Welcome to the season for big novels from big names

What a wonderful time to be alive if you are a lover of fine fiction. This month marks the beginning of the Christmas publishing season, and if the offerings for the next two months are anything to go by, it is going to be a bumper season. Here’s a selection of what we can expect to tempt us.

AUSTRALIAN FICTION

The First Friend, Malcolm Knox
Allen & Unwin, $34.99, out now
Trust award-winning Sydney Morning Herald journalist and writer Malcolm Knox to combine (deeply researched) historical fiction with biting satire. The First Friend is set in Stalin’s Russia in the 1930s and told from the perspective of Vasil Murtov, fictitious right-hand man to the (real) head of the secret police Lavrentiy Beria. Knox’s take on autocracy, laced (as always) with dark humour, is frighteningly relevant.

Cherrywood, Jock Serong
Fourth Estate, $34.99, September 4
Jock Serong worked with refugees and Indigenous Australians in his previous career as a lawyer, and his books are infused with a deep humanity that has won him considerable acclaim.

The highly imaginative Cherrywood follows the fate of Thomas, a Scottish industrialist who in 1916 decides to build a paddle-steamer in Melbourne, and Martha, a bright but disillusioned lawyer who in 1993 becomes intrigued by a mysterious local pub.

The Belburd, Nardi Simpson
Hachette, $32.99, September 25
Nardi Simpson is a Yuwaalaraay storyteller and one-half of Indigenous band Stiff Gins. Her 2020 debut novel, Song of the Crocodile, won the ALS Gold Medal (among other awards).

The Belburd, like her first, features a strong Indigenous woman, Ginny, a talented young poet making her way in the world. A lyrical and haunting exploration of the mystery of being.

The Burrow, Melanie Cheng
Text, $32.99, October 1
Writer and GP Melanie Cheng’s poignant second novel is about a small family – parents Jin and Amy, and 10-year-old Lucie – reeling from a devastating loss four years ago. The family’s life is disrupted – in good ways and bad – by the arrival of a new pet bunny and Amy’s mother Pauline, forcing each of them to reckon with the past. It’s about grief, hope and family.

The Valley, Chris Hammer
Allen & Unwin, $34.99, October 1
The Valley, by master of crime fiction Chris Hammer (his 2019 debut Scrublands was an international bestseller, followed quickly by five more), is the fourth in a series featuring detective Ivan Lucic and his offsider, Nell Buchanan. Here the murder victim turns out to be a close relative of Nell’s, exposing her past. Gripping (as always).

Wing, Nikki Gemmell
Fourth Estate, $34.99, October 2
Described as a cross between Lord of the Flies and Picnic at Hanging Rock, Nikki Gemmell’s Wing explores what it is to be a young woman today. Four year-10 girls from an exclusive school go missing in the bush on a school excursion and a male teacher goes looking for them. The girls eventually emerge, traumatised, but the teacher does not. A deftly plotted, taut, compulsive read.

Dusk, Robbie Arnott
Picador, $34.99, October 8
Robbie Arnott, a two-time winner of the Age Book of the Year Award, is renowned for sensitive, nuanced writing about the interconnection between the human and natural worlds. In Dusk, twins Iris and Floyd set off into the highlands in pursuit of a Dusk, a puma killing animals and humans. Reluctant hunters who need the bounty on offer, they face unexpected challenges on their quest.

Rapture, Emily Maguire
Allen & Unwin, $32.99, October 1
The eighth novel by former Miles Franklin shortlisted author Emily Maguire, tells the intriguing story of the brilliant Agnes, daughter of a priest in ninth-century Mainz, who runs away disguised as a man so she can pursue the religious study she would be denied as a woman. Compelling.

The Deal, Alex Miller
Allen & Unwin, $32.99, October 1
Alex Miller, twice winner of the Miles Franklin, returns in his 14th novel, The Deal, to topics close to his heart – love and art. In 1975, teacher and writer Andy, happily married to Jo, agrees with his artist friend Lang to do something Jo is not comfortable with. Trouble ensues, pitting the commercial reality of the art market against Andy’s ideals.

Juice, Tim Winton
Hamish Hamilton, $49.99, October 1
In Tim Winton’s first novel since The Shepherd’s Hut (2018), a man and a child are on the run. Having driven through the night, they arrive at an abandoned mine site hoping to find refuge, believing no one is there. They are wrong. Juice, Winton has said, means “human resilience and moral courage”, and there is that in spades in this complex, riveting book already being hailed as a masterpiece.

INTERNATIONAL

Creation Lake, Rachel Kushner
Jonathan Cape, $34.99, September
If you’re in the market for a whip-smart, wickedly funny thriller, look no further than American writer Rachel Kushner’s Creation Lake, in which American undercover agent Sadie is sent to a remote part of France to infiltrate a group of eco-terrorists, whose mysterious leader lives in a cave and is anti-civilisation.

Gabriel’s Moon, William Boyd
Viking, $34.99, September 10
Prolific and widely celebrated British writer William Boyd’s 17th novel (others include Restless and Any Human Heart) is an ingeniously plotted, old-school spy thriller. Gabriel Dax, a travel writer orphaned as a young boy, is reluctantly lured by an MI6 handler into life as a spy in 1960s London.

Tell Me Everything, Elizabeth Strout
Viking, $34.99, September 10
A new novel by the Pulitzer-winning American novelist is always something to look forward to, with beautiful writing and warm, empathetic exploration of human relationships. In her 10th, she brings together two of her well-known characters, writer Lucy Barton and quirky Olive Kitteridge, who bond as they exchange stories about people they know – some happy, some tragic.

Entitlement, Rumaan Alam
Bloomsbury, $32.99, September 17
American writer Rumaan Alam’s last book, Leave the World Behind, was an international bestseller (and made into a Netflix movie starring Julia Roberts). Entitlement, set in New York in 2014, grapples with the same fraught issues – class, gender, race, privilege and morality – or lack of it. An idealistic young black woman forms a friendship with her employer, a billionaire 83-year-old philanthropist, raising interesting questions about power and who’s using whom.

The Last Dream, Pedro Almodovar
Harvill Secker, $34.99, September 24
Multi-award-winning Spanish film director Pedro Almodovar describes The Last Dream as “a fragmentary autobiography”. It consists of 12 pieces of fiction and non-fiction written since the 1960s. Some pieces are clearly autobiographical (there are some great ones on writing), others fantastical. All, he says, demonstrate the close connection between “what I write, what I film and what I live”. It’s fascinating.

Our Evenings, Alan Hollinghurst
Picador, $34.99, October 8
Best known for his 2004 Booker Prize-winning The Line of Beauty, Alan Hollinghurst once again interrogates issues around class, privilege, race and sexuality in contemporary England. Dave is a half-Burmese scholarship boy whose school life is made miserable by bullies such as Giles, the son of his benefactors. Dave becomes an actor, Giles a reactionary politician. Their lives diverge, then shockingly collide. Brilliant.

Annihilation, Michel Houellebecq
Picador, $34.99, September 24
Described as the final book by bestselling but controversial French writer Michel Houellebecq, Annihilation is set in France in 2027. The country is in disarray and hurtling towards elections when it is subject to a series of cyberattacks. Political advisor Paul Raison is on the job. This was a bestseller in France and Germany in 2022.

Blue Ruin, Hari Kunzru
Scribner, $34.99, September 18
British writer Hari Kunzru (Red Pill, White Tears) sets Blue Ruin in pandemic-stricken New York, where Jay, formerly an artist in London, is living in his car and delivering groceries. On a delivery, he encounters Alice, an ex-girlfriend whom he hasn’t seen since she ran off with his best friend Rob 25 years earlier. She and Rob are living a life of prosperity. The disparity in their situations triggers a reckoning on both parts.

Intermezzo, Sally Rooney,
Allen & Unwin, $34.99, September 24
Zeitgeisty Irish writer Sally Rooney (Normal People) writes about grief, love and family in Intermezzo, in which two quite different brothers – one a lawyer, one a chess master - deal with the death of their father and its aftermath.

The Empusium, Olga Tokarczuk
Text, $34.99, September 24
The Empusium, by the acclaimed Polish winner of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature, opens in Poland in 1913 as a young man enters a sanatorium to heal his tuberculosis. Within days, he is exposed to a mysterious death and shockingly misogynistic observations by the men in charge – all, says Olga Tokarczuk, direct quotes from male writers including Sartre, Darwin and Nietzsche. A powerful feminist fable.

Of course, there are many other books heading our way. Look out also for Chinese Postman by Brian Castro (Giramondo, $32.95, October 1), Here One Moment by Liane Moriarty (Pan Macmillan, $34.99), Death at the Sign of the Rook by Kate Atkinson, Precipice by Robert Harris (Hutchinson Heinemann, $34.99) and We Solve Murders by Richard Osman (Viking, $34.99, September 17).

The Booklist is a weekly newsletter for book lovers from books editor Jason Steger. Get it delivered every Friday.