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The best new books out in 2022

A month-by-month guide to the most exciting fiction, non-fiction and children’s books out in 2022.

Wahala by Nikki May (6 Jan)

Set to be one of the most talked-about books of the year, this debut novel is an explosive tale of love, race and family. Fearlessly political about class, colourism and clothes, Wahala follows three mixed-race friends living in London and is soon to be a major BBC series.

The Book of Sand by Theo Clare (6 Jan)

In this unique, compelling novel a group of extraordinary characters are driven to the very limit of their endurance in two very different worlds. Willing to fight to the death, only the strongest will survive. An audacious standout, The Book of Sand is lyrical and devastating.

Pandora by Susan Stokes-Chapman (27 Jan)

An immersive and gripping historical novel set in Georgian London, the discovery of a mysterious ancient Greek vase sets in motion conspiracies, revelations and romance. Atmospheric and addictive, Pandora is a story of secrets and deception, fate and hope.

Non-Fiction

Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? by Dr Julie Smith (6 Jan)

Drawing on years of experience as a clinical psychologist, online sensation Dr Julie Smith shares her expert advice and powerful coping techniques in this warm, insightful book. Written in bite-sized entries on topics from anxiety to low mood to motivation, it tackles issues that affect us all and offers practical solutions to help.

Bigger Than Us by Fearne Cotton (20 Jan)

In her latest book, Fearne Cotton shares the insight of wise minds and what they can teach us about happiness, connection and hope. For anyone seeking a path through life, Bigger Than Us offers inspiration for tapping into the strength and comfort around us and for releasing the blocks and insecurities that hold us back.

Worn by Sofi Thanhauser (25 Jan)

Tracing the origins of garment-making through time and around the world, Worn explores the social, economic and environmental impact of our clothes. Through the stories of linen, cotton, silk, synthetics and wool, it looks beyond care labels to show how clothes reveal the truth about what we really care about.

The Lost Sounds by Robert Macfarlane, Jackie Morris and Chris Watson

From woodland to moorland to the sea, Britain is home to a vast array of natural settings – each with its own unique sounds. With a foreword by Robert Macfarlane , artwork by Jackie Morris and a fascinating ‘making of’ interview with sound recordist Chris Watson, The Lost Sounds is an immersive natural listening experience, taking you across the UK through the sounds of nature.

Children's and YA

Peppa Pig: Peppa’s Royal Party (6 Jan)

It’s the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, and Peppa Pig and her friends have been invited to the royal garden party! They’re so excited but when they arrive, there’s been a huge mix up. Can Peppa help save the day?

The Green Planet by Leisa Stewart-Sharpe & Kim Smith (6 Jan)

Wannabe naturalists will love this non-fiction book that delves into the hidden world of plants. From caring for each other to tricking animals into working for them, plants are truly incredible.

Leonora Bolt: Secret Inventor by Lucy Brandt & Gladys Jose (20 Jan)

Leonora Bolt is only nine years old but she’s already a super talented inventor. She loves spending her days in her top-secret laboratory. But her Uncle Luther has been watching her closely, and has an evil plan for Leonora’s greatest invention yet…

Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson (3 Feb)

Juggling lives and crossing continents, Black Cake is an extraordinary story of how the inheritance of secrets, betrayal and memoires can shape a family for generations. Soon to be a major Hulu series produced by Oprah, this unforgettable debut is as moving as it is delicious.

The Herd by Emily Edwards (3 Feb)

A thought-provoking novel set to spark hot debates, The Herd is about two best friends. Godmothers to each other’s daughters, little do they know they differ radically over one very important issue. When one of them, afraid of being judged, tells what is supposed to be a harmless white lie, the consequences are catastrophic.

When We Were Birds by Ayanna Lloyd Banwo (10 Feb)

In When We Were Birds we meet a down-on-his-luck gravedigger and a woman whose mother is dying. Their destinies intertwined, both have something that the other needs. Rich with magic and wisdom, it is an exuberant tale of loss and renewal that explores what it means to love and be loved.

Again, Rachel by Marian Keyes (17 Feb)

Twenty-five years after the iconic bestseller Rachel’s Holiday burst into our lives, Rachel is back in Marian Keyes ’ hilarious, heart-warming sequel. These days Rachel thought she was settled… but with the reappearance of a man she’d once loved, is she about to discover that no matter what our age, everything can change?

Run And Hide by Pankaj Mishra (24 Feb)

Run and Hide is the story of three friends who soar from humble beginnings to sky-high success in an age of upheaval and breakdown. But someone is about to pay for their many transgressions. A searing examination of rampant materialism and spiritual bankruptcy, it is a shimmering tale for our times.

Otherlands by Thomas Halliday (1 Feb)

Journey back in time to the dawn of complex life with award-winning palaeobiologist Thomas Halliday’s staggering history of life on Earth. An exhilarating exploration of the worlds that were here before ours, Otherlands immerses us in a series of distant eras and ancient landscapes.

Are You Really OK?   by Stacey Dooley (3 Feb)

In this powerful book, Stacey Dooley opens up the conversation about mental health in young people, to challenge the stigma and stereotypes around it. Working in collaboration with medical experts, campaigners and charities, she talks to those directly affected to help tell their stories and shine a light on the factors that play a part.

Block, Delete, Move On by LalalaLetMeExplain (10 Feb)

Good news: it’s not you, it’s them. This is not a dating book that promises to find you a person to love; instead, it will help you to identify the troublesome ones before it’s too late. It will empower you to recognise your worth and see that it’s perfectly possible to be contentedly single, too.

Bluey: Grannies (3 Feb)

Bluey and her sister Bingo have decided to dress up as grannies. But in the middle of their game, they come across a very important question: can grannies dance? This book is perfect for fans of the hit Aussie TV series.

Hey Duggee: The World Book Day Badge (17 Feb)

The Squirrels are trying to decide which book they’d like Duggee to read to celebrate World Book Day. Trouble is they can’t seem to make up their minds! Should they choose a story about a clown or a detective? Or should they just make up their own story?

Rocket Rules: Ten Little Ways to Think Big! by Nathan Bryon & Dapo Adeola (17 Feb)

Rocket from Nathan Bryon and Dapo Adeola ’s award-winning story Look Up! is back and this time, she’s got ten rules for living life in the best way possible. Created for World Book Day 2022, this book will inspire young readers to think big.

The Promise by Damon Galgut (3 March)

Winner of the 2021 Booker Prize , The Promise charts the crash and burn of a white South African family. As time passes, one question hovers over them: can you ever escape the repercussions of a broken promise? In this confident, deft and quietly powerful novel, sharp and tender emotional truths hit home.

The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan (3 March)

In this timely, remarkable debut, the state has decided that a mother is not fit to care for her daughter and must be re-trained. Soon, mothers everywhere will be re-educated. Impossible to put down, The School for Good Mothers is an explosive novel about love and the pressures of perfectionism, parenthood and privilege.

Run Rose Run by Dolly Parton and James Patterson (7 March)

From America’s beloved superstar and one of its great storytellers comes an exciting thriller about a young singer-songwriter on the rise – and on the run. Desperate to escape her troubled past, she’s determined to do whatever it takes to survive.

Stepping Up by Sarah Turner (17 March)

When an unspeakable tragedy turns Beth’s life upside down, it’s not long before she feels seriously out of her depth. But with the help of her best friend and neighbour, this time she’s determined she’s not giving up. Funny and tender, it is a story about digging deep and finding magic in things that were there all along.

French Braid by Anne Tyler (24 March)

The major new novel from Anne Tyler , French Braid is a brilliantly perceptive, painfully true and funny journey deep into one family’s foibles, from the 1950s right up to the changed world of today. Faultless and profound, it is a moving meditation on the small moments that can make up a life and shape the future.

Yinka, Where Is Your Huzband? By Lizzie Damilola Blackburn (31 March)

This hotly anticipated debut is total joy to read. When Yinka’s cousin gets engaged, she forms a plan to find herself a date. Warm, witty and bursting with charm, it’s a story of friendship, family, romance – and learning to love yourself.

Ammu by Asma Khan (17 March)

Asma Khan ’s Ammu, her mother, is the centre of their family. This book is a tribute to the simple home-cooking from her kitchen in Calcutta. These Indian dishes will bring warmth to your kitchen when you need a quick meal to share with family and friends – food to comfort, restore and nourish.

Every Family Has A Story by Julia Samuel (17 March)

Every Family Has A Story sees bestselling psychotherapist Julia Samuel turn from her work with individuals to sessions with a wide variety of families. Diving deep into eight case studies, she analyses a range of issues including separation, step-relationships, leaving home and loss. Showing how there can be forgiveness and learning amidst trauma and hardship, this is an honest and compassionate meditation on what we inherit and how we can create the families we wish for.

The Shame Machine by Cathy O’Neil (22 March)

In this revelatory book, Cathy O’Neil argues that shame is being weaponized by governments and corporations to attack the most vulnerable. With clarity and nuance, she dissects the relationship between shame and power. Who does the system serve? And, most importantly, how can we all fight back?

Horizons by James Poskett (24 March)

Horizons is a radical retelling of the history of science. Challenging both the existing Eurocentric narrative and our perceptions of revered individuals, it also celebrates the work of scientists neglected by history. In this ambitious, remarkable read, James Poskett reveals that scientific advancement is, and has always been, a global endeavour.

A Line Above the Sky by Helen Mort (24 March)

A Line Above the Sky blends memoir and nature writing to ask why humans are drawn to danger, and how we can find freedom in pushing our limits. It is a visceral love letter to losing oneself in physicality, whether climbing a mountain or bringing a child into the world, and an unforgettable celebration of womanhood in all its forms.

The Ship Asunder by Thomas Nancollas (31 March)

In this moving and original new history, Tom Nancollas goes in search of 11 relics that together tell the story of Britain at sea. From the swallowtail prow of a Bronze Age vessel to a stone ship moored at Baroque quayside, each one illuminates a distinct phase of our adventures upon the waves and brings us closer to the people, places and vessels that made a maritime nation. 

Gretel the Wonder Mammoth by Kim Hillyard (3 Mar)

After waking up and breaking free from her icy shell, Gretel learns she is the last surviving mammoth in the world. Everyone wants to meet her! But Gretel soon feels overwhelmed and isn’t sure how to talk to her friends about it… This is a sweet story about overcoming anxiety.

The Tale of Peter Rabbit Picture Book by Beatrix Potter (3 Mar)

It’s Peter Rabbit ’s 120th birthday this year! And to celebrate, we’re releasing this special picture book edition of Beatrix Potter’s classic tale. It includes all the original drawings and text; it’s just set out in a new format for little children.

The Last Firefox by Lee Newbery and Laura Catalán (3 Mar)

Charlie Challinor has been finding life a bit scary lately. But then he is made guardian of a firefox called Cadno, and things get a whole lot scarier. A wicked hunter is looking for Cadno, so it’s up to Charlie to find the bravery and strength he never thought he had.

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus (5 April)

Meet the unconventional, uncompromising Elizabeth Zott. In this fresh, funny and tender debut novel , we follow chemist Elizabeth through love, motherhood and TV stardom. An iconic heroine teaching women to challenge the status quo – she’s sure to leave you quite changed, too.

Companion Piece by Ali Smith (7 April)

A celebration of companionship in all its timeless and contemporary, spellbinding and shapeshifting forms, Companion Piece is the follow-up to Ali Smith ’s extraordinary Seasonal Quartet. A set of four novels – Autumn , Winter , Spring and Summer which were written and published in as close as possible to real time, between 2016 and 2020, providing commentary on world events.

Elizabeth Finch by Julian Barnes (14 April)

In the latest novel from Julian Barnes , a former student unpacks his teacher’s old notebooks and remembers her uniquely inquisitive mind. A truly original story, it’s also a loving tribute to philosophy, a careful evaluation of history and an invitation to think for ourselves.

No Less The Devil by Stuart MacBride (28 April)

It’s been seventeen months since the Bloodsmith butchered his first victim and Operation Maypole is still no nearer to catching him. Now isn’t the time to get distracted by other cases, but Detective Sergeant Lucy McVeigh soon finds herself without much choice. A dark, gritty and compulsive thriller, it’s a must-read for crime fiction fans.

Theatre of Marvels by Lianne Dillsworth (28 April)

Theatre of Marvels is the story of a Black, British actress’ rise to stardom – and what comes next. A deliciously immersive tale, it whisks you on an unforgettable journey across Victorian London in a bold exploration of race, class and gothic spectacle.

The Journey of Humanity  by Oded Galor (7 April)

A landmark, radically uplifting account of our species’ progress from one of the world’s pre-eminent thinkers, The Journey of Humanity offers breakthrough insights into the power of diversity and our capacity to tackle climate change. Its hopeful vision contains the keys not only to the thriving of our species but to our survival.

Emotion by Design by Greg Hoffman (7 April)

Join Greg Hoffman, Nike’s former Chief Marketing Officer, as he helps craft the company’s iconic campaigns for Ronaldo and Serena, Olympic Games and World Cup finals. In this part-guidebook part-memoir, his insights offer a revelatory method that will make any brand more creative: emotion by design.

The Lost Paths by Jack Cornish (13 April)

By 2026, 10,000 miles of undiscovered footpaths around Britain stand to be lost. Jack Cornish has spent the last five years walking these forgotten routes, and The Lost Paths is the result. Written with the hope it will show just how special these rights of way are, and how embedded each path is in our history, the book is a rallying cry to reclaim what has been lost and preserve it for future generations.

The Lives of Brian by Brian Johnson (14 April)

That AC/DC’s legendary front man got to do it all is one of the most cheering and entertaining stories in rock ‘n’ roll history. Warm, vivid and often laugh-out-loud funny, this life-affirming memoir tells the incredible story of one of the world’s most well-loved performers.

Bittersweet by Susan Cain (21 April)

In this inspiring book, author of the bestselling phenomenon  Quiet   Susan Cain explores the power of “bittersweetness” – a tendency toward sorrow and longing, an acute awareness of passing time, and a piercing joy when beholding beauty. At a time of profound discord and anxiety, Bittersweet brings us together and shows us how to transform our personal and collective pain into creativity, transcendence, and connection.

Portable Magic by Emma Smith (28 April)

The perfect book for bibliophiles, Portable Magic is a fascinating journey into our relationship with the physical book. Exploring the unexpected and unseen consequences of our love affair with books, it illuminates the ways in which this relationship is more reciprocal – and more turbulent – than we tend to imagine.

It's Time to... Clean Up! by Carly Gledhill (14 April)

Get little hands ready for some spring cleaning! This interactive board book is filled with different sliders and flaps for children to help vacuum, wash the dishes, and hang out the washing.

The Drama Llama by Rachel Morrisroe and Ella Okstad (14 April)

Every time Alex Allen worries a llama appears. And this wouldn’t be a problem, except the more Alex worries, the bigger the llama gets and the more trouble he causes. Will Alex ever be able to control his worries and lose this mischievous llama?

Wilder Than Midnight by Cerrie Burnell (28 April)

Saffy, Aurelia and Wild Rose are three girls who have all grown up to lead very different lives. They do have one thing in common though – Silverthorne. It’s a place filled with secrets and untold terrors, and together, this trio have the power to change everything.

The Good Left Undone by Adriana Trigiani (5 May) 

Escape to sun-drenched, mid-century Europe in this poignant new novel about love, family and untold secrets. The Good Left Undone tells the tale of Domenica Cabrelli and the two great loves of her life. Decades later, her daughter Matelda realises she must unpack their family’s legacy and discover the real story of her mother’s wartime years before it’s too late.



Idol by Louise O’Neil (12 May) 

This is the story of Samantha, an influencer with a booming career and adoring young fans. When an essay about Samantha’s sexual awakening as a teenager with her female best friend Lisa goes viral, Lisa gets in touch to say that she remembers that night very differently... Riveting and bold, Idol interrogates how well we can ever really know those we follow online, and asks us to consider how effortlessly we choose which stories to believe.



With a Mind to Kill by Anthony Horowitz (26 May) 

Discover the explosive new chapter in the world of 007. In a mission where treachery is all around and one false move means death, James Bond must grapple with the darkest questions about himself. But not even he knows what has happened to the man he used to be…

How to Prevent the Next Pandemic by Bill Gates (3 May) 

Though the Covid-19 pandemic isn’t over, governments around the world are starting to talk about what happens next. Can we hope to prevent a new pandemic? Bill Gates believes the answer is yes, and in this book he lays out clearly and convincingly what all of us can do to not only ward off another Covid-like catastrophe – but to eliminate all respiratory diseases.



Life Time by Russell Foster (19 May)

Learn how to sleep better, work better and feel better with this fascinating guide to using the science of the body clock to create the optimum personal routine. Illustrating the surprising effects the time of day can have on our health, Russell Foster explains astonishing science that can help us to live healthier, sharper lives.

His Name Is George Floyd by Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa (19 May)

In His Name is George Floyd we meet the kind young boy, high school football player and loving father constantly in search of a better life in a society determined to write him off. The book reveals the myriad ways that structural racism shaped Floyd’s life and death – and delivers a powerful exploration of how one man ended up touching the world.



Regenesis by George Monbiot (26 May)

In this bracingly original book, George Monbiot shows how we can resolve the biggest of our environmental dilemmas and feed the world without devouring the planet. A breathtaking vision of a new future, Regenesis explores the opportunity we now have to transform not only our food system but our entire relationship to the living world.



The Social Distance Between Us by Darren McGarvey (26 May)

If all the best people are in all the top jobs, then why is Britain such a bin fire? In this brilliant book, Darren McGarvey explores this question alongside society’s biggest issues – from homelessness and poverty to policing and overrun prisons. For anyone who feels that they don’t know where to start with helping to bring about much-needed change, start here.



Good Pop, Bad Pop by Jarvis Cocker (26 May)

We all have a random collection of the things that made us – photos, tickets, clothes, souvenirs – stuffed in a box or drawer somewhere. When Jarvis Cocker starts clearing out his loft, he finds a jumble of objects that catalogue his life. In Good Pop, Bad Pop , he unpacks this debris: evidence of a unique life, Pulp, 20th century pop culture, the good times and the mistakes.


All the Flowers Kneeling by Paul Tran (5 May)

This astonishing poetry collection charts the rebuilding of a self in the wake of extremity. Rich, resonant poems of desire, freedom, control and rebirth reach back into the past to show how it both scars and transforms. At once confessional and profoundly defiant, All the Flowers Kneeling is an essential testament to the human capacities for resilience, endurance and love.

Baby Touch: Rainbow (5 May)

Introduce first colours to your baby with this board book from the Baby Touch series . Each page features a different colour and textured patch for little hands to touch. A great one for encouraging interaction and stimulating babies’ senses.

The Good Turn by Sharna Jackson (12 May)

Eleven-year-old Josephine Williams has decided to start her own Girl Scout troop with her best friends Margot and Wesley. As the trio head out to earn their camping badges they come across an abandoned factory they just can’t help but explore… A must-read for fans of the Murder Most Unladylike series.

Ten Minutes to Bed: Little Fairy by Rhiannon Fielding and Chris Chatterton (26 May)

This new addition to the hit Ten Minutes to Bed series follows a little fairy called Poppy. Poppy spots a lost gnome looking for his glade, and she’s determined to help him. But will Poppy be able to fly him to safety and get herself back home before bedtime?

Meredith, Alone by Claire Alexander (9 June)

In this gorgeous debut novel, Meredith Maggs hasn’t left her house in 1,214 days. But she insists she isn’t alone. She has her cat Fred, visits from her friend Sadie, an online support group – plus jigsaws, recipes, Emily Dickinson and the internet. But something’s about to change. Does she have the courage to overcome what’s been keeping her inside all this time?



The Whalebone Theatre by Joanna Quinn (9 June)

Get ready to fall in love with this immersive, heart breaking and joyous novel. With her step-parents distracted by their endless party guests, Cristabel Seagrave and her siblings scratch together their own education. As war approaches and the roles they’re expected to play are no longer those they want, they must each find a way to write their own story.



The Poet by Louisa Reid (9 June)

Written in verse and charged with passion and anger, The Poet is a brilliant, beautifully written portrait of a deeply dysfunctional relationship, exploring coercive control, class and privilege. It’s also an utterly compelling tale of female solidarity and survival.

Unlawful Killings by Her Honour Wendy Joseph QC (9 June)

Every day in the UK lives are suddenly, brutally taken away. High-profile murder cases grab our attention in dramatic headlines – but every unlawful death tells a story. In this riveting book, Her Honour Wendy Joseph QC describes how cases unfold and exactly what it's like to be a witness to human good and bad.



I’ll Die After Bingo by Pope Lonergan (16 June)

I’ll Die After Bingo is a no-holds-barred account of what life inside a care home is really like. Featuring night-time drama, incontinence pads and the uniquely dark humour of one double-amputee Alzheimer's patient, it shows us  everything there is to know about Britain's care system. Funny and heartfelt, it challenges us to think differently about the value of our elderly and the carers who look after them.



Birdgirl by Mya-Rose Craig (30 June)

One of the most anticipated debuts of 2022, Birdgirl is the story of Mya Rose – birder, environmentalist and diversity activist. To date she’s seen over five thousand different types of bird: half the world’s species. Her journey is defined by her love for these creatures, and in pursuing her passion she has become ever-more determined to campaign for our survival.

Black in Time by Alison Hammond (2 June)

In her new book, TV presenter Alison Hammond journeys back in time to learn about some amazing Black people from history. From Mary Seacole to George Bridgetower, this non-fiction pick is an inspiring read for all children.

Welcome to Dinosaur School by Rose Cobden and Loretta Schauer (23 June)

It’s Jewel the dinosaur’s first day at school and the nerves are kicking in! But once she’s settled in her new classroom, it turns out school isn’t really that scary after all. This charming picture book is perfect for children due to start primary school.

The Midnighters by Hana Tooke and Ayesha L. Rubio (23 June)

Fans of The Unadoptables will love this new tale from author Hana Tooke. There’s the mysterious disappearance of a friend, a large gothic city, a secret society known as the Midnight Guild, and a little bit of magic…

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin (14 July)

In this magnificent novel, two children meet in a hospital gaming room. When they spot each other again eight years later, their collaborations make them superstars. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow takes us on a dazzling quest as it examines the nature of identity, creativity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play and, above all, our need to connect.



 The Family Remains by Lisa Jewell (21 July)

Loved The Family Upstairs ? Find out what happens next in this gripping sequel. When a bag of human bones is discovered on the foreshore of the River Thames, DCI Samuel Owusu is called to the scene and must follow a trail of clues. These point to four deaths, an unsolved mystery, and a family whose secrets can’t stay buried forever… 



The Retreat by Sarah Pearse (21 July)

In the new locked-room thriller from the author of The Sanatorium , guests at a wellness retreat receive a warning that a woman’s body has been found at the bottom of a cliff. With a storm on the way, they’re told not to panic; to stick together and ignore any rumours about the island and its history. When the weather clears they’ll be taken back to the mainland. Until then, they should enjoy their stay… 



Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of It by Janina Ramirez (21 July)

The Middle Ages are often seen as a bloodthirsty time of Vikings, saints and kings: patriarchal societies which oppressed and excluded women. But if we dig a little deeper, we can see that the 'dark' ages were anything but. With this fascinating book, see the medieval world with fresh eyes and discover why so many remarkable women were removed from our collective memories.

Trixie Pickle Art Avenger by Olaf Falafel (7 July)

Bullies had better watch out as Art Avenger Trixie Pickle is about! This new story from comedian and author Olaf Falafel follows Trixie as she teaches school bullies a lesson using her art skills. Perfect for fans of Diary of a Wimpy Kid.

Little Seahorse and the Big Question by Freddy McConnell & Rosalind Beardshaw (7 July)

In Little Seahorse and the Big Question , Papa and Little One are exploring what they need most. Clean water, friends and a home are all very important – but they need each other the most. Written by journalist and seahorse dad Freddy McConnell, this touching picture book is for all kinds of families.

That's Not My Name! by Anoosha Syed (28 July)

It’s Mirha’s first day of school and she can’t wait to learn and meet all her new classmates. However, she finds everyone keeps mispronouncing her name and goes home wondering whether she should get another. But her mum helps Mirha see that her name is extra special.

The Last White Man by Mohsin Hamid (11 August)

From the bestselling author of Exit West comes a new novel of love, loss, and rediscovery. It is the story of a man who wakes one morning to find that his skin has turned dark, his reflection a stranger to him. Soon reports of similar occurrences begin to surface. A masterful treatise on race, prejudice and nationalism, The Last White Man invites us to envision a future that dares to reimagine who we think we are, and how we might yet be together.



The Queen of Dirt Island by Donal Ryan (18 August)

The Queen of Dirt Island is a searing, jubilant tale about four generations of women. It is a story of terrible betrayals and fierce loyalties, of isolation and togetherness, of transgression, forgiveness, desire, and love. It is about all the things family can be and all the things it sometimes isn't. And it is a celebration of the powerful stories that bind generations together.



The Long Knives by Irvine Welsh (25 August)

In the second book of Irvine Welsh ’s CRIME series, Ritchie Gulliver MP is found dead having been castrated and left to die in an empty Leith warehouse. Vicious, racist and corrupt, many thought he had it coming. But nobody predicted this. As Detective Ray Lennox unravels the truth, and the list of attacks grows, he must put his personal feelings aside. But one question persists... Who are the real victims here? 

A Ladybird Book: The Ancient Egyptians by Sidra Ansari & Anja Sušanj (4 August)

This new addition to the A Ladybird Book series will take you back in time to when the ancient Egyptians lived. The civilisation lasted for over 3,000 years and saw the emergence of ideas and inventions such as mathematics and toothpaste!

Crash! Bang! Wallop! by Neil Clark (11 August)

Crash, Bang, and Wallop are all boisterous and love making lots of noise. But when they meet three quieter characters, the trio find that they can still have fun in quiet moments. Little ones will love reading this fun rhyming book.

How to Grow a Dragon by Rachel Morrisroe & Steven Lenton (18 August)

Sarah and Mr Pottifer have received a delivery of dragodil seeds. And although unexpected, this means they can now grow helpful dragon pets for their customers! But it quickly becomes apparent that these fiery beasts are not well-behaved at all.

Act of Oblivion by Robert Harris (1 September)

In 1660, General Edward Whalley and Colonel William Goffe cross the Atlantic – they are on the run and wanted for the murder of King Charles I. In London, Richard Nayler is tasked with tracking them down. He’ll stop at nothing until the two men are brought to justice. This thrilling new novel is an epic journey across continents, and a chase like no other.



Love Untold by Ruth Jones (1 September)

The funny, moving and uplifting new novel from Ruth Jones , co-creator of Gavin & Stacey and author of bestsellers Never Greener and Us Three .



Lessons by Ian McEwan (13 September)

When Roland Baine’s wife vanishes, leaving him alone with his tiny son, he is finally forced to confront the reality of his restless existence. Epic, mesmerising and deeply humane, Lessons is a chronicle for our times – a powerful meditation on history and humanity through the prism of one man's lifetime.



The Bullet that Missed by Richard Osman (15 September)

A new mystery is afoot in the third book in the Thursday Murder Club series from Richard Osman . We can’t wait.

Colditz by Ben MacIntyre (15 September)

In a Gothic castle on a hilltop in the heart of Nazi Germany, an unlikely band of British officers spent WWII plotting daring escapes from their Nazi captors. But that tale contains only part of the truth. The astonishing inside story, revealed for the first time in this new book, is a tale of the indomitable human spirit, but also one of snobbery, class conflict, homosexuality, bullying, espionage, boredom, insanity and farce. Deeply researched and full of incredible human stories, this is the definitive book on Colditz.



Landlines by Raynor Winn (15 September)

Following The Salt Path and The Wild Silence , in Landlines Raynor Winn embarks on her most ambitious walk to date. With husband Moth she travels from the dramatic beauty of the north-west corner of Scotland, to the familiar territory of the South West Coast Path. Chronicling her journey, she maps not only the physical terrain, but also captures the collective consciousness of a country facing an uncertain path ahead.



Terry Pratchett: A Life With Footnotes by Rob Wilkins (29 September)

In 2015,  Terry Pratchett was working on his finest story yet – his own. Following his untimely death from Alzheimer's, the mantle of completing Pratchett’s memoir was passed to Rob Wilkins, his former assistant and friend. This is Pratchett’s extraordinary story – from his early childhood to the literary phenomenon that his Discworld series became; and how he met and coped with the challenges that Alzheimer's brought with it.

The Whisperling by Hayley Hoskins (1 September)

It’s 1897 and 12-year-old Peggy Devona has a very rare gift – she is a Whisperling and can speak to the dead. She keeps her skill a secret as those in her village fear anyone who is different. But when her best friend is accused of murder, Peggy has to draw on her abilities to solve the case and prove Sally’s innocence.

Speak Up! by Nathan Bryon and Dapo Adeola (15 September)

Rocket is an avid bookworm and loves her weekly trips to the library where she reads all about inspirational figures from the past. But when Rocket learns that her local library is going to be shut down, she is determined to speak up – just like Rosa Parks – and save the day.

The Ministry of Unladylike Activity by Robin Stevens (29 September)

Those who have been missing the escapades of Daisy Wells and Hazel Wong will be delighted to learn that author Robin Stevens has a brand-new series. It’s the Second World War, and a secret arm of the British government is training up spies. Hazel’s little sister May Wong knows there is no one more perfect to become a spy than a child. She offers up her services but is turned away. So, Hazel and her friend Eric, take matters into their own hands…

Darling by India Knight (20 October)

Marooned in a sprawling Norfolk farmhouse, teenager Linda Radlett feels herself destined for greater things. She longs for love, but how will she ever find it? She can't even get a signal on her mobile phone. In this razor-sharp, gloriously funny retelling of Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit of Love , we follow Linda's journey – one wilder, more surprising and more complicated than she could ever have imagined.


Nightwalking: Four Journeys Into Britain After Dark by John Lewis-Stempel (20 October)

As the human world settles down each evening, nocturnal animals prepare to take back the countryside. In this beautiful book, acclaimed nature writer and farmer John Lewis-Stempel takes us on four walks through the four seasons, revealing a world bursting with life and normally hidden from view.



 Autobiography by Malorie Blackman (20 October)

In Malorie Blackman ’s long-awaited autobiography, the author shares her extraordinary story – from a childhood surrounded by words, to the 83 rejection letters she received in response to her first project, to the children's laureateship. It explores the books that have made her, and the background to some of the most beloved children's stories of today. It is an inspiring account of the power of words to change lives. 



Edible Economics: A Hungry Economist Explains the World by Ha-Joon Chang (27 October)

Explore economic thinking – about globalisation, climate change, immigration and more – in its most digestible form. In Edible Economics , Ha-Joon Chang makes challenging ideas more palatable by plating them alongside stories about food from around the world. Myth-busting, witty and thought-provoking, it shows that getting to grips with the economy is like learning a recipe: if we understand it, we can change it – and, with it, the world.



Manorism by Yomi Sode (27 October)

Through poems about family, survival and the complexities of belonging, Manorism examines the lives of Black British men and boys. From exploring the ongoing pressure of code-switching, to charting the dramatic reconciliations surrounding a death in the family, this thrillingly original book is a must for all lovers of poetry and its power.

I Am, You Are by Ashley Harris Whaley and Ananya Rao-Middleton (13 October)

Written by disability activist Ashley Harris Whaley, I Am, You Are offers a thorough explanation about disability for children, parents, carers, and teachers. It includes explanations on key words and concepts alongside beautiful illustrations. A must-have for every child.

My Name is Malala by Malala Yousafzai and Mariam Quraishi (18 October)

Malala Yousafzai is known all over the world for her tireless activism and bravery in the face of oppression. This board book that charts her life is a wonderful introduction for younger readers and will inspire anyone who reads it.

Peter Rabbit: Tales from the Countryside (27 October)

Featuring 24 stories inspired by Beatrix Potter’s original tales, this compendium of Peter Rabbit tales for every season will delight all readers. Join Peter as he harvests apples in the autumn, stargazes on a winter’s night, finds a missing lamb in the spring, and enjoys a picnic in the summer.

Fourteen Days edited by Margaret Atwood (1 November)

Set in a Lower East Side tenement in the early days of the pandemic, Fourteen Days is a dazzling, heart-warming novel with an unusual twist: each character has been secretly written by a different, major literary voice – from Margaret Atwood and Douglas Preston to Dave Eggers and Celeste Ng. One to look forward to, it portrays how, beneath the loss and suffering, some communities managed to become stronger. 


Novelist as a Vocation by Haruki Murakami (8 November)

Haruki Murakami fans are sure to be delighted with this unique look into the mind of the master storyteller. In Novelist as a Vocation , the famously reclusive writer shares what he thinks about being a novelist, his thoughts on the role of the novel in our society, his own origins as a writer, and his musings on creativity. 



A Private Spy by John le Carré (3 November)

Don’t miss this collection of letters from John le Carré , spanning decades from his childhood to the Cold War to his final years. By turns intimate and comic, tender and clear-sighted, A Private Spy offers a rare and illuminating portrait of one of the greatest British novelists of our time.



 The Song of the Cell by Siddhartha Mukherjee (3 November)

In his most spectacular book yet, Siddhartha Mukherjee tells the story of how scientists discovered cells, began to understand them, and are now using that knowledge to create new humans. Making complex science thrilling, he continues his exploration of what it means to be human. Told in six parts, laced with his own experience as a researcher, doctor and prolific reader, The Song of the Cell is both panoramic and intimate – a masterpiece.

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The best books of 2022

From Hanya Yanagihara’s epic novel to a brilliant memoir by Bono … Guardian critics pick the year’s best fiction, politics, science, children’s books and more. Tell us about your favourite books in the comments

Hanya Yanagihara’s follow-up to A Little Life, Percival Everett’s biting satire and Ali Smith’s playful take on lockdown – Justine Jordan reflects on a year in fiction. Read all fiction

Children’s books

Imogen Russell Williams picks the best titles for children and teenagers, from a spooky tale by Philip Pullman to the long-awaited new novel from SF Said – plus books for young readers by Oliver Jeffers and Maggie O’Farrell. Read all children’s books

Crime and thrillers

Cosy crime from Ajay Chowdhury, a new Rebus novel and a handful of excellent debuts – Laura Wilson rounds up the best page-turners. Read all crime and thrillers

Science fiction and fantasy

A verse novel written in Orcadian Scots, a unique UFO story and a distinctive time-travel tale from the author of Station Eleven – Adam Roberts selects five of the best science fiction and fantasy books. Read all science fiction and fantasy

Biography and memoir

Fiona Sturges chooses the best memoirs, from Alan Rickman’s posthumous diaries to Michelle Obama’s follow-up to Becoming, as well as compelling biographies of Agatha Christie and John Donne. Read all biography and memoir

History and politics

Reflections on the British empire, urgent stories of deadly migrant routes and a Nobel peace prize-winner’s thoughts on the future of democracy – Alex von Tunzelmann ’s choice of books about our past and present. Read all history and politics

Jonathan Liew picks five of the year’s best books about sport, including a thought-provoking history of Black footballers and a fascinating biography of Geoffrey Boycott. Read all sport

With subjects ranging from the lessons of the Covid-19 pandemic to the potential of digital virtual worlds, Alok Jha selects the year’s top science books. Read all science

Black and queer communities are centred in much of this year’s poetry, including Joelle Taylor’s account of butch lesbian counterculture and Warsan Shire’s captivating take on home and identity – Rishi Dastidar chooses the best collections. Read all poetry

Graphic novels

James Smart picks out the finest comics and graphic books, from thoughtful memoirs to vividly illustrated fiction. Read all graphic novels

Bono’s autobiography, oral histories of hip-hop and heavy metal and a smart reflection on Black women in pop – Alexis Petridis ’s pick of books about music and musicians. Read all music

Rachel Roddy on the best food books of the year, from stories of growing up in a Chinese takeaway to pressure cooker recipes and a guide to snacking. Read all food

To browse all of the Guardian’s best books of 2022 visit guardianbookshop.com . Delivery charges may apply.

• 2022 in Culture
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Best books of the year 2022

From economics, politics and history to science, art, food and, of course, fiction — our annual round-up brings you top titles picked by FT writers and critics

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British Book Awards 2022 shortlist is in, and these are the novels to read next

The nibbies line-up offers an exciting range of literature, article bookmarked.

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The British Book Awards – also known as the Nibbies – 2022 shortlist has been announced.

As one of the leading literary awards, founded in 1990 by The Bookseller , it has become known as “the Baftas of the book world” and honours the best UK writers and their work across fiction, non-fiction, and children’s books.

Judges – Gabby Logan, Rob Rinder, Ugo Monye, and Giovanna Fletcher – have the near-impossible task of deciding the book of the year winners by category, which will be announced today, 25 May.

So, if your reading pile is looking a little low on the ground, the announcement of the shortlist should provide all the inspiration you need.

There’s an incredible range of talent among the shortlisted titles this year. In the fiction categories alone you’ll notice some well-established names (Kazuo Ishiguro and Sally Rooney), as well as newcomers ( Women’s Prize for Fiction nominee, Meg Mason , and Obama’s favourite, Raven Leilani ), so there are lots to get your teeth stuck into.

• The Women’s Prize for Fiction 2022 longlist is here
• Costa Book of the Year Awards winner and previous top titles
• International Booker Prize longlisted novels to know

In honour of the British Book Awards shortlist 2022, we’re here to bring you the lowdown on the fabulous fiction categories. It’s time to get reading!

Fiction of the Year shortlist

‘the passenger’ by ulrich alexander boschwitz, published by pushkin press: £7.37, amazon.co.uk.

Set in 1930, Boschwitz’s novel provides an account of Jewish persecution in Nazi Germany and is said to provide an almost unbearable and suspenseful story of a fight for survival.

‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’ by Anthony Doerr, published by Fourth Estate: £16.40, Whsmith.co.uk

Landing a spot in Barack Obama’s 2021 reading list , Cloud Cuckoo Land was noted as a “literary feat” when it was reviewed by The Independent owing to being more than 600 pages long. It tells the lives of five characters – that each form a sub-story to the main plot – and how they are each connected by a copy of a mysterious ancient text.

‘Klara and the Sun’ by Kazuo Ishiguro, published by Faber: £8.36, Bookshop.org

Ishiguro’s eighth novel is a luminous journey through the mind of Klara, an artificial friend who has been built to keep lonely children company. Using Klara’s voice, Ishiguro explores themes of power, status. and fear among humans, as well as the implications of AI and human relationships. Klara and the Sun was also longlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize .

‘Empire of the Vampire’ by Jay Kristoff, published by HarperVoyager: £13.75, Blackwells.co.uk

This dark fantasy epic is the story of a lone warrior who has been captured by vampires, and it’s said to be a visceral account that is unputdownable.

‘Sorrow and Bliss’ by Meg Mason, published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson: £12.99, Waterstones.com

Longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction award 2022, Sorrow and Bliss also took the top spot in our guide to the best books of 2021 thanks to being an “exciting, funny, and thought-provoking novel”. It tells the story of 40-year-old Martha and her dysfunctional family, a failed marriage, and depression. While it “sounds like a truly awful misery read”, our writer noted that “it’s the funniest book of the year, with the most recognisable characters”.

‘Beautiful World, Where are You’ by Sally Rooney, published by Faber: £14.99, Waterstones.com

The author’s eagerly anticipated third novel, Beautiful World, Where are You is set in Ireland and does what Rooney’s other titles do well – explores the lives and loves of its characters. This one focuses on two best friends, Alice and Eileen, and their relationship with each other and those around them.

Debut Book of the Year shortlist

‘open water’by caleb azumah nelson, published by viking: £7.05, amazon.co.uk.

Gaining the “first novel award” in the Costa Book Awards 2021 , Open Water touches on themes of love and race in contemporary society. It’s said to be a tender and emotional story about two young black British artists who form a relationship after meeting in a south east London pub.

‘Assembly’ by Natasha Brown, published by Hamish Hamilton: £12.99, Waterstones.com

Brown’s eagerly anticipated debut was lauded by The Independent for being a “completely captivating read you won’t be able to put down”. Narrated by a British black woman, it’s said to be a “hauntingly accurate novel about the stories we construct for ourselves and others”.

‘Mrs Death Misses Death’ by Salena Godden, published by Canongate Books: £7.37, Whsmith.co.uk

Death is tired of her job and is desperate for someone to talk to, but she befriends a young writer, who is able to write her memoir. Interspersed with poetry, Godden’s debut is said to be a thought-provoking read.

‘Luster’ by Raven Leilani, published by Picador: £9.29, Bookshop.org

Having featured in our review of the best debut novels , Barack Obama’s reading list of 2020 , and the Women’s Prize for Fiction longlist in 2021 , the hype for Luster has been real. It tells the story of 23-year-old Edie and her awkward journey through modern life – it touches on themes of womanhood, sexuality, power dynamics in relationships and race, as well as notions of loneliness and loss. Leilani’s writing is pacy and piercing.

‘How to Kill Your Family’ by Bella Mackie, published by Borough Press: £14.99, Waterstones.com

How To Kill Your Family “depicts Grace’s mission to avenge her mother, which sees her tracking down numerous relatives, including her famous billionaire father, and picking them off one by one”, noted our reviewer . It was praised by The Independent for being a “deliciously addictive” and “very entertaining read”.

‘She Who Became the Sun’ by Shelley Parker-Chan, published by Mantle: £12.75, Amazon.co.uk

Set in the backdrop of famine-stricken China in the mid-1300s, She Who Became the Sun was described by The Independent as being a “brutal, war-strewn epic” that is “beautiful and detailed with queer re-imaginings of history”.

Crime and Thriller Book of the Year shortlist

‘girl a’ by abigail dean, published by harperfiction: £8.36, bookshop.org.

Dean’s first novel took the top spot in our guide to the best debut novels of 2021 , and also featured in our review of the best fiction books . It tells the story of Lex Gracie, the “Girl A” of the title, who “is one of seven abused and neglected children who grew up in a home dubbed the House of Horrors”, noted our writer . They also said that after they put it down they couldn’t “stop thinking about it, harrowing though its subject matter is”.

‘The Appeal’ by Janice Hallett, published by Viper Books: £7.37, Amazon.co.uk

Set in the sleepy town of Lower Lockwood, a production and fundraiser leads to a murder, The Appeal is said to be filled with many twists and turns. Turning traditional storytelling on its head, Hallet reveals all by presenting a series of different emails, messages, and transcripts.

‘A Slow Fire Burning’ by Paula Hawkins, published by Doubleday: £6.25, Amazon.co.uk

Hawkins’s third novel is “set on a London canal where a man is found stabbed to death in his houseboat”. In our review of it, we said it “pays huge attention to detail in the light and shadows of the canal and its surroundings”, this makes it an “atmospheric tale” and a “good page-turning thriller”.

‘1979’ by Val McDermid, published by Sphere: £5.35, Waitrose.com

Set in Scotland, 1979 tells the story of reporter Allie Burns who’s on a mission to get her first big scoop. It sees Burns and her colleagues expose a series of criminal offences and risk making powerful enemies.

‘The Dark Remains’ by William McIlvanney and Ian Rankin, published by Canongate Books: £17.99, Waterstones.com

A prequel to the original DI Laidlaw stories, The Dark Remains is set against the backdrop of Glasgow in the Seventies – where poverty, high unemployment, alcohol and domestic abuse, and violence are rife. And it’s Laidlaw’s first case. The book was first written by McIlvanney and finished off by Rankin after his death.

‘The Man Who Died Twice’ by Richard Osman, published by Viking: £9.49, Whsmith.co.uk

A follow-up to his debut, The Thursday Murder Club (£5, Theworks.co.uk ), this title is about the “same group of ageing sleuths as they are embroiled in murders, mysteries, stolen diamonds, and a mugging”. Our review mentioned how “they plot to take on a Columbian drug cartel and the mafia – all from their sleepy Kent retirement village” and praised Osman’s “wit and humour” for making it “a joy to read”.

Pageturner of the Year shortlist

‘small pleasures’ by clare chambers, published by weidenfeld & nicolson: £7.49, waterstones.com.

Not only has this tome landed itself a spot in the Women’s Prize for Fiction longlist , but it also took the top spot in our guide to the best new books to read in 2020. This “compassionate tale is exquisitely written and entranced us from the very first page”, praised our writer.

‘Worst Idea Ever’ by Jane Fallon, published by Michael Joseph: £5, Amazon.co.uk

Centred around Georgia, her friend, and her friend’s husband, Worst Idea Ever is about how a fake Twitter account unravels their lives. It is said to be a witty and gripping novel.

‘The Wolf Den’ by Elodie Harper, published by Head of Zeus: £7.37, Amazon.co.uk

Set in Pompeii’s brothels, The Wolf Den tells the story of enslaved Amara. Harper’s historical novel is a tale of survival and determination. It’s the first in the trilogy.

‘The Party Crasher’ by Sophie Kinsella, published by Bantam Press, Transworld: £16.99, Waterstones.com

A well-composed family drama, The Party Crasher is centred around Effie, while also allowing each character to have their own story. Effie gatecrashes a family party, and the novel is said to serve as a reminder that everyone around us has things bubbling under the surface.

‘The Summer Seekers’ by Sarah Morgan, published by HQ: £6.21, Amazon.co.uk

This uplifting, feel-good novel is about one of the most unconventional of road trips with the oddest of couples. The key message is no matter what your age, you should always follow your dreams.

‘The Last House on Needless Street’ by Catriona Ward, published by Viper Books: £6.29, Whsmith.co.uk

Ward’s novel “tells the story of a missing child and her sister’s quest to find her”, noted our review . And our writer praised the author for creating “a rare work of fiction that explores the human will to endure – no matter the cost”.

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The books we're looking forward to in 2022

The must-reads to add to your list!

If you love thrillers, what could be better than a new novel from Lucy Foley? And fans of family dramas will be delighted to hear Anne Tyler has a new book out in April. Here are 22 of the most exciting new releases coming in 2022.

To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara

Yanagihara is best-known for her 2015 hit A Little Life which is on many people's top 10 books ever lists. This new book is a very different beast, split into three sections, all set in New York City 100 years apart. It opens in an alternate 1893 where New York is part of the Free States, a nation separate to the rest of America, that allows gay marriage. The next part is set in 1993, during the AIDS epidemic and the final section, set in 2093, is about a world floored by pandemics.

Free Love by Tessa Hadley

I’ve been a fan of this elegant writer since her debut Accidents In The Home . Her new novel is set in the 60s and follows dutiful housewife Phyllis who turns her life upside down after kissing the twenty-something son of a family friend. Hadley writes with great insight about love and passion.

A Terrible Kindness by Jo Browning Wroe

A beautiful book full of big emotions. Based on the real-life tragedy of Aberfan, it’s the story of newly-qualified embalmer William who rushes to volunteer his services. What he sees on that terrible night forces his to face the losses in his own life.

The Key In The Lock by Beth Underdown

This compelling gothic mystery spans 30 years, and is about family, secrets, power and generational trauma…

Love Marriage by Monica Ali

This is the first novel in 10 years from the author of Brick Lane . It's the story of Yasmin Ghorami as she prepares to marry fellow doctor Joe Sangster and how the meeting of their two families reveals long-held secrets.

Again, Rachel by Marian Keyes

25 years after the publication of one of Keyes' most-loved books, she's written a sequel. Rachel Walsh is now in a better place, with a steady job and a nice boyfriend, but she finds herself destabilised after seeing her ex again.

Impossible by Sarah Lotz

When a stray e-mail appeared in Bee’s inbox, she decides to write back. Through e-mail she gets to know Nick and they decide to meet under the clock at Euston. But that's where their love story goes awry...

French Braid by Anne Tyler

This new novel from award-winning author Tyler begins in 1959, with a family holiday to a cabin by a lake. It's the only one the Garretts will ever take, but its effects will ripple through the generations.

Notes On An Execution by Danya Kukafka

This author, who was Good Housekeeping book of the year winner with Girl In Snow , returns with a sledge-hammer of a thriller. As a killer awaits his execution on death row, we hear from three women affected by his actions: his mother, Lavender, his ex-wife Hazel and the detective who caught him.

Notes on an Execution by Danya Kukafka

Booth by Karen Joy Fowler

New historical novel from the author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves , focusing on a 19 th century family divided by the issue of the day, one that has split the US nation in two.

Mother's Boy by Patrick Gale

Laura, an impoverished Cornish girl, meets her husband when they are both in service in Teignmouth in 1916. They have a baby, Charles, but Laura's husband returns home from the trenches a damaged man, already ill with the tuberculosis that will soon leave her a widow. This is sure to be another big emotional read from Gale.

Reputation by Sarah Vaughan

The author's follow up to Anatomy Of A Scandal is a political drama about a female MP pushed to the brink by online harassment.

One Day I Shall Astonish The World by Nina Stibbe

Another wonderful, funny slice of fiction from the author of best-seller, Love Nina . Her latest novel explores a decades-long friendship between two women and what happens when your paths diverge.

One Day I Shall Astonish the World by Nina Stibbe

The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley

We know from The Guest List and The Hunting Party that Foley writes a cracker of a thriller. Her new one is set in the city of lights where Jess arrives to stay with her half-brother Ben, only to find him missing. Jess tries to find answers among his neighbours in a Paris apartment building.

Careering by Daisy Buchanan

Set in the magazine world, this dark comedy is described as a 'hard look at the often toxic relationship working women have with their dream jobs.'

The Exhibitionist by Charlotte Mendelson

The Hanrahan family are gathering for a weekend as famous artist Ray Hanrahan prepares for a new exhibition of his art – the first in many decades. His three children will be there, as will his selfless wife, Lucia, an artist in her own right. For all of them, the weekend will be a momentous one, as each has their own secrets to hide...

Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson

This historical fiction debut novel follows two siblings whose their mother leaves them an unusual inheritance: a traditional Caribbean black cake made from a family recipe and a voice recording in which she talks about the past.

A Tidy Ending by Joanna Cannon

Linda and her husband Terry live a fairly quiet existence until she begins to take an interest in their new house's previous inhabitant. As the story unfolds we find out more about Linda's murky past.

Elizabeth Finch by Julian Barnes

A moving story about a teacher of philosophy and the effect she has on her students from the author of The Sense Of An Ending .

The Candy House by Jennifer Egan

This new novel from the author of A Visit from the Goon Squad imagines a world where we can access every memory you've ever had - and exchange them with others.

Corsair The Candy House by Jennifer Egan

Lessons In Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

Set in the 60s, this is the story of the extraordinary Elizabeth Zott, chemist turned host of popular TV cookery show, Supper At Six. As she teaches the nation's women to cook, she's also empowering them to find their voices - and not everyone's happy about it...

People Person by Candice Carty-Williams

The best-selling author of Queenie is back with another heartfelt read that's fresh and funny. People Person is about a young woman connecting with four half siblings and the absent father she barely knows.

Trapeze People Person by Candice Carty-Williams

Take My Hand by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

Inspired by a real life case, this is the story of two sisters aged 12 and 14 who were sterilised without consent in Alabama in 1973, a case that shed light on a shocking chapter in American history.

Book Lovers by Emily Henry

A rom-com set in the book world - can't wait to read this!

Our Wives Under The Sea by Julia Armfield

This genre-defying debut novel is already getting lots of good reviews on social media. After a deep-sea mission goes wrong, Leah returns back to land changed forever...

Picador Our Wives Under The Sea by Julia Armfield

The House Of Fortune by Jessie Burton

A new book by the author of The Miniaturist is always a cause for celebration. This new novel is a sequel to her much-loved debut and is set in Amsterdam, in 1705, where Thea Brandt is about to turn 18 and has the task of saving the family fortunes on her young shoulders.

The House of Fortune by Jessie Burton

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From economics, politics and history to science, art, food and, of course, fiction — our annual round-up brings you top titles picked by FT writers and critics

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Simon Kuper selects his must-read titles

Ángel Gurría-Quintana selects his must-read titles

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GREAT BRITISH BOOK CLUB

14 of the Best New British Mysteries for Autumn 2022

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Cool temperatures, dark evenings, and crunchy leaves make for great mystery-reading – and since publishers know that, there are always quite a few good releases throughout late summer and autumn. To help you navigate the best of what's new and upcoming, we've rounded up some of the best new British mysteries below.

Keep in mind that publication dates occasionally vary between the US and UK. For those titles not yet released, we've included a US release date above the description.

the bullet that missed

Author : Richard Osman

Date : 20 September, 2022

In this third installment of the Thursday Murder Club series , a decade-old cold cast leads Elizabeth and friends to a local news legend and body-less murder. After someone notices their curiosity, however, Elizabeth gets a threatening visit.

The cold case becomes decidedly hot, and it leads Elizabeth, Joyce, Ron, and Ibrahim on an adventure involving an upmarket spa, a luxury penthouse, and a prison cell with an espresso machine. 

Get it :  Amazon Kindle  |  Paperback  |  Audible  |  Bookshop.org  (supports independent bookshops)

the ink black heart

Author : Robert Galbraith (aka JK Rowling)

While Troubled Blood (Book #5) handled a cold case full of mostly geriatric witnesses, The Ink Black Heart (Book #6) takes us into the more youthful world of the internet and online harassment.

When successful animator Edie Ledwell shows up begging to speak with Robin, she describes a mysterious online stalker called Anomie who's been threatening and harassing her. Robin turns away the case, thinking nothing of it until a few days later. That's when she gets the startling news that Edie has been murdered in Highgate Cemetery.

Later, Robin and Strike are approached to help her agent and production company find out the true identify of Anomie. Agreeing, they quickly find themselves wrapped up in a web of dodgy businesses, online aliases, and family conflicts. Not surprisingly, the case put them – and the entire agency – at risk.

Get it : Amazon Kindle  |  Hardcover  |  Audio Book | Bookshop.org (supports independent bookshops)

The twist of a knife

Author : Anthony Horowitz (of Foyle's War fame)

Date : 15 November 2022 in the US

This is the fourth book in the Hawthorne and Horowitz mystery series, a series in which the author is a character working alongside a former police detective called Hawthorne. This time around, we see Horowitz firmly declining Hawthorne's request to do another book and case together.

Unfortunately, Horowitz won't have much choice in the matter. Shortly after he declines, he finds himself the chief suspect in a homicide investigation. To keep himself out of trouble, he'll need Hawthorne's investigative skills to find the real killer.

under a veiled moon

Author : Karen Odden

Date : 11 October 2022 in the US

The second book in the Inspector Corravan series, this one is set in September 1878 as the pleasure boat Princess Alice makes its way up the Thames. In a tragic turn of events, the book collides with an enormous iron-hulled collier, throwing all 600 passengers into the river. Only 130 survive. 

Clues point to sabotage by the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and Irish-born Scotland Yard Inspector Michael Corravan will have to get to the truth – no matter what his friends and colleagues may think about his actions and possible conflicts of interest. 

Get it :  Amazon Kindle | Hardcover | Audible  |  Bookshop.org  (supports independent bookshops)

a botanist's guide to parties & poisons

Author : Kate Khavari

In 1923 London, research assistant Saffron Everleigh is eager to build her career at University College London. Unfortunately, she's plagued by comments about her father's influence in getting her position, along with a general belief that women aren't suited to serious research.

When she attends a dinner party for the school, she hopes to get to know her colleagues better – until everyone is shocked by the sudden death of one of the professor's wives. It's clear she's been poisoned, and when Saffron's mentor becomes chief suspect, she'll use her botanical knowledge to help clear his name.

Get it : Amazon Kindle | Hardcover | Audible  |  Bookshop.org  (supports independent bookshops)

the family remains

Author : Lisa Jewell

On the banks of the Thames, DCI Samuel Owusu discovers bones connected to a thirty year old cold case in Chelsea. At the same time, Rachel Rimmer receives the news that her husband has been found dead in the cellar of his French home. Elsewhere, Lucy Lamb is finally coming home – thirty years after fleeing London in the wake of a tragedy. 

All three will be brought together by the convoluted and interconnected mysteries they're involved in, and what follows will demonstrate the lengths people go to to protect the ones they love and uncover the truth.

the prisoner

Author : BA Paris

Date : 1 November 2022 in US

In spite of the loss of her parents as a child, Amelie moves to London and makes a good life for herself. The future seems full of promise when she's swept up into the luxurious world of handsome billionaire Ned Hawthorne.

Unfortunately, that all comes to a grinding halt when she wakes up one day, trapped in a pitch-black room with no idea where she is. Though answers aren't forthcoming, she's puzzled to learn she soon feels safer in captivity than she had with her husband Ned.

The burning pages

Author : Paige Shelton

In the seventh Scottish Bookshop Mystery, bookseller Delaney Nichols and her co-worker are invited to a Burns Night Supper (See: What Is Burns Night? ) not far from the Cracked Spine bookshop. It quickly becomes clear that there was an ulterior motive behind their invitation.

After the dinner, a fire breaks out and the dinner venue burns to the ground. When her co-worker is blamed, Delaney rushes to prove his innocence – but she soon learns be might have a good motive for arson.

Get it :  Amazon Kindle | Hardcover | Audible | Bookshop.org (supports independent bookshops)

marple: twelve new mysteries

Author : Collaboration

In 1927, the world was introduced to St. Mary Mead's most famous spinster, Miss Jane Marple, in a short story published in  The Royal Magazine . While Dame Agatha is no longer with us and able to write new Marple mysteries, this collection of stories brings us new tales from some of today's most talented mystery writers. The stories are as follows:

• EVIL IN SMALL PLACES by Lucy Foley
• THE SECOND MURDER AT THE VICARAGE by Val McDermid
• MISS MARPLE TAKES MANHATTAN by Alyssa Cole
• THE UNRAVELLING by Natalie Haynes
• MISS MARPLE’S CHRISTMAS by Ruth Ware
• THE OPEN MIND by Naomi Alderman
• THE JADE EMPRESS by Jean Kwok
• A DEADLY WEDDING DAY by Dreda Say Mitchel
• MURDER AT THE VILLA ROSA by Elly Griffiths
• THE MURDERING SORT by Karen M. McManus
• THE MYSTERY OF THE ACID SOIL by Kate Mosse
• THE DISAPPEARANCE by Leigh Bardugo

The rising tide

Author : Ann Cleeves

If you're a fan of Ann Cleeves' Vera book series , you'll be pleased to know this autumn brings a new entry in the series. 

50 years ago, a group of friends met on a school trip to Holy Island. Ever since, they've been visiting the island for reunions to honour their friendship and the friend they lost to the rising causeway just a few years after their meeting.

When one of those friends is hanged, Vera is called in to investigate. As she begins to learn more about his life, she realises the friends are hiding more than what she initially thought.

bleeding heart yard

Author : Elly Griffiths

When Cassie's husband finally persuades her to attend a school reunion, she expects nothing more than a routine catch-up with high-achieving friends from Manor Park School. Unfortunately, one of them is soon found dead in a school toilet, supposedly from a drug overdose. 

Because it's a high-profile investigation, Cassie's new boss, DI Harbinder Kaur, will be heading up the case. The case threatens to dredge up old secrets from her past – the same ones that kept her from previous reunions.

A sliver of darkness: stories

Author : CJ Tudor

Date : 8 November 2022 in the US

Though the stories in this book are more macabre than true mystery, they're not entirely without mystery. Dubbed “Britain's female Stephen King”, CJ Tudor brings us eleven bone-chilling stories of time slips, doomsday scenarios, and killer butterflies. 

the inheritance

Author : Howard Linskey

When Sarah's aunt dies, a huge inheritance is at stake – but it comes with conditions. In order to receive the inheritance, she'll have to solve the decades-old mystery of her aunt's friend's disappearance. As if that's not bad enough, she'll soon learn there's someone out there who wants the secrets to stay hidden.

here lie the dead

Author : JD Kirk

Date : 20 September 2022

If you haven't given JD Kirk's DCI Jack Logan series a try, you're missing out on some of the most gripping Scottish crime thrillers to come out in years (all made even better by Angus King's audiobook narration).

This time around, the body of a teenager has been discovered near Eilean Donan Castle several months after she initially disappeared. As DCI Jack Logan and his team begin to untangle the secret's of the young woman's life, their findings threaten to tear the small community apart. When a second girl goes missing in similar circumstances, they find themselves racing against time to prevent another murder.

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Book reviews: 47 of the best novels of 2022

New releases include The Singularities by John Banville and Saha by Cho Nam-Joo

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1. The Singularities by John Banville

2. saha by cho nam-joo (trans. jamie chang), 3. bournville by jonathan coe.

• 4. Molly & the Captain by Anthony Quinn

5. Darling by India Knight

6. the passenger by cormac mccarthy, 7. demon copperhead by barbara kingsolver, 8. liberation day by george saunders, 9. lucy by the sea by elizabeth strout, 10. the romantic by william boyd, 11. the marriage portrait by maggie o’farrell, 12. carrie soto is back by taylor jenkins reid, 13. lessons by ian mcewan, 14. the ink black heart by robert galbraith, 15. haven by emma donoghue, 16. trust by hernan diaz, 17. the last white man by mohsin hamid, 18. a hunger by ross raisin, 19. acts of service by lillian fishman, 20. the twilight world by werner herzog, 21. the exhibitionist by charlotte mendelson, 22. vladimir by julia may jonas, 23. to paradise by hanya yanagihara, 24. joan by katherine j. chen, 25. the house of fortune by jessie burton, 26. the seaplane on final approach by rebecca rukeyser, 27. the young accomplice by benjamin wood, 28. the sidekick by benjamin markovits, 29. nonfiction: a novel by julie myerson, 30. you have a friend in 10a by maggie shipstead, 31. very cold people by sarah manguso, 32. trespasses by louise kennedy, 33. elizabeth finch by julian barnes, 34. the candy house by jennifer egan, 35. companion piece by ali smith, 36. young mungo by douglas stuart, 37. sell us the rope by stephen may, 38. french braid by anne tyler, 39. good intentions by kasim ali, 40. the school for good mothers by jessamine chan, 41. pure colour by sheila heti, 42. a previous life by edmund white, 43. a class of their own by matt knott, 44. our country friends by gary shteyngart, 45. scary monsters by michelle de kretser, 46. free love by tessa hadley, 47. the fell by sarah moss.

As the author of three trilogies, John Banville is “no stranger to using recurring characters”, said Ian Critchley in Literary Review . But The Singularities takes this to extremes: so stuffed is it with “old Banville protagonists” that it is close to being a “literary greatest-hits collection”. The setting is Arden House – the crumbling Irish country house from Banville’s 2009 work The Infinities . Various characters from that work are joined by William Jaybey (from The Newton Letter ) and Freddie Montgomery (from The Book of Evidence ), among others. One doesn’t begrudge Banville his “game with his readers”: The Singularities is a “pleasure to read”.

With its “assembly of characters” and country house setting, this novel seems to have the “makings of a whodunnit”, said Tom Ball in The Times . But “no one dies”, or even falls out; and, in fact, little of consequence happens. Fortunately, “you don’t read Banville for his taut plots”. You read him because, every few pages, there’s a sentence “so perfectly contrived it stops you for a moment, achingly, like a beautiful stranger passing in the street”.

Knopf 320pp £14.99; The Week Bookshop £11.99

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The South Korean writer Cho Nam-Joo is best known for her 2016 novel Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 , said Ellen Peirson-Hagger in The i Paper . A story of “everyday sexism”, it sold more than a million copies in South Korea and sparked a national conversation about the status of women. Cho’s latest novel, Saha , is “just as political” – though this time the focus is on class. Set in a dystopian future, the novel follows a disparate group of characters who live in some dilapidated buildings on the outskirts of “Town”, a fiercely hierarchical “privatised city-nation” where all aspects of life are tightly controlled. Offering a powerful critique of “plutocracy, systemic inequality” and “gendered violence”, the novel is “utterly captivating”.

Cho’s dystopia is “not particularly original”, and her plotting can be “surprisingly loose”, said Mia Levitin in The Daily Telegraph . But the novel’s characterisation is “touching” – and its themes are certainly powerful. At a time of rising global inequality – South Korea’s economy is dominated by “mega-corporations” – this is a book that “resonates widely”.

Scribner 240pp £14.99; The Week Bookshop £11.99

“Few contemporary writers can make a success of the state-of-the-nation novel,” said Rachel Cunliffe in The New Statesman . But one who can is Jonathan Coe. His latest charts 75 years of British history, following the lives of a single family, headed by matriarch Mary Lamb, who live on the outskirts of Birmingham, near the Bournville factory. Coe covers so much ground in just 350 pages by alighting only on key moments: VE Day in 1945; the Queen’s coronation; the 1966 World Cup; the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. The result is a “piercing” satire on Englishness that is “designed to make you think by making you laugh”. This is a warm and comforting book, said Melissa Katsoulis in The Times – like a “mug of hot chocolate”.

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The final section, set during Covid-19, is very moving, said J.S. Barnes in Literary Review . But much of this novel is “flat and formulaic”. The use of hindsight is clunky: when Mary visits The Mousetrap in 1953, she thinks: “I imagine it will be closing before very long.” It feels like a “procession through well-worn territory”, rather than something designed to “excite or entertain”.

Viking 368pp £20; The Week Bookshop £15.99

4. Molly & the Captain by Anthony Quinn

Anthony Quinn is a “fine prose stylist, able to evoke the past with vivid immediacy”, said Alex Preston in The Observer . His ninth novel is a sweeping epic that consists of three interlinked sections. In the 1780s, Laura Merrymount – daughter of the Gainsborough-esque portraitist William Merrymount – strives to escape from her father’s shadow and become a painter herself. In Chelsea a century later, we meet the young artist Paul Stransom and his sister Maggie – who abandoned her own dreams of becoming an artist to care for their dying mother. And finally, in 1980s Kentish Town another artist, Nell Cantrip, suddenly acquires late-career fame. Marked by its “intricate”, immaculate plotting, this novel is a “rollicking read”.

I found the plotting a bit predictable, and the characterisation heavy-handed, said Imogen Hermes Gowar in The Guardian . But the book has interesting things to say “about women’s work and talent, and the life cycle of art”; and it is deftly put together by a writer who delights in the “granular details of an era”, while also understanding its broad sweep.

Abacus 432pp £16.99; The Week Bookshop £13.99

India Knight’s new book is a “contemporary reimagining” of Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit of Love , said Christina Patterson in The Sunday Times . Updating “such a beloved novel” certainly isn’t easy – but Knight has pulled off the task with aplomb. In her version, the four Radlett children – Linda, Louisa, Jassy and Robin – are not the progeny of an English lord, but of an ageing and reclusive rock star. Desperate to protect his children from “modern life”, he has purchased a “vast Norfolk estate” – and it’s there that we first encounter Linda and her siblings, through the eyes of their cousin Franny. The narrative tracks their passage to adulthood, and their romantic entanglements – centred on “Linda’s pursuit of love”.

Darling works because, as in Mitford’s original, the details are so “bang on”, said Emma Beddington in The Spectator . Sometimes, Knight artfully tweaks them: she replaces hunting with swimming, and gives her adult characters jobs (Linda runs a café in Dalston). Mitford “diehards can rest easy: your blood vessels are safe with this faithful, fiercely funny homage”.

Fig Tree 288pp £14.99; The Week Bookshop £11.99

Cormac McCarthy’s first novel in 16 years explores “the very boundaries of human understanding”, said Nicholas Mancusi in Time . Investigating a plane crash in the Gulf of Mexico, diver Bobby Western discovers that one passenger is missing; soon he is being harassed by government agents. But the pretence that this is a thriller doesn’t last long: chapters in which Bobby discusses the meaning of life alternate with ones in which his maths genius sister Alice experiences schizophrenic hallucinations. It’s a deeply weird book, held together by “chuckle-out-loud” humour. A companion novel, Stella Maris , focusing on Alice, does little to explain it – but together they are “staggering”.

Sorry, said James Walton in The Times , but I can’t remember a recent novel so wildly indifferent to what its readers might enjoy, or even understand. The conversations that make up the bulk of it, ranging from nuclear physics to Kennedy’s assassination, are a complete ragbag. McCarthy’s gift for description and dialogue remains undiminished, but there’s no escaping the sense that The Passenger is “a big old mess”.

Picador 400pp £20; The Week Bookshop £15.99

Barbara Kingsolver’s latest novel is a retelling of David Copperfield , transposed to the “valleys of southwest Virginia at the height of America’s opioid crisis”, said James Riding in The Times . Demon Copperhead, the “rambunctious hero”, is “born in a trailer to a teenage single mother”, and grows up in a world of neglectful child protection services and dubious guardians. The characters are all recognisable from the Dickens novel – but appear in new guises: “Steerforth becomes Fast Forward, a pill-popping quarterback; Uriah Heep is U-Haul, a football coach’s errand boy”. Daring and entertaining, Demon Copperhead is “shockingly successful” – “like Dickens directed by the Coen brothers”.

It’s a promising premise, not least because in its extreme inequality, post-industrial America resembles Victorian England, said Jessa Crispin in The Daily Telegraph . Yet while Kingsolver closely cleaves to the story of the original, she “breaks the most important rule of working in the Dickensian mode”: the need to “show the reader a good time”. Hers is a retelling “beset by earnestness” – and as a result it falls flat.

Faber 560pp £20; The Week Bookshop £15.99

Besides being a Booker Prize winner with his only novel, Lincoln in the Bardo , George Saunders is “routinely hailed as the world’s best short story writer”, said James Walton in The Daily Telegraph . The American’s dazzling new collection – his first since 2013’s Tenth of December – shows why he garners such acclaim. As is customary in a Saunders collection, quite a few of the tales are “deeply strange”: in the title story, three people are kept permanently “pinioned to a wall”, enacting scenes from American history; another story is set in a theme park that has never received any visitors. Around half the tales, however, explore “recognisable social and political dilemmas”: two employees clashing at work; a mother’s despair about the state of America after her son is pushed over by a tramp. And whether Saunders is engaging with contemporary reality, or “taking us somewhere else entirely”, he never forgets that the most important duty of a writer is to make his work “winningly readable”.

Tenth of December was a “marvellous” collection, but unfortunately Liberation Day doesn’t hit the same heights, said Charles Finch in the Los Angeles Times . Although “the standard of Saunders’ writing remains astronomically high”, there are times here when he seems almost on auto-pilot, reprising themes and situations he has previously explored. It’s true that if you’ve read Saunders before, then parts of Liberation Day will sound “like self-parody”, said John Self in The Times . But then again, “it’s churlish to knock a true original for repeating himself”. When he’s at his best, Saunders’ “oblique, farcical, tragic” view of the world still has the ability to “take the top of your head off”.

Bloomsbury 256pp £18.99; The Week bookshop £14.99

“Elizabeth Strout is writing masterpieces at a pace you might not suspect from their spaciousness and steady beauty,” said Alexandra Harris in The Guardian . Lucy by the Sea is the third sequel to her acclaimed bestseller My Name is Lucy Barton . It takes place early during the pandemic, when Lucy and her ex-husband, William, leave New York for a friend’s empty beach house in Maine – for “just a few weeks”, he says. It is “a study of a later-life reunion between a man and woman who married in their 20s”. It isn’t “a tender tale”, as William isn’t an easy man to like, but it is “as fine a pandemic novel as one could hope for”.

Over the course of three Lucy Barton books, Strout has “created one of the most quizzical characters in modern fiction”, said Claire Allfree in The Times . Still, even this “avid fan” found herself wondering whether this instalment is “surplus to requirements”. This, sadly, is a novel that “mistakes simplistic observation for subtle insight, bathos for pathos”, and Lucy herself is “downright annoying”. I disagree entirely, said Julie Myerson in The Observer . Lucy by the Sea is a wonderful evocation of lockdown life. It is “her most nuanced – and intensely moving – Lucy Barton novel yet”.

Viking 304pp £14.99; The Week Bookshop £11.99

William Boyd’s 17th novel – his first set in the 19th century – is an “old-fashioned bildungsroman” that follows its “hero, Cashel Greville Ross, through a long and peripatetic life”, said Lucy Atkins in The Sunday Times .

After growing up in Ireland and Oxford, Cashel “impulsively joins the army” and finds himself “facing the French bayonets at the Battle of Waterloo”. He subsequently “hangs out” with Byron and Shelley in Italy, spends time in east India and New England, and becomes an opium addict, an author and a diplomat. Although the authorial winks can be groan-inducing – “Shelley can barely swim”, a friend of the poet declares – it is a “masterclass” in narrative construction and its ending is “genuinely poignant”.

Boyd is “as magically readable as ever”, said Jake Kerridge in The Daily Telegraph . But amid the non-stop action and “endless verbal anachronisms”, Cashel never quite emerges as a fully rounded character. Compared with Boyd’s previous “whole life novels”, such as Any Human Heart and Sweet Caress , The Romantic feels “glaringly synthetic”.

Viking 464pp £20; The Week Bookshop £15.99

Maggie O’Farrell’s last novel, the brilliant Hamnet , “fleshed out” the lives of Shakespeare’s children, said Elizabeth Lowry in The Daily Telegraph . Her latest brings another neglected historical figure into the light – the noblewoman Lucrezia de’ Medici. In 1560, a 16-year-old Lucrezia left Florence to begin her married life with Alfonso d’Este, heir to the Duke of Ferrara, Modena and Reggio. “Within a year, she was dead”; it was rumoured Alfonso had killed her. Taking these “suggestive details” as inspiration (as Robert Browning did in his famous poem My Last Duchess ), O’Farrell “constructs a convincing human drama”.

O’Farrell is a master of visual description, said Claire Allfree in The Times . A tiger moves “like honey dripping from a spoon”; through a window, the sound of sobbing drifts upwards “like smoke”. Yet the “headily perfumed” prose proves oddly dulling: rather than “springing forth messily alive”, Lucrezia seems “trapped beneath the weight” of the “relentless” description. Although it sets out to bring Lucrezia back to life, it ends up being a “bloodless book”.

Tinder Press 438pp £25; The Week Bookshop £19.99

Taylor Jenkins Reid is a TikTok phenomenon, said Marianka Swain in The Daily Telegraph . Thanks in part to BookTok – the social media app’s books community – her novels about glamorous women finding fame and fortune have sold in their millions. Continuing with that “winning strategy”, her latest centres on a “hotshot American tennis pro”.

Carrie Soto is a former world No. 1, who has won a record 20 grand slams. Now in her late 30s, she mounts an “unlikely comeback”, prompted by the emergence of a new star, Londoner Nicki Chan. This is a “compulsive, soapy page-turner” with “more substance than the average beach read”. In short, it’s an “ace” of an “escapist romp”.

Jenkins Reid has a “nose for a cultural moment”, said Susie Goldsbrough in The Times . And so this book’s appearance so soon after the retirement of Serena Williams – clearly an inspiration for Carrie – is “coincidental but not surprising”. Don’t expect “psychological depth”; “fundamentally, this is a sports story”, with whole chapters devoted to single matches. But it’s certainly very “fun to read”.

Hutchinson Heinemann 384pp £16.99; The Week Bookshop £13.99

Ian McEwan’s novels are often “lean, controlled enquiries” into specific historical moments, said Johanna Thomas-Corr in The New Statesman : 1950s Germany in The Innocent ; the Thatcherite 1980s in A Child in Time . But his 18th is very different – “baggier and more protean” than any of its predecessors. It’s also, “to my mind, McEwan’s best novel in 20 years”. His protagonist, Roland Baines, is a baby boomer who bears a strong resemblance to his creator, were his creator “not a hugely successful novelist”. Roland spends his childhood in Libya, then “attends a state-run boarding school” in England. And like McEwan, he discovers as an adult that he has a long-lost brother. Yet his life is notable for its lack of direction: he “scratches out a living as a hotel lounge pianist, an occasional tennis coach and a hack”. Humble and wise, Lessons is “an intimate but sprawling story about an ordinary man’s reckoning with existence”.

As is often the case for McEwan’s protagonists, Roland’s life “hinges” on a single traumatic episode, said Edmund Gordon in the TLS . Aged 14, he begins an affair with his piano teacher, Miss Cornell – a relationship which, while he “isn’t exactly a reluctant participant”, nonetheless wounds him. A second trauma follows in his 30s, when Roland’s German-born wife, Alissa, abandons him and their baby son to pursue her ambition of becoming a novelist, said Peter Kemp in The Sunday Times . While Roland is left a single parent, Alissa – somewhat implausibly – becomes “Germany’s greatest writer”. As the decades pass, the “social and domestic cavalcade of Roland’s life” plays out against the backdrop of “momentous global happenings” – from 9/11 to the Covid lockdowns. A “vividly detailed lifetime chronicle”, Lessons is a “tour de force”.

Yet it has its problems, said Claire Lowdon in The Spectator . This is a novel full of dropped storylines and non sequiturs, and McEwan can’t resist those “overbearing news bulletins” that have peppered his recent work (“The Profumo affair was only a year away” etc.). Still, Lessons is consistently enjoyable, and there’s something to be said for the “novelty” of reading a McEwan novel that feels more like “a Jonathan Franzen”. At the age of 74, his desire to try new things is impressive. “Despite the rambling and the rushed patches, here is a whole, unruly life between the covers of a single book: a literary feat of undeniable majesty.”

Cape 496pp £20; The Week Bookshop £15.99

This new crime novel by J.K. Rowling, using her Robert Galbraith pseudonym, has Cormoran Strike, her Afghan-War-veteran-turned-private detective, getting to grips with the world of online trolls, said Joan Smith in The Sunday Times .

Strike and his partner Robin are called to investigate the stabbing to death of a woman named Edie. She was the co-creator of a YouTube cartoon featuring “ghoulish” characters cavorting in a cemetery, and the finger of suspicion falls on a gamer known as “Anomie”, who had subjected Edie to a “torrent of lurid accusation” after claiming that she’d ripped off his ideas.

While the novel works as a “superlative piece of crime fiction”, its subject matter also feels highly pointed: Rowling has herself faced accusations of plagiarism, and she has been subjected to savage online abuse for arguing that aspects of trans ideology lead to the “erasure of the word ‘woman’”.

Sphere 1,024pp £25; The Week Bookshop £19.99

Emma Donoghue’s latest novel is set in early 7th century Ireland, and centres on a trio of monks who build a monastic community on a tiny island, said Ron Charles in The Washington Post . The men set out in their “precarious boat” after their leader Artt – a “legendary holy man” – has a “vision of an island in the western sea”. When they reach a “large rock” covered in “birds, guano and little else”, Artt is convinced it’s the place from his dream – and resolves that he and his companions will never leave. Haven may sound like a work that “few readers have been praying for”, but it proves “transporting, sometimes unsettling and eventually shocking”.

There are some “striking formal similarities” between this novel and Donoghue’s 2010 bestseller Room , inspired by the Josef Fritzl case, said Paraic O’Donnell in The Guardian . Both are works of “radical minimalism”, about people who “struggle to preserve their humanity in utter isolation”. Although Haven is “created in a muted palette”, this is a work of impressive “narrative sustenance” – and is “crowded with quietly beautiful details”.

Picador 272pp £16.99; The Week Bookshop £13.99

Hernan Diaz’s Pulitzer Prize-nominated first novel, In the Distance, centred on a “penniless young Swedish immigrant” in California, said Jonathan Lee in The Guardian . His second concerns a “character at the other end of the economic scale” – a “Gatsby-like tycoon in 1920s New York” named Andrew Bevel. Rather than tell Bevel’s story straight, Diaz embeds it in four “interconnected narratives”: a fictionalised novel based on Bevel’s life; Bevel’s unfinished autobiography; a memoir by his ghostwriter; and fragments from his wife’s “long-withheld diary”. It sounds tricksy, but it’s surprisingly readable – like a “brilliantly twisted mix” of Borges and J.M. Coetzee, with “a dash” of Italo Calvino.

The “knotty ingenuity” of this novel makes it deserving of its place on this year’s Booker longlist, said Lucy Scholes in The Daily Telegraph . It is “destined to be known as one of the great puzzle-box novels”. I doubt that, said John Self in The Times . Parts are “original and surprising”, but overall it’s “well behaved and dull”, and consumed by its own cleverness. Like the tycoon at its centre, it’s “all smart, no heart”.

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Mohsin Hamid’s fifth novel begins with a transformation, said Alex Preston in The Observer : Anders wakes up one morning to find his skin has changed from white to black. This metamorphosis is not explained; instead, the focus is on its impact on the people around Anders. When he goes out, he feels “vaguely menaced”; his boss tells him he’d have killed himself had it happened to him. But then Anders finds that similar transfor­mations are taking place across the US, until eventually there is “just one white man left”. Written in “incantatory” sentences, The Last White Man is a “strange, beautiful allegorical tale”.

Mysterious transformations can be “fertile terrain” for fiction, said Houman Barekat in The Times : one thinks, most obviously, of Kafka’s Metamorphosis. But while that work resists easy interpretation, Hamid’s aims are all too obvious: this is “yet another liberal parable” about the “psychic underpinnings of racial prejudice”. Ultimately, it’s a book that says more about the “publishing industry’s anxious scrabble for topicality” than about “the human condition”.

Hamish Hamilton 192pp £12.99; The Week Bookshop £9.99

Most books billed as telling us “what it means to be human” really do no such thing, said John Self in The Observer . Ross Raisin’s A Hunger is an exception. The tale of a London “sous chef in her mid-50s”, this is the fourth novel by this talented writer – and it is his most “ambitious” yet, encompassing “work and family, desires and appetites, responsibility and identity”.

Raisin has always excelled at portraying working lives, said Alexandra Harris in The Guardian : Waterline , his second novel, centred on a Clyde shipbuilder; A Natural , his third, was about a lower league footballer. Here, he captures the rhythms of kitchen life so skilfully that it “makes one realise the degree to which work is still under-charted territory in literary fiction”. Yet the novel is about much more than cooking: Patrick, Anita’s husband of 30 years, has recently developed early-onset dementia, forcing her to combine the stresses of her job with a new role as a carer “changing incontinence pads”. The result is a “deeply thought out and beautifully unshowy” novel about the “conflicting demands of work and care”.

I wasn’t impressed, said Claire Lowdon in The Sunday Times . Although Raisin’s gifts for “startling descriptive prose” are evident – notably in a bravura opening set in a walk-in fridge – the novel overall is let down by “wooden dialogue”, characters who don’t seem real, and a clumsy structure in which Anita’s present-day travails are juxtaposed with “rushed and skimpy” scenes from her early life. It may not be perfect, but this is a deft exploration of “the guilt that accompanies female ambition”, said Amber Medland in the FT . Daring in what it sets out to achieve, A Hunger is equally “impressive in its execution”.

Jonathan Cape 464pp £18.99; The Week bookshop £14.99

Lillian Fishman’s debut is one of the most “searching and enthralling” novels about sex I’ve read in years, said Johanna Thomas-Corr in The New Statesman . “Eve is a 28-year-old barista from Brooklyn in a long-term relationship with Romi, a paediatrician.” Although Eve considers herself a lesbian, she has fantasies about sleeping with a “wild number of people”. When she posts nude pictures of herself online, they catch the attention of an artist called Olivia – who proves to be acting on behalf of a “tall, wealthy man in his 30s” named Nathan, who makes Eve his sexual “toy”. “Part erotic Bildungsroman, part melancholy comedy of manners”, Acts of Service is “startlingly accomplished”.

Well, I found it thoroughly tedious, said Jessa Crispin in The Times – less a novel than a crude allegory. Nathan is “basically Christian Grey from Fifty Shades rendered in marginally better prose”. Fishman’s reflections on the corrupting effects of “patriarchy” and “capitalism” have been far better expressed elsewhere. Overhyped and unoriginal, this is a disappointing addition to the “library of endless want”.

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For 29 years after the end of the Second World War, a Japanese soldier named Hiroo Onoda held out on a small island in the Philippines, believing his comrades were still fighting, said Anthony Gardner in The Mail on Sunday . Now the great film director Werner Herzog, who befriended Onoda in 1997, has written an imaginative reconstruction of his experiences. Steeped in the atmosphere of the jungle, it’s an “enthralling” novel that explores the nature of time and warfare with great mastery.

Onoda’s single-minded intransigence makes him an archetypal Herzog hero, said Tim Robey in The Daily Telegraph , and this “Hemingwayesque” novella is highly cinematic, with short chapters and vivid scene-setting. But its refined prose gives it a sculptural quality too: its descriptions of the natural world are radiant. Herzog manages to inhabit the soldier’s mind, and to create a “visionary” narrative, said Peter Carty in The i Paper. Moral issues – Onoda killed a number of islanders – are somewhat sidelined, but this beautifully crafted book is a “literary jewel” nevertheless.

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Charlotte Mendelson’s “riotous, prize-winning novels” tend to be about messy, dysfunctional families, said Leyla Sanai in The Spectator . Her fifth centres on a “monstrous” artist named Ray Hanrahan and his downtrodden wife, Lucia. Narcissistic, abusive and controlling, Ray has “quashed” Lucia’s own artistic ambitions for decades, forcing her to minister to his needs and look after their (now grown-up) children.

With an “ostentatious private view” of his work about to open, he has summoned friends and family to their north London house. The result is a “glorious ride” of a novel – one in which “Mendelson observes the minutiae of human behaviour like a comic anthropologist”.

There is a lot going on in this novel – “at times, too much” – but the overall “effect is exhilarating”, said Susie Mesure in The Times . Moving between perspectives, Mendelson cranks the drama up to a “fiery climax”. There’s a “hint of HBO’s Succession ” in this tale of a “family in thrall to a despotic patriarch”, said Madeleine Feeny in The Daily Telegraph . Mingling “eroticism, absurdity and pathos”, it’s “electric”.

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At first glance, this debut novel seems to be yet another post-#MeToo book “dissecting sexual trauma and queasy power dynamics”, said Laura Hackett in The Sunday Times . At a US liberal arts college, John, a senior English professor, finds himself accused of sexual impropriety by “seven students with whom he has had affairs”. But rather than adopt their perspective, the novel is narrated by John’s wife – who is anything but sympathetic towards them. She laments the fact that young women today seem to have “lost all agency”, and admits to having “enjoyed the space” that her husband’s infidelities provided. With its bracing take on sexual politics, Vladimir is an “astonishing debut”.

In its second half, the novel becomes primarily about “female appetite”, as the narrator develops an obsessive crush on a “gorgeous new junior professor”, said Lucy Atkins in The Guardian . May Jones’s “quietly captivating” voice dazzles until the end, when the novel is let down by a “heavy-handed denouement”. Still, in its willingness to tackle “complex”, provocative themes, this is “an engrossing and clever debut”.

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Hanya Yanagihara’s latest novel is the “keenly awaited” follow up to A Little Life , her “devastating story of irreparable human damage”, said David Sexton in The Sunday Times . It consists of three sections all set in the same New York building and taking place, respectively, in 1893, 1993 and 2093.

Part one re-imagines 19th century New York as a “liberal breakaway nation in which gay marriage is normal”. Part two, set in the “time of Aids”, focuses on a wealthy white lawyer and his young Hawaiian lover. Part three envisages an America that has been ravaged by “successive waves of viruses, every few years from 2020”. While a “less bludgeoningly powerful” work than A Little Life , it’s still “highly affecting”.

This is in many ways a “wantonly strange” work, said Claire Allfree in The Times : the convoluted narrative can be “frustratingly opaque”, and there’s a complete absence of humour. Yet there’s no denying Yanagihara’s skill at immersing us in the “emotional world of her characters”. For all its flaws, To Paradise is “frequently magnificent”.

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The story of Joan of Arc – a 15th-century peasant girl from northeast France who became a national heroine – has been told many times before, said Marianka Swain in The Daily Telegraph . But in her second novel, the American writer Katherine J. Chen offers a “fresh and utterly enthralling take”. Her Joan is not a religious icon – “gone are the visions” – but primarily a “woman of action”: she’s a child of remarkable physical gifts who, through a series of “serendipitous events”, becomes a key ally of the dauphin (later King Charles VII), helping to lead his armies against the English. “Vivid, visceral and boldly immediate”, the novel has already earned comparisons with Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy.

At once a “mystic, martyr and war hero”, Joan is a largely “incomprehensible” figure today, said Jess Walter in The New York Times . Chen, however, has a “lively stab” at making her seem relevant – in part by imagining her as an “abused child” who uses her anger to become an “avenging warrior”. “Rich” and “visceral” in its descriptions, Joan is “stirring stuff”.

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In 2014, Jessie Burton’s debut novel The Miniaturist – about 18-year-old Nella Oortman’s coming of age in 17th century Amsterdam – became a global bestseller, said Gwendolyn Smith in The i Paper . Now Burton is back, with a “beguiling, tender sequel”, set 18 years later. Nella, now 37, is a widow (The Miniaturist climaxed with her husband’s execution for sodomy), who still lives in the “same grand address on Amsterdam’s Herengracht canal”. A “cold, austere place” in the previous book, the house is now suffused with “warmth and familiarity” – though it still “thrums with secrets”. “Wise and fabulously immersive”, this book, if anything, surpasses its predecessor.

I disagree, said Claire Allfree in The Daily Telegraph . Burton remains a “lovely writer”, who can craft “startlingly sculptural” sentences. But “where The Miniaturist was alive with spooky mystery”, this book lacks an “animating spirit”: characters, events and even the language seem contrived. “In seeking to bring more life to the characters in The Miniaturist, The House of Fortune somehow diminishes them instead.”

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Set in the Alaskan wilderness, Rebecca Rukeyser’s “wistful and sardonic” first novel is part adventure story, part coming-of-age tale, said The Irish Times . Seventeen-year-old Mira is working for the summer at a guest house run by a married couple, Stu and Maureen, alongside two other girls and a troubled chef. Much of her time is spent fantasising sexually about a boy she met the year before. Rukeyser’s descriptive prose is assured and elegant, and the story becomes increasingly tense, as Stu’s predatory behaviour towards the girls becomes apparent.

Mira’s adolescent yearning is well captured in this quirky, wry debut, said Siobhan Murphy in The Times . Rukeyser provides a “deftly juggled” mixture of merciless judgement and gentle compassion for her characters’ failings. There’s also plenty of comedy, said Cal Revely-Calder in The Sunday Telegraph, though the story becomes more “mature and melancholy” as it progresses. The Seaplane on Final Approach is about how “desire ruins everything”. And when the finale arrives, it is “catastrophic” – but it also provides “lengthy, gruesome fun”.

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“Few people outside the literary world” have heard of 41-year-old novelist Benjamin Wood, said Johanna Thomas-Corr in The Sunday Times . That’s a shame, because he’s “wonderful”. Already the author of “three richly layered novels”, he has now written a fourth, The Young Accomplice , which is “his most original yet”. Set in the 1950s, it centres on Arthur and Florence Mayhood, “childless architects in their 30s” who, inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright, dream of creating a communal-living project on their Surrey farm. To help them realise this ambition, they invite a pair of borstal leavers – brother and sister Charlie and Joyce Savigear – to live with them; unsurprisingly, things go wrong.

Compared with Wood’s previous novels, which blended “storytelling punch with literary sensibility”, this book at times feels muted, said John Self in The Times . Wood spends a lot of time in his characters’ heads; you wish for a bit more action. Still, there are compensations: the characters feel like “real people”, who you miss when they’re gone. This is a book that “digs its claws into you and sticks there”.

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Benjamin Markovits’s latest novel is a “compelling account of relative failure”, said Joseph Owen in Literary Review . Brian, the narrator, is a “big fat slow” Jewish kid from Austin, Texas, who becomes childhood friends with Marcus Hayes, his high school’s basketball star. Marcus is black, and from a broken home – for a while he lives with Brian’s family – but in adulthood, when Marcus becomes an “NBA superstar”, Brian is merely a “semi-successful” sportswriter. The novel convincingly portrays Brian’s “inhibited world-view”, which is “tainted by jealousy” of his friend. The result is a “bleak, amusing, ultimately absorbing read”.

This is a novel with the “topography of a classic American story”, said Stuart Evers in The Spectator : “sport as a metaphor for the fracture of the US; friendship as a microcosm of race relations”. It feels a little dated – a bit “male and white” – and the “detailed descriptions of basketball” could put some people off. In the final act, though, when Markovits unveils “his A-game”, the novel “ignites into something compelling and emotionally resonant”.

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In 2009, the novelist Julie Myerson found herself at the centre of a media storm after publishing a non-fiction account of her eldest son’s addiction to marijuana, said Hephzibah Anderson in The Observer . The episode, she has said, drove her to a “kind of breakdown”, and she has never directly addressed it in her writing. Except that now, in a way, she has. This, her 11th novel – entitled Nonfiction – is all about “teenage drug addiction”. The narrator is a once “happily married” writer, who is looking back on her attempts to save her heroin-addicted daughter “from self-destruction”. Given her own backstory, Myerson is risking a lot with such a novel – but “the results are nothing less than incandescent”.

The title is confusing, and deliberately so, said Alex Peake-Tomkinson in The Spectator . This is Myerson’s “squarest attempt so far at autobiographical fiction”. Yet in other ways, it seems a typical work: she has always explored “her worst fears in her novels”. Although I hope she will “look beyond her own life” in future, I found this a “satisfyingly propulsive” read.

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Maggie Shipstead’s “thrilling” historical epic, Great Circle , not only earned her a place on last year’s Booker shortlist, but also “proved a huge hit with readers”, said Lucy Scholes in the Financial Times . So it’s “savvy” of her publisher to bring out this collection of her short stories, written over the past 13 years. The tales vary widely in tone and setting – they transport us “from the catacombs of Paris, via an Olympic Village, to a guano island in the middle of the Pacific” – but taken together, they forcefully illustrate the “remarkable scope of Shipstead’s imagination and talent”.

While one or two of these stories seem a bit “too self-conscious”, most are superb, said Lizzy Harding in The New York Times . In the “sure standout”, “La Moretta”, a young couple’s honeymoon in Romania “transforms into folk horror à la The Wicker Man ”. Shipstead has an “unnerving ability to capture a character’s inner life in a few choice phrases”, said Stephanie Merritt in The Observer . “It’s a rare writer who can create a world as convincingly over a few pages as in a 600-page novel.”

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This “creepy coming-of-age tale” unfolds like a “darker version of Roald Dahl’s Matilda ”, except with “no Miss Honey coming to the rescue”, said Johanna Thomas-Corr in The Observer . Set in an “icy” Massachusetts town in the 1980s, it is narrated by Ruthie, an only child whose family is “on the edge of poverty”. Ruthie is an assiduous cataloguer of “everything she sees” – her mother’s lumpy body, her awkward dinners with richer school friends – but she doesn’t always understand the significance of what she sees. Marked by its “pitiless, minutely observed prose”, Very Cold People is a work that “will stay with me for a very long time”.

Manguso is especially good at evoking the “constraints and cruelties” of Ruthie’s home life, said Alexandra Jacobs in The New York Times . So successfully does she portray “boring old daily pain” that it almost seems redundant when “more dramatic plot-turns arrive” towards the end of the book. Very Cold People is at its best simply as a “compendium of the insults of a deprived childhood: a thousand cuts exquisitely observed and survived”.

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The Irish writer Louise Kennedy only began writing aged 47, but her rise has been meteoric, said Madeleine Feeny in The Spectator . The End of the World is a Cul de Sac, her debut short story collection, was “fought over” by nine publishers. And now, with this first novel, she has written what promises to be another hit. Plot-wise, Trespasses doesn’t break new ground, said Kevin Power in The Guardian: set near Belfast in 1975, it’s about a young Catholic primary school teacher who falls in love with a posh Protestant barrister. What distinguishes it is its “sense of utter conviction”. This is a story “told with such compulsive attention to the textures of its world that every page feels like a moral and intellectual event”.

Kennedy is a superbly visual writer, and her “idiomatic dialogue gives her prose real verve”, said Hephzibah Anderson in The Observer : the protagonist’s mother, catching sight of Helen Mirren on a chat show, describes her as a “dirty article”. Combining “unflinching authenticity” with a “flair for detail”, this is a “deftly calibrated” and ultimately “devastating” novel.

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Julian Barnes’s latest is that “old-fashioned thing, a novel of ideas”, said John Self in The Times . It is narrated by Neil, a former actor, but is really all about Elizabeth Finch, the “lecturer on a course on culture and civilisation that Neil took decades earlier”. Finch, who is “probably inspired” by Barnes’s friend, the late novelist Anita Brookner, is remembered as an inspirational teacher, someone “who obliged us – simply by example – to seek and find within ourselves a centre of seriousness”. Neil recalls their sort-of friendship – they occasionally met for lunch – and describes his quest, in the present day, to find out more about Finch in the wake of her death. Very much a “thinky” novel, Elizabeth Finch may be “rather less fun” than most of Barnes’s books, but it “offers plenty to chew on”.

“Part of the challenge of rendering a brilliantly inspirational teacher is making them sufficiently brilliant and inspirational,” said Sameer Rahim in The Daily Telegraph . Despite Neil’s insistence on Finch’s originality, “what she actually says tends to fall flat”. “She told me that love is all there is. It’s the only thing that matters,” a classmate of Neil recalls. The novel is further let down by its baffling middle section, which consists of Neil’s “stolid student essay” on the fourth century Roman emperor Julian the Apostate, whom Finch regarded as a kindred spirit, said Sam Byers in The Guardian .

It all adds up to a “work stubbornly determined to deny us its pleasures”. I disagree, said Peter Kemp in The Sunday Times . As a teacher, Finch “blazes with vividness”, and Neil’s essay is a “bravura exercise in nimbly handled erudition”. Elizabeth Finch “celebrates the cast of mind” – subtle, sceptical and ironic – that “Barnes most prizes”.

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Jennifer Egan’s new novel is a “sibling novel” to A Visit From the Goon Squad, her bestselling 2010 novel about rock music, “Gen-X nostalgia” and the “digitalisation of everything”, said Dwight Garner in The New York Times . Consisting of interrelated short stories which zigzag about in time, it resembles its predecessor in structure – and features many of the same characters. But at its centre is a new figure: the “Mark Zuckerberg-like” Bix Bouton, whose company, Mandala, has created an “implausible” device known as Own Your Unconscious, which lets users upload their own and other people’s memories, and “watch them all like movies”.

The sci-fi aspects of the book are neither new nor “particularly fully realised”, said Andrew Billen in The Times : memory uploads have been tackled better elsewhere. But this is essentially a book of short stories, and most of them are excellent and “brain-stretching”. What “really astounds is the visual brilliance of Egan’s writing across these disparate tales”. She won a Pulitzer for A Visit From the Goon Squad; I hope this book “wins another”.

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Ali Smith’s first novel since her “extraordinary Seasonal Quartet ” has a fitting title, said Alex Preston in The Observer , as it “springs from the same source as its predecessors”. Like them, it was “written and published swiftly”, to cram in recent events. It’s 2021, and Sandy, an artist, is “struggling through lockdown”. Her father is in hospital following a heart attack – and she “only has his dog for company”. Smith skilfully evokes the grim monotony of pandemic life, said Catherine Taylor in the FT – from the “regularity of testing” to “the exhaustion of medical staff”.

Much of the plot concerns Sandy’s “renewed acquaintance” with an old university friend Martina, who gets in touch to tell her about her recent interrogation by UK border police, said Philip Hensher in The Daily Telegraph . This leads to Sandy meeting Martina’s twin daughters, Eden and Lea, who are full of “millennial” rage and entitlement. Covering a “lot of contemporary ground”, Companion Piece offers an entertaining portrait of the “world we live in, by the most beguiling and likeable of novelistic intelligences”.

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Douglas Stuart’s debut, Shuggie Bain – the winner of the 2020 Booker Prize – was a “bleak autobiographical novel about a young boy caring for his alcoholic mother in 1980s Glasgow”, said Johanna Thomas-Corr in The Sunday Times . His follow-up is “cut from the same cloth”.

Fifteen-year-old Mungo lives with his mother and two older siblings in Glasgow’s East End. “His brother, Hamish, is a Faginesque Protestant gang leader; his sister, Jodie, is a do-gooding fallen angel; and their mother, Mo-Maw, is a woman ruined by alcohol.” As the novel opens, Mungo is shooed off by his mother on a fishing trip with two menacing strangers from her Alcoholics Anonymous group, who promise to teach him “masculine pursuits”.

Interspersed with this “gruesome excursion” are chapters set a few months earlier, detailing Mungo’s first love affair, with a Catholic neighbour called James. Although this “alternating timeline” feels forced at times, this is still a “richly abundant” work packed with fine writing and “colourful characters”.

It may be felt – with some justification – that Stuart has written the same book twice, said Nikhil Krishnan in The Daily Telegraph . Yet he “makes small differences count”. Because Mungo is older than Shuggie, he is able to see in his sexuality “not just a source of difference and alienation, but a possible route to escape and emancipation”. And Stuart widens his focus beyond family life, taking in the “Jets and Sharks world” of Glasgow’s sectarian politics.

Like its predecessor, this “bear hug of a new novel” has a “yeasty whiff of the autobiographical” about it, said Hillary Kelly in the Los Angeles Times . If you adored Shuggie Bain , this book “will please you on every page”.

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Joseph Stalin “never spoke or wrote” about the two months he spent in London in the spring of 1907, attending the 5th Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, said Alasdair Lees in The Daily Telegraph . Into this “psychological aperture” steps Stephan May, whose sixth novel is an “openly confected” retelling of those “few overlooked weeks”.

It begins with a 29-year-old Stalin – then known by his nickname, Koba – landing at Harwich, fresh from “a campaign of terror and banditry” in his native Georgia. In London, he stays in a dosshouse in Stepney, while better-off attendees – including Lenin – lodge in Bloomsbury. May’s Stalin is a “figure of fascinating contradictions” – an “idealist and a thug” – and the novel a “captivating thought experiment”.

Sadly, it often falls “disappointingly flat”, said Simon Baker in Literary Review . There are “samey descriptions” of London’s “awful” pubs, and May makes too much use of summary. Despite having the makings of an “exciting political thriller”, the novel isn’t convincing enough for May’s story to really grow.

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Anne Tyler virtually created the “family novel” genre, but has “strayed into more diverse territory recently”, said Melissa Katsoulis in The Times . Fans will be delighted by the 80-year-old’s 24th novel, which marks a return to type. Set, almost inevitably, in Baltimore, it’s a multi-generational saga spanning six decades, about a “comfortingly average” family. Mercy and Robin Garrett “enjoy a smoothly conventional life” running a hardware store and raising their three children. But theirs is a family in which “certain things must never be said”, and as the decades pass, this creates division. French Braid is “Tyler at her most Tyler-ish: pleasant and inoffensive, yet surprisingly deep and moving”.

Near its end, the novel does take an unexpected turn, said Anthony Cummins in The Observer . Its final chapters are set during Covid – a topic Tyler suggested she’d never write about. Typically, however, she emphasises not the pandemic’s harrowing side, but its “potential to occasion reunion and reconnection”. This book may fall short of her best work – but “at this point any Tyler book is a gift”.

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This “eagerly awaited” debut is being hailed as “part of a wave of novels by young men of colour exploring race, romance and mental health problems”, said Johanna Thomas-Corr in The Sunday Times . Nur, a 25-year-old online journalist from Birmingham who regularly suffers panic attacks, has been with Yasmina for four years. But he has yet to tell his Pakistani parents about the relationship: Yasmina’s family is Sudanese, and Nur has never got over his “mother’s disgust when she saw him hanging out with a black girl at school”.

On the surface a “poignant romance” about the barriers standing in the way of two young lovers, Good Intentions gradually reveals itself to be a deeper novel – about how an obsession with vulnerability can “make you forget your responsibility to others”.

Ali’s characters are “well-drawn”, and “what a tonic” to have a book about race in Britain set outside the capital, said Siobhan Murphy in The Times . Unfortunately, though, the unnecessarily complex structure necessitates a lot of darting “between points on the timeline” – and this, alas makes the novel rather “confusing”.

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Jessamine Chan’s “crafty and spellbinding” debut is set in a terrifyingly plausible dystopian America, said Molly Young in The New York Times . Frida Liu is a 39-year-old single mother with an 18-month-old daughter and a stressful job. One day, in a “spell of insomnia-induced irrationality”, she leaves her daughter unattended at home while running a work errand.

Neighbours hear the toddler crying, and alert the police. Frida is sentenced to a year in an “experimental rehab facility”, where women are moulded into better mothers by practising their parenting skills on AI dolls. The school continually berates Frida for her actions: her kisses, instructors tell her, “lack a fiery core of maternal love”.

It’s no surprise that this book has been “making waves” in the US, said Madeleine Feeny in The Daily Telegraph : “questions of how we define and evaluate motherhood pervade contemporary culture”. Beautifully lucid and elegantly written, this is a “must-read” novel, said India Knight in The Sunday Times – “a Handmaid’s Tale for the 21st century”.

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The Canadian writer Sheila Heti’s latest is “an original”, said Anne Enright in The Guardian . It’s a short novel about grief in which plot often gives way to “mystical” digressions that are “earnest, funny and sweet” – “a bit mad”, but in a good way.

Mira, a solitary woman in midlife, falls in love with Annie, a fellow student at their school for art criticism. Then Mira’s father dies, and his spirit joins her own inside a leaf, where they converse about “art, God, love and the transmigration of souls”, before Mira returns to “the pursuit of love”, her faith in “family and tradition” strengthened.

Billed as “a philosopher of modern experience”, Heti is known for her auto-fictional novels such as How Should a Person Be? (2010). Pure Colour is more like a fable, said Mia Levitin in the FT , in which God is an artist, and this world is his “first draft”, now “heating up in advance of its destruction”. Sadly, the book’s “meditations on grief” left me cold, and I found the prose “clunky” and “perilously close to kitsch”, with a naive, fairy-tale quality ill-suited to a story about middle age.

Harvill Secker 224pp £16.99; The Week Bookshop £13.99

Back in the 1970s and 1980s, Edmund White’s novels “forever enlarged what gay writing might do”, said Neil Bartlett in The Guardian . His latest book – “his 30th, by my count” – is an “elegant, filthy” work that “crackles with a heartfelt insistence that the old and hungry” still have much to tell us about “the dynamics of sex”.

In the year 2050, a married couple in a remote Swiss chalet decide to entertain each other by recounting their “previous sexual careers”. Constance, in her early 30s, is an “African-American orphan”, while Ruggero, her husband, is an elderly bisexual Sicilian aristocrat who is “legendarily well-connected (not to mention well hung)”.

As you’d expect, this novel is “elegantly written”, and contains many “arresting images”, said Peter Parker in The Spectator – but it’s fairly “preposterous”. The leap forward in time is merely a device allowing Ruggero to reminisce about his affair 30 years earlier with the now-forgotten writer Edmund White, then old and infirm: a “fat, famous slug”, he calls him. It is, however, all very entertaining.

Bloomsbury 288pp £18.99; The Week Bookshop £14.99

Unsure what to do after graduating, Matt Knott alighted on tutoring as an “easy way to make money”, said Georgia Beaufort in The Daily Telegraph . He duly joined an agency that specialised in finding “study buddies” for the children of the super-rich. With his “Cambridge degree and his floppy hair”, Knott proved a big success – and in this “very funny memoir”, he recounts his three years in the job.

His first assignment was in a house in Mayfair, where each day he sat in a “holding pool” of tutors waiting to see if he’d be picked to help a five-year-old with his homework. Other families were considerably friendlier: half servant, half family member, Knott accompanied his charges on various exotic holidays.

This amusing book sheds light on a ridiculous world of “butlers in very tight trousers” and “helicopter trips from Tuscan villas to smart restaurants in Rome”, said Roland White in the Daily Mail . In this milieu, five-year-olds eat lobster tempura for supper, and “PJs” stands for private jets instead of pyjamas. With his pleasing turn of phrase (these days he works as a screenwriter), Knott is a witty, observant guide.

Trapeze 336pp £16.99; The Week Bookshop £13.99

Gary Shteyngart’s fifth novel is set during the far-off-seeming “early days” of the Covid pandemic, said Claire Lowdon in The Sunday Times . Sasha Senderovsky, a successful Russian-born US novelist (like his creator), has retreated to his large house in upstate New York, accompanied by a group of friends. Their plan is to ride out lockdown together but, predictably, things go wrong.

Various housemates fall out with one another; “plenty of partner-swapping” occurs. If the basic conceit owes a lot to Chekhov, the novel’s boisterous, madcap comedy owes at least as much to A Midsummer Night’s Dream . Shteyngart has brilliantly captured the “almost maniacal aliveness” of the early pandemic. If anyone writes a funnier lockdown novel, “I will eat my face mask”.

There’s so much going on in this somewhat “messy” novel that at times it’s exhausting to read, said John Self in The Times . A “little more stillness” would have been welcome. Still, it exhibits Shteyngart’s trademark “feverish energy” – and the result is “often funny” and “sometimes moving”.

Allen & Unwin 336pp £14.99; The Week Bookshop £11.99

“Michelle de Kretser’s slyly intelligent sixth novel pairs two first-person narratives,” said Anthony Cummins in The Observer . One is set in “dystopian near-future Melbourne” and follows Lyle, an immigrant who works for a sinister government agency created to deport immigrants. The other is set in 1981, and follows Lili, a 22-year-old Australian, during a carefree sojourn in the south of France. The link between the two narratives is mysterious – and even the order you read them in is “up to you”, on account of the book’s “reversible, Kindle-defying two-way design”.

The publisher has been “fastidious” in cooperating with de Kretser’s conceit, said Sam Leith in The Daily Telegraph : there are two front covers, two copyright pages, two sets of acknowledgements, and so on. “It’s sort of magnificent, and it’s also sort of gimmicky” – and it left me unsure if I was actually reading a novel, or simply two novellas yoked together. Perhaps, though, it doesn’t really matter. Filled with “apt quick literary brushstrokes and the gleam of humour”, both halves are equally “terrific”.

Allen & Unwin 320pp £14.99; The Week Bookshop £11.99

Tessa Hadley is justly lauded for “elevating the domestic novel to literary fiction” in her stories about the “shifting geometries” of middle-class families, said Mia Levitin in the FT . Free Love , her eighth novel, “adds a Sixties twist to Anna Karenina ”. Set in 1967, it centres on 40-year-old Phyllis Fischer, a well-off suburban housewife married to Roger, a senior civil servant. One summer night, twenty-something Nicky – the son of a family friend – comes to supper. He and Phyllis steal an “illicit kiss” – and embark on an affair. Leaving home without a forwarding address, Phyllis swaps her cosy life with Roger for “then-bohemian Ladbroke Grove” (where Nicky occupies a squalid bedsit). Hadley’s style is as “sumptuous” as ever, and her characterisations are superb. While this isn’t perhaps her best novel, its publication is a “cause for celebration”.

Hadley has been criticised for the “narrowness of her social concerns – her incorrigible preoccupation with Cecilias, Harriets and Rolands”, said James Marriott in The Times . So it’s gratifying that in this “beautiful and exciting” novel, she contrasts the bourgeois world with the “supremely undomesticated” 1960s counterculture.

Yet there’s a problem, said Johanna Thomas-Corr in The Sunday Times : Hadley is far more at home among herbaceous borders than in the “pot-smoking” milieu of Nicky and his friends. Her depictions of the Swinging Sixties rarely rise above cliché – and “when she tries to capture the life of a black nurse whom Phyllis befriends, the writing becomes laboured”. You sense Hadley “itching to get back to the bourgeois suburbs” – and as this disappointing novel progressed, I wished I was back there with her.

Jonathan Cape 320pp £16.99; The Week Bookshop £13.99

Sarah Moss’s 2009 debut novel, Cold Earth , imagined an out-of-control virus, said Hephzibah Anderson in The Observer . She returns to similar terrain with her latest novel – only this time with less need for invention. Set in November 2020, The Fell centres on Kate, a forty-something single mum, who “finally snaps” during a two-week quarantine period, and goes for a solitary walk in the Peak District. It’s “destined to be an ill-fated expedition”: the night draws in, Kate doesn’t return – and her absence is noticed by her teenage son Matt. With its vivid sense of “accumulating dread”, this is an “intense time capsule of a tale”.

Moss moves “gracefully” between various perspectives, said Sarah Ditum in The Times : that of Alice, an elderly neighbour; and Rob, a member of the mountain rescue team. Elegantly written and concise, The Fell is a “close-to-perfect” novel. Even though Moss has said it was written fast, the prose here feels “precision-tooled”, said Roger Cox in The Scotsman . Remarkably, in only 180 pages, she has captured “all of lockdown life”.

Picador 180pp £14.99; The Week Bookshop £11.99

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The best books of 2022, according to Goodreads

If your plans between Christmas and New Year include hunkering down on the sofa with a cup of tea, a (heated) blanket and a good book, then we’ve got you covered. Our top book recommendations should provide plenty of inspiration for your winter reading list. But if you need even more suggestions for your next read, then maybe one of the winners of the Annual Goodreads Choice Awards might take your fancy.

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