Dan Brown is back. Tolkien is back. Tony Abbott is back. Harry Potter is back (well, recycled in four new editions). And 119 years after H. G. Wells, the Martians are back. Next year is a big one for Australian fiction debuts, including the story of Lizzie Borden the axe murderer – part of a trend towards using historical characters and retelling ancient myths. Crime fiction and thrillers are booming, and we can't get enough memoirs and life stories.
International fiction
Karl Ove Knausgaard has finished his My Struggle cycle of novels (one remains to be published in English), but he's still writing about his life: Autumn (August) and Winter (November), two of four books named after the seasons, are out with Penguin Random House. The Mirror and the Light (Fourth Estate, August) is the final novel in Hilary Mantel's Thomas Cromwell trilogy.
![English author Neil Gaiman.](/web/20170105212322im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/f/x/n/t/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gtg24z.png/1483080999350.jpg)
Neil Gaiman tackles the Viking world in Norse Mythology (Bloomsbury, February); and in House of Names (Picador, March), Colm Toibin looks at the Atreus series of Greek stories from the female point of view. Kamila Shamsie reworks the Antigone legend in a Muslim family in Home Fire (Bloomsbury, September). And Edward St Aubyn has a contemporary version of King Lear (PRH, October).
Paul Auster's first novel in seven years is 4 3 2 1 (Faber & Faber, February). Arundhati Roy's first novel since she won the Booker Prize 20 years ago is The Ministry of Utmost Happiness (PRH, July). Hannah Tinti's The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley (Hachette, April) is described by Ann Patchett as part-Tarantino, part-Scheherezade. Haruki Murakami has a book of short stories, Men Without Women (PRH, May).
![The late Georgia Blain's book <i>The Museum of Words</i> is about her experience with a brain tumour.](/web/20170105212322im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/9/s/j/c/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gtg24z.png/1483080999350.jpg)
J.R.R. Tolkien's Beren and Luthien (HarperCollins, May) is the first published stand-alone version of his saga of a man and an elf. F. Scott Fitzgerald's last collection of unpublished stories is titled I'd Die For You (Simon & Schuster, May). And what's a year without new J. K. Rowling releases? To celebrate the 20th anniversary of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in June, Bloomsbury is publishing four "house editions" named after the Hogwarts school houses, with new fact files, character profiles and illustrations.
And Stephen Baxter has written an authorised sequel to H. G. Well's The War of the Worlds, The Massacre of Mankind (Hachette, February).
Australian fiction
Six Miles Franklin winners have novels on the way. Michelle de Kretser's Life to Come, Sofie Laguna's The Choke, and Alex Miller's The Passage of Love will all be published by Allen & Unwin in the second half of the year. Others are Steven Carroll's final book in his six-part Glenroy sequence, A New England Affair (Fourth Estate, September); Kim Scott's Taboo (Picador, August); and A. S. Patric's Atlantic Black (Transit Lounge, October).
Novels inspired by historical characters include Gwen by Goldie Goldbloom (Fremantle Press, February); about the artist Gwen John; From the Wreck by Jane Rawson (Transit Lounge, March); Beauty in Thorns by Kate Forsyth (PRH, July) about the Pre-Raphaelite women; The Last Days of Jeanne D'Arc by Ali Alizadeh (Giramondo, August); Billy Sing by Ouyang Yu (Transit Lounge, April) about a half-Chinese Gallipoli hero; and The Beachcomber's Wife by Adrian Mitchell (Wakefield Press, January).
![Christina Stead's letters will be published by Miegunyah Modern Library in February.](/web/20170105212322im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/f/y/o/v/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gtg24z.png/1483080999350.jpg)
Look out for Brian Castro's Blindness and Rage: A Phantasmagoria (Giramondo, April); Eva Hornung's The Last Garden (Text, May); Stephen Lang's Winderran (UQP, July); Chris Womersley's tale of 17th-century witchcraft, City of Crows (Picador, September); Heather Taylor Johnson's Jean Harley Was Here (UQP, March); Ruby J. Murray's The Biographer's Lover (Black Inc., September); Vivienne Kelly's The Starlings (Text, April), Melanie Joosten's Gravity Well (Scribe, June) and a new novel from Stephanie Bishop (Hachette, September).
There are short-story collections from John Kinsella (Old Growth, Transit Lounge, February); Sue Woolfe (Do You Love Me or What?, Simon & Schuster, March); Beverley Farmer (These Waters: Five Tales, Giramondo, July); and Alex Skovron (The Man Who Took to his Bed, Puncher & Wattmann, May). Unusually, there are short-story debuts: The Circle and the Equator by Kyra Giorgi (UWAP, February); Australia Day by Melanie Cheng (Text, July) and Silent by Stephanie Buckle (Finlay Lloyd, mid-year).
![American author Richard Ford.](/web/20170105212322im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/g/0/n/l/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gtg24z.png/1483080999350.jpg)
Debut fiction
It's a crowded field for first-time novelists in Australia. Standouts for 2017 include Sarah Schmidt's See What I Have Done (Hachette, April) about the Lizzie Borden murder case; Peter Polites's Down the Hume (Hachette, March), described as the new Tsiolkas or Luke Davies; Sarah Bailey's The Dark Lake (Allen & Unwin, June); Richell Prize-winner Sally Abbott's climate-change story Closing Down (Hachette, May); and Tracy Sorenson's The Lucky Galah (Picador, September) described as "Madame Bovary with red dust and tropical cyclone Steve".
Michael Fitzgerald's The Pacific Room (Transit Lounge, July) is about Robert Louis Stevenson in Samoa; Dennis Glover's The Last Man in Europe (Black Inc., July) is about how Orwell came to write Nineteen Eighty-Four. Black Dog institute founder Gordon Parker has written a rollicking tale of mental illness, In Two Minds (Ventura, April). Other debuts include Mallee Boys by Charlie Archbold (Wakefield Press, May); Blueberry by Glenna Thomson (PRH, January); and Libby Angel's The Trapeze Act (Text, January). And ABC TV journo Tony Jones makes his debut with a political thriller for Allen & Unwin in the second half of the year.
![UWAP is publishing <i>The Collected Poems of Fay Zwicky</i>.](/web/20170105212322im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/f/y/k/t/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gtg24z.png/1483080999350.jpg)
Crime and thrills
Candice Fox has two books on the way: Crimson Lake (PRH, February) and a second novel written with James Patterson, Last Chance (August). Award-winning Emma Viskic's new novel is And Fire Came Down (Bonnier, September). Look out for new novels from Michael Robotham (Hachette, August) and The Dry author Jane Harper (Picador, later in the year).
The father and daughter team of Tom and Meg Keneally have the second in their Monsarrat crime series, The Unmourned (PRH, March). Sulari Gentill has book eight of her Rowland Sinclair mysteries, A Dangerous Language (Pantera Press, September). Another historical murder mystery is Greg Pyers' The Unfortunate Victim (Scribe, February).
![Senator Jacqui Lambie will be releasing her memoir in 2017.](/web/20170105212322im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/r/g/w/t/v/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gtg24z.png/1483080999350.jpg)
Literary thrillers come from Anna George (The Lone Child, PRH, August) and Stephen Greenall (Winter Traffic, Text, February). Also on the way is Sara Foster's The Hidden Hours (Simon & Schuster, April), Fiona Capp's To Know My Crime (Fourth Estate, March), Kathryn Heyman's Storm and Grace (Allen & Unwin, February), Nick Athanason's Palindrome (Brandl & Schlesinger, February), Lois Murphy's Soon (Transit Lounge, September) Michael Brissenden's political thriller, The List (Hachette, August), J. M. Green's Too Easy (Scribe, May) David Free's Get Poor Slow (Picador, January) and Peter Corris' last Cliff Hardy adventure, Win, Lose or Draw (Allen & Unwin, January).
From overseas, Dan Brown has a new Robert Langdon novel, Origin (PRH, September). David Lagercrantz has written Millennium V, fifth in the series that began with Stieg Larsson's Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Hachette, September). Jo Nesbo has a new Harry Hole novel, The Thirst (PRH, May). Other fancied titles include Dennis Lehane's Since We Fell (Hachette, May), Daniel Cole's Ragdoll (Hachette, March), and J. P. Delaney's The Girl Before (Hachette, February).
![Kate Grenville promises to make you smell the world differently with her new book.](/web/20170105212322im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/f/x/z/f/image.related.articleLeadNarrow.300x0.gtg24z.png/1483080999350.jpg)
And the late Michael Crichton, creator of Jurassic Park, has a recently discovered novel about fossil hunting, Dragon Teeth (HarperCollins, June).
Life stories
It's another huge year for Australian memoirs. The late Georgia Blain's farewell book is about her experience of a brain tumour (The Museum of Words, Scribe, July). Other novelists turning to memoir are Inga Simpson (Understory, Hachette, June); and Nikki Gemmell on her mother, who killed herself in 2015 (After, HarperCollins, April).
![Ali Alizadeh's <i>The Last Days of Jeanne D'Arc</i> will be out in the second half of 2017.](/web/20170105212322im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/j/0/q/2/image.related.articleLeadNarrow.300x0.gtg24z.png/1483080999350.jpg)
Brentley Frazer's Scoundrel Days (UQP, March), described as "Tom Sawyer on acid", avoids all tenses of the verb "to be". Former diplomat Bruce Grant surveys his life in Subtle Moments (Monash University Publishing, January); and Gerard Windsor gives his account of Catholicism in The Tempest-Tossed Church (NewSouth, May).
Expect autobiographies from Kerry O'Brien, Gai Waterhouse and Nick Riewoldt towards the end of the year. Caroline Baum has Only: A Singular Memoir (March). And Eddie Ayres, formerly ABC broadcaster Emma Ayres, tells his story in Danger Music. All these books are from Allen & Unwin.
Follow-up memoirs are on the way from Noel Tovey (And Then I Found Me, Magabala, March); Jimmy Barnes (HarperCollins, November) and actor Steve Bisley (Highways, Bonnier, October). The biggest follow-up memoir comes from overseas: Nelson Mandela's sequel to Long Walk to Freedom, Dare Not Linger (Pan Macmillan, November).
Among international titles, look out for Chinese artist and dissident Ai Weiwei's book about himself and his father (PRH, September); Armistead Maupin's autobiography (PRH, October); and Richard Ford's memoir about his parents, Between Them (Bloomsbury, May).
History, biography, literature and letters
Literary biographies include A Writing Life: Helen Garner and Her Work by Bernadette Brennan (Text, April), the first full-length study of Garner's work; Simon Leys: Navigator Between Worlds by Philippe Paquet (LaTrobe University Press, July); A Wife's Heart: The Untold Story of Bertha and Henry Lawson by Kerrie Davies (UQP, April); Come in Dymphna by Marilla North (Brandl & Schlesinger, May), about Dymphna Cusack; and Beyond the Rock by Janelle McCulloch (Bonnier, April), about Picnic at Hanging Rock author Joan Lindsay.
The selected letters of Christina Stead, A Web of Friendship, will be published by Miegunyah Modern Library in February. Vance and Nettie Palmer's letters are collected in Loving Words, edited by Deborah Jordan (Brandl & Schlesinger, June). Former Governor General Quentin Bryce's letters are published in Dear Quentin (MUP, April).
In the arts and entertainment, there are biographies of Martin Sharp (Joyce Morgan, Allen & Unwin, February); conductor Stuart Challender (Richard Davis, Close to the Flame, Wakefield Press, April) and INXS star Michael Hutchence (Toby Creswell, The Devil Inside, Bonnier, November).
Alexis Wright writes about a famed Indigenous activist in Tracker Tilmouth: An Essayed Memoir (Giramondo, October). And J. M. Coetzee has Late Essays (PRH, September).
The outstanding history title for 2017 could be The Vandemonian Wars by Nick Brodie (Hardie Grant, July) about the attempted genocide of the Indigenous people of Tasmania. Overseas, Simon Schama's latest is The Story of the Jews (PRH, December).
Politics and big issues
Is there any politician who hasn't written a memoir yet? Tony Abbott is onto his second, Reflections (MUP, August), considering the case for conservatism. In 2017 expect memoirs from Gareth Evans (An Incorrigible Optimist, MUP, August); former Greens leader Christine Milne (UQP, second half of the year); Jacqui Lambie (Allen & Unwin, June); and Sam Dastyari (Snack Packs, Villages and Senate Inquiries, MUP, July).
Labor's shadow climate-change minister Mark Butler has written The Climate Wars (MUP, July) and Bill Shorten's wife Chloe has written Take Heart: A Story for Modern Stepfamilies (MUP, April).
Timely books include Please Explain: The Rise, Fall and Rise Again of Pauline Hanson by Anna Broinowski (PRH, June); David Marr's Quarterly Essay on the Australian brand of the politics of resentment (Black Inc, March); and Rodney Syme's Time to Die (MUP, February).
With The Case Against Fragrance (Text, February), Kate Grenville promises to make you smell the world differently.
Poetry
Contemporary Australian Poetry is an anthology that covers 25 years from 1990 to 2015 and features more than 500 poems by 234 poets. Edited by Martin Langford, Judith Beveridge, Judy Johnson and David Musgrave, it's published by Puncher and Wattmann in February. Another collection, The Fremantle Press Anthology of Western Australian Poetry (March), edited by John Kinsella and Tracy Ryan, is the first comprehensive survey of Western Australian poets. And Shaping the Fractured Self, edited by Heather Taylor Johnson (UWAP, May) is an anthology with its genesis in pain and illness.
UWAP is also publishing The Collected Poems of Fay Zwicky (May), edited by Lucy Dougan and Tim Dolin. And for fans of the late Michael Dransfield, Paula Keogh has a memoir of their life together, The Green Bell: A Memoir of Love, Madness and Poetry (Affirm Press, March).
Individual collections include Transparencies by Stephen Edgar (Black Pepper, February) and Sure by Jennifer Harrison (Black Pepper, March); Superette by Melinda Bufton (Puncher & Wattmann, February); Rendition by A. Frances Johnson and The War of Independence by Mark Reid (both Puncher & Wattmann, July); The Landing by Paul Croucher (Transit Lounge, February); Accidents of Composition by Merlinda Bobis (Spinifex, August); Venetian Voices by Christine Courtney and Lonnie's Lament by Ken Bolton (both Wakefield Press, March).
Giramondo will publish new books by Jennifer Maiden, Shevaun Coolley, Michael Farrell, Lachlan Brown, Alan Wearne and Kate Middleton.