This preview highlights titles to be published in January
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New Titles: Fiction January
January is the time for introducing new talent to the fiction scene and this year is no exception, with débuts across all genres to look forward to
Madeleine Feeny @madeleinefeeny
ny N
ew year, new proof pile. As ever, publishers are clamouring to launch the
careers of their hotest débuts. Distinctive new voices Catherine Airey and Sanam Mahloudji weave intergenera- tional family stories of migration and belonging through their female characters. Both Lucy Steeds and Nnedi Okorafor (not a début) examine artistic processes and the relationship between a creator and their audience in very different contexts. Roisin O’Donnell makes her début with a Dublin-set tale of coercive control as compelling as any thriller, while Nina Bhadreshwar’s crime novel highlights the exploitation of the vulnerable in Sheffield. Other key débuts include Aria Aber, Katie Buckley, Devika Rege and Clare Sesta- novich; Mary Watson in crime;
Submissions New Titles: Fiction is a monthly preview of hardbacks, trade paperbacks and paperback originals. For its submission guidelines, contact alice.o’keeffe@
thebookseller.com. For submission deadlines, visit
thebookseller.com/ publishing-calendar.
Next week
Pepsi Demacque-Crocket and Karissa Chen in historical; and Sarah Handyside and Silvia Saunders in commercial fiction. Fans can also look forward to new novels from Emma Healey, Holly Bourne and Nicola Dinan. Folk horror and folklore influence débuts by Lucy Rose, Nick Newman and Rachel Bower, while the dark academia trend continues in first novels from Kate van der Borgh, Isabel Agajanian and Micah Nemerever. An appetite for immersive epics of love and ambition, sparked by Taylor Jenkins Reid and Gabrielle Zevin, is visible in Layne Fargo’s The Favourites and Kate Fagan’s The Three Lives of Cate Kay. Bookshops can expect a stam- pede for the fourth instalment in Rebecca Yarros’ record-smashing Empyrean series. Sophie Hannah and Frieda McFadden should also keep the tills ringing. In other news, I am taking
maternit leave from next month and leave you in the capable hands of journalist and author Lauren Brown who may be reached at fictionnewtitles@
thebookseller.com.
BookScan ratings accompanying titles are based on TCM sales (excludes e-book, export, direct, library and other sales) of the author’s most recent original work in a similar format with at least six months’ sales through Nielsen BookScan, using the notation left.
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The next edition of The Bookseller (11th October) will feature New Titles: Non-Fiction covering titles released in January.
TheBookseller.com 21
Book of the Month Intricate secrets of three generations of women
Literary Catherine Airey
Confessions Viking, 23rd, £16.99, hb, 9780241675182
Confessions is a feat of voice and structure that seizes the reader with emotional urgency and doesn’t let go. Opening with the testimony of Cora, who becomes a teenage orphan when her father dies in 9/11, it zigzags
between rural Ireland and New York to piece together a family’s secrets across three generations buffeted by their own desires, the will of others, the tide of history and the restrictions society imposes on women. Threaded through these female perspectives are excerpts
from a mysterious game, and letters, from which a picture of this family’s mysteries—of motherhood, abortion and adoption —gradually emerges. At the novel’s heart lies a schism between two Irish sisters—an artist with fragile mental health who moves to New York, and a writer who remains in their home- town of Burtonport—and Confessions explores the tension between family loyalty and personal freedom, and the isolation of immigration. Acquired in a major 24-hour six-figure pre-empt in the UK
and a “hotly contested” auction in the US, Confessions will be launched with an “ambitious” campaign. Airey grew up in England in a family of mixed English-Irish descent, and now lives in County Cork.
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