TEN NOT TO MISS Ten titles not to miss Highlights of the Season


Tessa Hadley Free Love Jonathan Cape, 6 January, hb, £16.99, 9781787333673


Sagas, romance & historical


I’m such a fan of Hadley’s writing, most recently Late in the Day and the


short story collection Bad Dreams and Other Stories, and this sounds just wonderful. Set in London, 1967, it follows pretty, dutiful housewife Phyllis, who is married to Roger, a devoted father who works for the Foreign Office, with whom she has two children: bookish teenager Colette and golden boy Hugh. But when the twentysomething son of a friend kisses Phyllis in her suburban garden one night after dinner, something in her catches fire. Phyllis’ sexual and intellectual awakening will mirror that of the 1960s society that is transforming around her.


New York, the fragile young scion of a wealthy family resists a wealthy suitor, drawn instead to a music teacher of no means. In a 1993 Manhattan besieged by the AIDS epidemic, a young Hawaiian man lives with his older, wealthier partner, and hides his past. And in 2093, in a world riven by plagues and totalitarian rule, a powerful scientist’s granddaughter navigates life without him, and tries to solve the mystery of her husband’s disappearances.


Lizzie Damilola Blackburn Yinka, Where is Your Huzband? Viking, 6 January, hb, £14.99, 9780241504598


Sagas, romance & historical


January will be packed to the rafters with débuts as usual,


but this one caught my eye— such a strong title! It follows 31-year-old British-Nigerian woman Yinka, a single South Londoner, who needs to find a date for her cousin’s upcoming wedding. Yinka wants to find love on her own terms, but her mother (and various interfering aunties) think they can do better. Will Yinka find herself a “huzband” in time? Bridget Jones remade for the 2020s, says Viking, which pre-empted within 24 hours of submission, and Netflix has already snapped up the film rights.


Jonathan Franzen Crossroads Fourth Estate, 5 October, hb, £20, 9780008308896


General fiction No proof arrived in


Hanya Yanagihara To Paradise Picador, 11 January, hb, £20, 9781529077476


General fiction No one who read A Little


Life will ever forget it, so this, Yanagihara’s third novel, is much-anticipated. Spanning three centuries and three different versions of the American experiment, it concerns lovers, family, loss and the elusive promise of utopia. In an alternate 1893


time for this preview sadly, but this is the sixth novel from “arguably America’s greatest living novelist” (Daily Telegraph). It is the first in the A Key to All Mythologies trilogy, which follows the lives of three generations of a Midwest family as they “navigate the political and social crosscurrents of the past 50 years”. Crossroads is set in the early 1970s, and tells of the Hildebrandt family, pastor Russ, wife Marion and their children Clem, Becky and Perry as each seeks a freedom for themselves that the other family members threaten to complicate. Expect widespread coverage across print media.


Paula Hawkins A Slow Fire Burning


Doubleday, 31 August, hb, £20, 9780857524447


Adventure, crime & horror


On a shabby canal boat moored on


Regent’s Canal in north London, a young man’s body is discovered—lying in a pool of blood with a smile carved into his throat—by his busybody neighbour. A disturbed young woman with a quick temper seems to have been the last visitor on the boat. But what seems a straightforward case is anything but, as Hawkins introduces the wider cast of characters and slowly reveals the connections between them all, the loyalties and grievances, the secrets and the ties. A terrific, unputdownable thriller from the author of The Girl on the Train that is as much about the compelling, damaged characters as it is about the intricate plot.


Richard Osman The Man Who Died Twice Viking, 16 September, hb, £18.99, 9780241425428


Adventure, crime & horror


The much- anticipated follow-up to the


fastest-selling crime début of all time, The Thursday Murder Club, which sold in 36 territories and made TV producer and “Pointless” star Osman a bona fide mega brand author straight out of the gate—and helped him win Author of the Year at the Nibbies. Elizabeth has received a letter from a former colleague who needs her help. He mentions stolen diamonds, a violent mobster and a very big mistake. Elizabeth enlists the help of fellow septuagenarians Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron in the hunt for a killer, and the diamonds. With massive PR, this will be impossible to miss.


Sally Rooney Beautiful World, Where Are You Faber, 7 September, hb, £16.99, 9780571365425


General fiction Whereas the bestselling


Normal People focused tightly on the ever-shifting relationship between lovers Marianne and Connor, this centres on the friendship between two women in their late twenties: successful novelist Alice, who has moved to a quiet town on the west coast of Ireland, and her best friend Eileen, who has stayed in Dublin, working for peanuts at a literary


magazine. The pair keep in touch via long emails, which intersperse the main narrative, discussing everything from late- stage capitalism to climate change, art and philosophy and, of course, their love lives. Alice has begun a tentative relationship with Felix, who works in a warehouse, while Eileen, post-messy break-up, falls back into the familiarity of Simon, a man she has known since childhood. I loved it.


Leïla Slimani The Country of Others Faber & Faber, 5 August, hb, £14.99, 9780571361618


Sagas, romance & historical


A new direction for the author of Lullaby and Adèle, this is the first in a


historical fiction trilogy telling the story of one French family from 1946 to 2016. It begins in Morocco, 1947, where Mathilde has followed her new Moroccan husband, Amine. The pair met when he was billeted in Alsace, fighting for the French. Now on his isolated family farm, Mathilde finds the loneliness, inequality and relative poverty of her new life a struggle, and very different to what she had imagined. Drawn from the author’s own personal family history, this is one for fans of Elena Ferrante.


Elizabeth Strout Oh William! Viking, 21 October, hb, £14.99, 9780241508176


General fiction The latest from the Pulitzer


Prize-winning Strout returns to the eponymous heroine of My Name is Lucy Barton, although it works beautifully as a stand- alone. Having overcome a poor, rural childhood, Lucy is now a successful novelist living in New York. This begins in the aftermath of the death of her second husband, David, but is chiefly about her first husband, the William of the title, with whom she has shared a long friendship. Strout writes sparely, with such delicate precision, about this decades-long partnership showing how we are all, ultimately, a mystery to each other. Profound and deeply moving, I loved it. Profound and deeply moving, she is an extraordinary writer.


Amor Towles The Lincoln Highway


August 2021–January 2022 09


Hutchinson, 5 October, hb, £20, 9781786332523


General fiction The third novel from the author


of Rules of Civility and A Gentlemen in Moscow is set in 1954 and begins with 18-year- old Emmett Watson being driven home to Nebraska after serving a prison sentence. With his father dead and mother disappeared, Emmett plans to pick up his eight-year-old brother Billy and drive to California to start a new life. But two friends and fellow inmates, the wily Daniel, known as Duchess, and Woolly, stowed away in the warden’s car, and they want to go to New York to claim Woolly’s inheritance. Towles is simply a wonderful storyteller, and this is pure reading pleasure.


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