash's war letters in August, and Grantlee Kieza has a biography of the World War I commander, Monash (ABC Books, October). Peter Burness has a prose and pictorial survey, Australians at the Great War 1914-18 (Murdoch Books, April). For a view from the trenches there's Watson's Pier, with Joshua Funder writing about his great-grandfather's experiences at Gallipoli (MUP, April).

Prisoners of War, by Joan Beaumont, Lachlan Grant and Aaron Pegram (MUP, June) is a history of Australian POWs. Stuart Macintyre looks at war and reconstruction in the 1940s in Australia's Greatest Experiment (NewSouth, June). There are also Australian histories of old age (Pat Jalland, MUP, January); the Racial Discrimination Act (Tim Soutphommasane, NewSouth, May); cultural life (New Year's Day at the Hotel Australia by Lindsay Barrett, Puncher & Wattmann, May) and the 1980s (Frank Bongiorno, Black Inc, November). And for recent ugly history of corruption, there's Sydney Inc by Kate McClymont and Vanda Carson (MUP, October); and the last volume in Matthew Condon's Three Crooked Kings trilogy, All Fall Down (UQP, July).

One growing field is anthologies by women. They include Purple Prose, edited by Liz Byrski and Rachel Robertson (Fremantle Press, December); Fury: Women Write about Sex, Power and Violence, edited by Samantha Trenoweth (Hardie Grant, February); and essays on motherhood in Mothermorphosis, edited by Monica Dux (MUP, April); and Mothers and Others (Pan Macmillan, April).

From overseas, look out for Johann Hari's controversial survey of the war on drugs, Chasing the Scream (Bloomsbury Circus, February). But if you'd rather read about another form of mind-altering, there's the ever-popular Norman Doidge, with The Brain's Way of Healing (Scribe, February).

POETRY

Les Murray's first volume of poetry in five years, Waiting for the Past, is out in April; Black Inc is also publishing a collection of poems about his home, Bunyah (October). What is probably Clive James' final volume, Sentenced to Life (Pan Macmillan, April), is a mix of poetry and prose; as is Mike Ladd's Invisible Mending (Wakefield Press, March).

Other standouts are Net Needle, by Robert Adamson (Black Inc, May); and Western Australian Poetry Anthology, edited by John Kinsella and Tracy Ryan (Fremantle Press, November). Puncher & Wattmann bring us Heart Starter by John Tranter (April), M. T. C. Cronin's The Law of Poetry (March), Martin Langford's Ground (June) and Anna Kerdijk-Nicholsons's Everyday Epic (June).

There's a poetry retrospective from Jack Davis (Magabala Books, July); Cocky's Joy by Michael Farrell (Giramondo, March); and Chiaroscuro by Sandy Jeffs (Black Pepper, February). Boleslaw Lesmian, a poet unpublished for 30 years in Soviet Poland, will finally have his voice heard in Love, Sex and Death, a collection translated by Australian Marcel Weyland (Brandl & Schlesinger, March).
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