Literary biography and criticism include Frank Moorhouse: A Discontinuous Life by Matthew Lamb (PRH, December); The Life of Donald Horne by Ryan Cropp (Black Inc, August); On Peter Carey by Sarah Krasnostein (Black Inc, June); In Search of Dorothea, a biography of Dorothea Mackellar by Deborah Fitzgerald (Simon & Schuster, August); and Murnane by Emmett Stinson (MUP, August).

INTERNATIONAL FICTION
Look out for new novels from Salman Rushdie (Victory City, PRH, February), a magical realist feminist tale; Zadie Smith (The Fraud, PRH, September), a portrait of London 200 years ago; Richard Ford’s last Frank Bascombe novel, Be Mine (Bloomsbury, July); a psychological thriller from Booker prizewinner Eleanor Catton (Birnam Wood, A&U, April); and Sebastian Barry (Old God’s Time, Faber, March).

Curtis Sittenfeld’s Romantic Comedy (PRH, April), is set behind the scenes of a TV show; Lauren Groff’s The Vaster Wilds (PRH, September), begins with a 1600s voyage across the Atlantic. A new novel from Bret Easton Ellis (The Shards, A&U, February), is about a group of Los Angeles friends as a serial killer strikes the city; and an untitled novel from Elif Shafak (PRH, September) is about a young man who goes to Mesopotamia in search of great art.

New Zealand author Pip Adam combines science fiction with social realism in Audition (Giramondo, July). Fugitive Pieces author Anne Michaels returns with a new novel, Held (Bloomsbury, November). And Margaret Atwood fans will find her in two PRH books: a short-story collection, Old Babes in the Wood (March); and Fourteen Days (May), where she leads a cast of star writers collaborating on a novel about a New York tenement in lockdown.

BIG DEBUTS
Two hotly anticipated debuts are Pip Finkemeyer’s Sad Girl Novel (Ultimo, October), about an aspiring novelist, her historian best friend, and trying to find your path in life; and Mikki Brammer’s The Collected Regrets of Clover (Viking, May). Sold in 23 countries, Brammer’s novel is “a hopeful, insightful and utterly beautiful” story about death.

Another three books acquired after heated auctions are Megan Rogers’ The Heart is a Star (Fourth Estate, May), about the messiness of midlife; Dianne Yarwood’s The Wakes (Hachette, March), “an uplifting novel about love, loss, heartbreak and the enduring power of friendship”; and Michael Thompson’s How to be Remembered (A&U, March), which asks what would happen if on the same day every year, everyone around you forgets you exist.

Prizewinners breaking into print include Andre Dao’s Anam (PRH, May), winner of the Victorian Premier’s fiction award for an unpublished manuscript; Aisling Smith’s After the Rain (Hachette, May), winner of the Richell prize; Annette Higgs’ On A Bright Hillside in Paradise (PRH, July), winner of the 2022 Penguin literary prize; and Molly Schmidt’s Salt River Road (Fremantle, November), winner of the City of Fremantle Hungerford prize.

STORYTELLERS AND BIG SELLERS
Pip Williams’ follow–up to The Dictionary of Lost Words, one of the most successful Australian novels ever, is The Bookbinder of Jericho (Affirm, April), about two women working in the bindery of Oxford University Press as World War I begins. Another eagerly awaited novel is Benjamin Stevenson’s Everyone on This Train is a Suspect (PRH, October), a follow-up to Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone. And Trent Dalton fans will be keen to read his new novel (Fourth Estate, October).

Graeme Simsion’s Creative Differences (Text, January) is about two writers with very different approaches to life and work. Kate Morton’s epic novel Homecoming (A&U, April) is “a love letter to Australia”. Robert Gott moves from crime fiction to a comedy about a politician’s nude portrait in Naked Ambition (Scribe, May). There’s more comic observation from Toni Jordan (Prettier If She Smiled More, Hachette, April); Emma Young (The Disorganisation of Celia Stone, Fremantle, September); and Rachel Matthews (Never Look Desperate, Transit Lounge, September).

From overseas, Tom Hanks has a story on a subject he knows well (The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece, PRH, May). Bestselling author of The Mountains Sing, Nguyen Phan Que Mai, has a new novel based on American and Vietnamese history, Dust Child (Bloomsbury, April). Also from Bloomsbury is Isabel Allende’s latest, The Wind Knows My Name (June). Sarah Winman follows up her big hit, Still Life, with another novel for Fourth Estate in August.

CRIME AND THRILLERS
The ever-popular small town with dark secrets plot gets a good work-out in Crows Nest, by Nikki Mottram (UQP, February); in Lowbridge, by Lucy Campbell (Ultimo, July); and in debut thriller The Summer Party by Rebecca Heath (Bloomsbury, January).

Loraine Peck’s The Double Bind (Text, April) follows members of a notorious Sydney crime family. Dinuka McKenzie’s Taken (HarperCollins, February) is about the mystery of a missing baby; and there’s a missing daughter in Candice Fox’s Fire With Fire (PRH, April). Sarah Smith’s Seven Steps to a Long and Fulfilling Death (Ultimo, August) is about a dead woman investigating her own murder.

There are new novels from Dervla McTiernan (HarperCollins, September), Sally Hepworth (Pan Macmillan) and Lyn Yeowart (PRH, August). For cosy crime fans there’s Amanda Hampson’s The Tea Lady (PRH, April).

Overseas crime includes new novels from Don Winslow (City of Dreams, HarperCollins, April); Harlan Coben (I Will Find You, PRH, February); and Richard Osman’s fourth cosy tale (PRH, September). Rebecca Kuang has a “darkly funny literary thriller”, Yellowface (HarperCollins, June). Martin Cruz Smith’s hero Arkady is back in Independence Square (Simon & Schuster, June) but this time he has to fight Parkinson’s as well as bad guys.

Jo Nesbo has been busy, with two titles for PRH (Killing Moon, May; The Flesh Eating Telephone, October). So has the James Patterson factory, with Countdown (written with Brendan Dubois, January) and a non-fiction book written with Matt Eversmann (American Cops, February). Both for PRH.

LIFE STORIES
Two well-known novelists have turned to memoir. Reckless, by Marele Day (Ultimo, May) examines her long friendship with an international fugitive. Emboldened, by Belinda Alexandra (Affirm, April), looks at the inspiring women who saved her from the aftermath of a night when she ran from home in terror.

Helen Elliott, a regular reviewer for this masthead, looks at her younger years through letters in Eleven Letters to You (Text, May). Kris Kneen examines the growing body in their third memoir, Fat Girl Dancing (Text, May). Smashing Serendipity by Binjareb Nyoongar woman Louise Hansen (Fremantle Press, February) is a story of a woman fighting violence and racism. Back to Biloela by Priya Nadesalingam with Rebekah Holt (A&U, October) tells the story of the refugee family’s ordeal on Christmas Island and final return to the country town they call home.

Susan Johnson remembers a year with her mother on the Greek island of Kythera (Aphrodite’s Island, A&U, May). Jeanne Ryckmans combines memoir and detective story in Trust: A Fractured Fable (Upswell, August). Former Age journalist Martin Flanagan recalls his time at a Catholic boarding school in a memoir for PRH. Tracks author Robyn Davidson takes a journey into her past in Unfinished Woman (Bloomsbury, October). And Frances Peters Little remembers her musical father in Jimmy Little: A Yorta Yorta Man (Hardie Grant, April).

Heading the celebrity memoirs is Sam Neill’s Did I Ever Tell You This? (Text, March). Hardie Grant has two August memoirs from star footballers Joel Selwood and Erin Phillips. Foodie Matt Preston’s Big Mouth (PRH, November) is billed as “a rock’n’roll memoir of death, guns and the occasional scandal”.

Simon & Schuster has two books about kings: Christopher Andersen’s The King (February) is the first biography of Charles since he became monarch; and Jonathan Eig’s King (June) is a biography of Martin Luther King jr.

PRESSING ISSUES
Racism and sexism continue to be dominant themes. The provocative title of a book by this masthead’s Osman Faruqi is The Racist Country (PRH, August). Ellen van Neerven looks at racism in sport in Personal Score (UQP, May). Two Black Inc books examine Indigenous concerns: Statements from the Soul, edited by Shireen Morris and Damien Freeman (February), and the Quarterly Essay On the Uluru Statement from the Heart, by Megan Davis (June).

Stan Grant’s The Queen is Dead (Fourth Estate, May) is a “pull-no-punches” look at colonialism, the monarchy and its bitter legacy for Indigenous people. Indigenous history is explored in David Marr’s A Family Business (Black Inc, October); and Victor Briggs’ Seafaring (Magabala, April). And Kate Auty examines a massacre in O’Leary of the Underworld (Black Inc, February).

Chanel Contos’ untitled book for Macmillan offers “a radical rethinking of what yes means when it comes to sex”. Clementine Ford’s I Don’t (A&U, October) challenges accepted ideas about marriage. In Cancelled (Hardie Grant, September), Grace Tame and Michael Bradley look at cancel culture. And Lucia Osborne-Crowley examines the Ghislaine Maxwell trial and what it means for reparative justice in Maxwell (A&U, second half of 2023).

There are more books on our endangered environment. Justyn Walsh’s Eating the Earth (UQP, July) is “an incisive celebration and a critique of modern capitalism”. Dave Witty meditates on nature in his book In Search of Lost Trees (Monash University Publishing, May). And Penny van Oosterzee looks at the tropical rainforest of northern Queensland in Cloud Land (A&U, February).

From overseas, Jeff Goodell looks at the impact of climate change to come in Heat (Black Inc, July); Maja Gopel offers an invitation to rescue our future in Rethinking Our World (Scribe, May); and Peter Wohlleben follows up his bestseller The Hidden Life of Trees with The Power of Trees (Black Inc, April).

POLITICS
The top political biography is likely to be Tanya Plibersek: On Her Own Terms by Margaret Simons (Black Inc, March). Bruce Wolpe looks at Trump’s Australia (A&U, June). Paul Farrell charts the rise and fall of a premier in Gladys: A Leader’s Undoing (Monash, March). And Peter Rees uncovers a Tim Fischer you didn’t know in I Am Tim (MUP, August).

Chris Wallace has interviewed all living 20th-century Australian prime ministers and their biographers for Political Lives (NewSouth Publishing, February).

Two important books from whistleblowers are on the way. The Trial: Defending East Timor (MUP, late 2023) is Bernard Collaery’s account of being prosecuted, with “Witness K”, by the federal government for allegedly breaching the Intelligence Services Act. The Nature of Honour by David McBride, also facing prosecution for exposing alleged war crimes, will be published by PRH.

POETRY
Volume Two of John Kinsella’s collected poems, Harsh Hakea, is out with UWA Publishing in February and he also has a verse novel, Cellnight (Transit Lounge, April). Veteran poet PiO has a verse account of a US poetry tour in The Dirty T-shirt Tour (Giramondo, August).

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Two memoirs in verse form are coming from S.J. Norman (Blood from a Stone, UQP, November), about the legacy of violence towards women; and Madison Godfrey (Dress Rehearsals, A&U, March), about “a decade of performing womanhood in a non-binary body”.

Upswell has several collections, including David McCooey’s The Book of Falling and Stuart Barnes’ Like to the Lark (both in February). Likewise, Giramondo’s list features established poets such as Kate Middleton (Television) and Bonny Cassidy (Monument), both in October, and debut authors such as the 2020 winner of the Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize, Amy Crutchfield (The Cyprian, September).

Others to watch out for are Omar Sakr’s Non-essential Work (UQP, April); and Kate Larsen’s Public.Open.Space (Fremantle, July), her debut after a decade working as an insta poet.