Highlights of the Season


Cleopatra, the queen who confronted and contested the patriarchal power of Rome.


Alex Hay


The Midnight Guests Headline Review, 10 September, hb, £20, 9781035433896 Third novel from the author of The Housekeepers and The Queen of Fives is set in 1926 and unfolds over 24 hours at the Hotel Artemis, presided over by the mysterious Diana Gold, owner and impresario. But at least two of the guests will be far from the usual clientele of Hollywood film stars and royalty, and what might they want?


John Boyne The Weight of Angels Doubleday, 24 September, hb, £20, 9781529943849


Boyne reimagines the life of Oscar Wilde, if only he had not responded to the Marquis of Queensbury’s insult (Wilde sued for libel, which led ultimately to his imprisonment in gaol and subsequent early death). Here, the playwright lives to bear witness to the momentous events of the early 20th century.


Science Fiction & Fantasy


Chloe Benjamin Under Story Tinder Press, 1 September, hb, £20, 9781035437382


Latest from the author of The Immortalists, eight years in the writing. Biologist Laurel Salter has fled to a research station in Antarctica in an attempt to outrun her past. When a strange light appears, she becomes convinced it has powers. The story of a marriage told forward and backward in time, a scientific odyssey, a love letter to our planet and a hopeful vision of the future, says Headline. Film rights have sold.


In 2031, America is at war with itself but the Republic of California has lifted the curfew in LA. Ari, newly released from prison, is going to a party. Years later, now living in Paris, Ari remains haunted by that party, which offered a link to two different versions of reality in parallel worlds. From the author of Station Eleven, this will be huge.


Picador, 24 September, hb, £20, 9781037407161


His previous novel, Trust, was dizzyingly brilliant – and won the Pulitzer Prize – so I am very much looking forward to my proof of Ply. Set centuries in the future, this is said to examine the place of technology in a deeply changed society, while charting the distance that stands between us and those we love.


Traveler‘s Wife. Alba DeTamble slips unpredictably through decades like her father before her, caught between two loves: Zach who lives in the present and cannot follow her when she disappears, and Oliver, who can travel through time. How is it possible to love and live a meaningful life, in such a fractured world, it asks.


October General Fiction


China Miéville The Rouse Picador, 17 September, hb, £35, 9781509847396


Twenty years in the writing, I am told, this is a “sprawling saga of a bloody century and the intimate story of two lives, their loves, regrets and secrets”, says Picador. From the author of The City & The City who has won the Hugo and Arthur C Clarke awards.


Alex Pheby Waterblack Galley Beggar Press, 17 September, pb, £12.99, 9781913111786


The conclusion of the Cities of the Weft trilogy follows Mordew and Malarkoi. Nathan Treeves leads an army of ghosts from the underwater city of Waterblack, heading to the final confrontation with the forces ranged against him. Poses vital questions about the way power can be abused, who decides who has power and what it means to have none, says the publisher.


Susanna Clarke, Victoria Sawdon (illus) The Bishop of Durham Attempts to Surrender the City Bloomsbury Circus, 22 October, hb, £10.99, 9781037203909


Full of medieval magic, this is a “long-lost” chapter in the lore of Clarke’s magnum opus Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell – one of my favourite books, ever – in a gorgeous, illustrated, gifty hardback. The year is 1110 AD and as the fairy host sweeps across the North of England, the city of Durham is under siege. Clarke’s second novel, Piranesi, won the Women’s Prize for Fiction.


Sarah Moss The Winter Guest Picador, 1 October, hb, £12.99, 9781037412172


This giftily packaged novella (128 pages) from the author of Ghost Wall and Summerwater is a “deliciously twisty story” of two strangers, both guests at a hotel in the West of Ireland on Christmas Eve, who agree to tell each other the worst thing they have ever done…


Bonnie Garmus Peck & Peck Manilla Press, 13 October, hb, 9781786588814


Following her barnstorming debut, Lessons in Chemistry, Garmus moves from Transworld to Bonnier with her second novel, set in 1980s New York City, where college graduate Batter Gray lands his dream job at Peck & Peck, the prestigious poetry quarterly run by warring twin brothers. This is great fun, zingy and fresh, and Bonnier will really get behind it.


Emily St John Mandel Exit Party Picador, 17 September, hb, £18.99, 9781035081288


12


Audrey Niffenegger Life Out of Order Jonathan Cape, 13 October, hb, £22, 9781787336766


Hernan Diaz Ply


The Bookseller Buyer’s Guide Fiction


The sequel to Niffenegger’s 2004 bestseller, The Time


Reverend Richard Coles A Carol and a Killing Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 22 October, hb, £14.99, 9781399637107


This seasonal novella (160 pages) is the latest instalment in Coles’ Canon Clement mystery series. As the festive season commences, one of the cathedral’s choristers tumbles to his death during a Christmas concert before he can even finish the note. But did he fall, or was he pushed?


Yiyun Li Music Against the Night 4th Estate, 22 October, hb, £20, 9780008647803


Two musicians – destined to be husband and wife – pursue individual success. In late 18th-century Dublin, musical prodigy John Field can hear notes in the air, and his family aspires for him to become the next Mozart. Meanwhile, in Pondicherry, French India, love of music drives Adelaide Percheron first to Paris and then Moscow.


Adventure, Crime & Horror


Jeffrey Archer Adam and Eve HarperCollins, 6 October, hb, £22, 9780008640316


Said to be Archer’s final novel, this is the story of two children


born on the last day of the Great War, their lives shaped by class and circumstance – one a shepherd’s son, the other an earl’s daughter – and destined to intertwine.


Cold War is colder than ever and, for the first time, Smiley finds himself in the alien world of American intelligence, hunting a traitor in Los Angeles. I really enjoyed the first one.


Mick Herron Watch the Quiet Snow Baskerville, 22 October, hb, £22, 9781399838771


Five Slough House novellas, now in one volume for the first time: The List, The Drop, The Catch, The Last Dead Letter and Standing by the Wall.


Vaseem Khan The Man with the Golden Compass


Ann Cleeves The Dying Light Macmillan, 8 October, hb, £22, 9781529077797


The Detective Matthew Venn series reaches book four with the discovery of the body of a young woman in the swimming pool of a luxury holiday home in North Devon. Her best friend is missing, and the house belongs to a rising political star, both facts that draw intense media interest. Northumberland-based crime stalwart Cleeves won the highest accolade in crime writing, the CWA Diamond Dagger, in 2017.


Lee Child, Andrew Child Chain Reaction Bantam (Transworld), 20 October, hb, £22, 9781911754244


The 31st Jack Reacher thriller, and the seventh in the collaboration between brothers Lee and Andrew Child. Susan Turner (Never Go Back) is actually back, now General Turner, based deep inside the Pentagon; she needs Reacher’s help when one of her team is murdered on covert duty and she cannot trust anyone she works with. Transworld is planning an ambitious campaign to reach more than 40 million readers, including viewers of the popular Amazon Prime adaptation.


Nick Harkaway The Taper Man Viking, 22 October, hb, £22, 9780241795309


The sequel to Karla’s Choice, in which Harkaway took on the mantle of his father’s (John le Carré) most famous creation, George Smiley. Now, the year is 1965, the


Zaffre, 22 October, hb, £20, 9781804188699


Next in the James Bond spin-off series featuring the former MI6 Head of Q Branch (played by Ben Whishaw in recent Bond films) follows Quantum of Menace. Q is hired as a civilian contractor by the police to look into the murder of a tech millionaire turned online antique dealer. Also features a cameo from Miss Moneypenny.


Ross Montgomery The Shadows of Kensington Gore


Viking, 22 October, hb, £18.99, 9780241766187


The second outing for unlikely detective duo Stephen Pike and Miss Decima Stockingham follows The Murder at World‘s End. In London, 1911, when a policeman is murdered on the streets of Kensington during a suffragette march, blame falls on three women seen fleeing the scene. The sole witness? Under-butler Pike.


Sagas, Romance & Historical


Philippa Gregory Royal Witch HarperFiction, 20 October, hb, £25, 9780008745035


Fresh from her triumph at the recent British Book Awards, where Boleyn Traitor scooped Fiction Book of the Year, Gregory turns to the Plantagenet court of Henry V, where lady-in-waiting Eleanor Cobham, fearful of the future, consults a fortune-teller. When the prophecy comes true, Eleanor seizes her chance for more power, but the higher she rises, the sharper the knives around her become…


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