New release books for 2011

HIS STORY: Former Supreme Court judge Michael Kirby has written about his private life in his memoir Fragments, Friends, Memories. Source: The Daily Telegraph

Fragments, Friends, Memories

Michael Kirby

(Allen & Unwin, June release)

The former Supreme Court judge, and one of Australia's most admired public figures, Michael Kirby – who has written extensively about the law – now writes about his private life in this memoir. "He has rarely revealed the private man," says publisher Rebecca Kaiser. "And in this collection of recollections we learn about the real Michael Kirby for the first time. He opens up as never before about being gay, about his 30-year relationship with Johan van Vloten, his love of James Dean and religion among other things. It's beautifully written, reflective and generous."

Five Bells

Gail Jones

(Random House, February release)

Perth literary professor Gail Jones became one of my all-time favourite Australian writers with the release of her second novel, Sixty Lights. Her fifth novel, Five Bells, is inspired by the famous and very beautiful Kenneth Slessor poem of the same name. It is set on and around Sydney Harbour on one day during which four lives converge and are transformed by a fifth person, a child whose presence at Circular Quay haunts the day.

Crime

Ferdinand Von Schirach

(Text, February release)

This slim volume of stories has already become an instant bestseller in Germany, where author Ferdinand von Schirach has worked as a criminal defence lawyer since 1994. "I write about criminal cases," he writes. "But actually my subject is human beings – their failings, their guilt, and their capacity to behave magnificently." With that grand hook, von Schirach introduces nine fascinating stories taken from his experiences in the legal system. He thoughtfully confronts questions of guilt and innocence and justice, and how it does – or does not – intersect with the law, through these stories about individuals' lives.

The Emperor of Lies

Steve Sem-Sandberg

(Faber, July release)

The world has been so enamoured of Swedish crime fiction since Stieg Larsson's The Millennium series exploded on to the scene that it will be really interesting to see some Swedish writing of a different calibre. This book won the August Prize, which is the Swedish equivalent of the Man Booker Prize, the most prestigious literary prize in the English-speaking world. Drawing on the chronicles of life in the World War II Polish ghetto of Lodz, Sem-Sandberg tells the story of Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, who assumed monarchical rule over a quarter of a million Jews in the ghetto.

Caleb's Crossing

Geraldine Brooks

(Fourth Estate, May release)

Pulitzer Prize-winning Australian author Geraldine Brooks has carved a niche for herself by bringing moments in history alive in superb style and rich detail – her first book was the highly acclaimed Year of Wonders, which she followed up with March and People of the Book. Her next novel is set in 1665 and is about Caleb, a young Indian from the island of Martha's Vineyard, who becomes the first native American to graduate from Harvard.

The Language of Flowers

Vanessa Diffenbaugh

(Picador, September release)

This debut novel by US author Vanessa Diffenbaugh was the subject of an international bidding war last year. Being compared to books such as The Time Traveller's Wife and Chocolat, The Language of Flowers is the story of a damaged young woman who goes from being homeless to being a sought-after wedding floral designer. Victoria, whose childhood was spent in a series of foster homes, can only communicate through the Victorian language of flowers, in which different flowers convey different emotion and meaning. When she falls in love with a farmer at the local farmers' market she must confront her troubled past and the danger that lies within her.

Before I Go To Sleep

S.J. Watson

(Text, May release)

With filming scheduled to begin next year by Ridley Scott's production company, the buzz is big about this debut work by English author S.J. Watson. printed in more than 30 languages, it's a psychological thriller about a woman who wakes each day beside a man she is not familiar with. She knows nothing of her life. Every night her mind erases her memory of the day, but before she goes to sleep, she has fragmented flashbacks to the accident that damaged her – and then she forgets. Watson, 39, has been acclaimed for combining elements of a thriller with questions about the meaning of love.

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Kate Grenville

(Text, September release)

After the stellar success of her Commonwealth Literature Prize-winning The Secret River, it seemed Kate Grenville had written the definitive colonial Australian novel. But then came the elegant and moving The Lieutenant, and Grenville proved her assuredness as a storyteller working familiar territory. Now comes the third book in what Grenville always planned as a trilogy. It is as yet unnamed but given Grenville's track record with her knowledge and feel for the period, it will be one to watch. Text publisher Michael Heyward is "tremendously excited" about the final novel and claims it to be the best of the three.

All That I Am

Anna Funder

(Hamish Hamilton, July release)

Australian author Anna Funder won awards and critical acclaim all around the world for Stasiland, her 2003 work of non-fiction stories from behind the Berlin Wall. Now she has a novel being published about the heroic but largely tragic fate of a small group of left-wing German activists who opposed the rise of Hitler. Publisher Ben Ball says: "I was the distraught underbidder for Stasiland in London, when I said to the agent that were there a novel that Anna was thinking of writing I'd be glad to offer for that too, whatever it was. So almost 10 years later, I was thrilled to receive the manuscript of All That I Am – and after reading it, excited in the extreme. We always knew Anna was one of our best writers. Now she shows herself to be one of our best novelists."

Friends Like These

Wendy Harmer

(Allen & Unwin, April release)

Entertainer and radio show host Wendy Harmer is always good for a bit of light relief with witty insight and this novel is regarded by her publisher to be her best yet. Billed as a comedy of manners, it is set in Sydney's eastern suburbs and is the story of Jo Blanchard, a newly trained, recently single, marriage celebrant who has left her job at an exclusive girls school after a scandal. Among its themes are greed, fraud and finding something to believe in, and the book's editor, Catherine Milne, says it is "by turns intense, light, romantic, thought-provoking, funny, deep, satirical, moving and bitingly witty".