Maggie O’Farrell
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Born in Northern Ireland and now living in Edinburgh, O’Farrell published her first novel, After You’d Gone, to critical acclaim in 2000 and won a Betty Trask award. In 2020 she won the Women’s prize for fiction for her novel Hamnet, which imagined the short life of Shakespeare’s son. She has also written a bestselling memoir, I Am, I Am, I Am. The Marriage Portrait is her ninth novel.
New book in a nutshell
Set in the gilded world of Florence in the 1560s, The Marriage Portrait tells the story of the third daughter of Cosimo de’ Medici. When Lucrezia’s older sister dies, she finds herself forced into marriage with the sinister Alfonso. Abandoned in a distant villa, she realises that he is planning to kill her. Smart historical fiction with a memorable central character – expect more prizes and critical praise. Published 30 August (Tinder).
Campaign
A preorder campaign has been running since publication was announced in February. Cinematic advertising and attention-grabbing stunts are planned for the launch and through the autumn. O’Farrell has multiple events and festival appearances – also expect blanket media coverage.
Further reading
Sarah Dunant is the queen of Renaissance fiction – try The Birth of Venus, also set in Florence. Or there’s Rupert Thomson’s Secrecy, about an artist in the Medici court. For the historical backdrop, Paul Strathern’s books on the Medici are rich in detail and beautifully written, while Christopher Hibbert’s The Rise and Fall of the House of Medici reads like a novel.
Ian McEwan
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The winner of the Booker prize for his 1998 novel Amsterdam, Lessons is McEwan’s 17th novel and is also the author of two collections of short stories. A graduate of the University of East Anglia’s acclaimed creative writing programme, he initially wrote gothic-tinged stories before the huge success of The Child in Time (1987), which won the Whitbread award. Many of his novels have been adapted for film and television.
New book in a nutshell
We first meet Roland Baines, the hero of Lessons, in the wake of the second world war. Alone at a strange boarding school, he begins the piano lessons that will shape and then wound him. We follow dramatic events both personal and historical, from the Cuban missile crisis to Covid, and learn how this restless, dissatisfied personality has been formed by his times. A beautiful, sad book about love, loss and regret. Published 13 September (Jonathan Cape).
Campaign
The book was launched with a significant advertising campaign and there will be across-the-board interviews. Readers will also be able to hear McEwan talk about Lessons at bookshops and festivals across the country.
Further reading
The most obvious companion piece would be Julian Barnes’s Booker-winning The Sense of an Ending, although Any Human Heart by William Boyd takes a similarly sweeping approach to history. Dominic Sandbrook’s engaging histories of the second half of the 20th century will give you the sociopolitical context – Never Had It So Good is superb.
Kamila Shamsie
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Born in Karachi, Pakistan, Shamsie is best known for her 2017 novel Home Fire, which won the Women’s prize and was longlisted for the Booker. Shamsie is professor of creative writing at the Centre for New Writing in Manchester. Best of Friends is her eighth novel.
New book in a nutshell
The story of Zahra and Maryam, Best of Friends begins with their 80s childhood in Karachi. Zahra is conservative and quiet, Maryam wild and expressive, but their differences cement their closeness until an impulsive moment dramatically changes the dynamic between them. We meet them again in 2019; both women have forged careers in London but their friendship is put to the test as the novel moves towards its devastating denouement. Published 27 September (Bloomsbury).
Campaign
Ali Smith describes Best of Friends as a “shining tour de force” and Bloomsbury is planning a blockbuster campaign, with more than 25 national and international interviews and events as well as a huge digital advertising campaign.
Further reading
Best of Friends is a novel in which cricket features heavily – Shamsie is a member of the Authors XI Cricket Club, whose early members included PG Wodehouse and Arthur Conan Doyle. Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland is another great cricketing novel, while Peter Oborne’s Wounded Tiger tells the complex history of Pakistani cricket. Other recent novels about migration and globalisation worth trying include Taymour Soomro’s Other Names for Love, Pankaj Mishra’s Run and Hide and Scary Monsters by Michelle de Kretser.
William Boyd
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Born in Accra, Ghana, during the dying days of empire, Boyd grew up in Nigeria before attending school in Scotland. He is perhaps best known for Any Human Heart (2002), a playful fictional diary that encompasses the most significant historical and literary events of the 20th century. Boyd has written many screenplays, including film and TV adaptations of his own work. The Romantic is his 17th novel.
New book in a nutshell
Drawing on the success of Any Human Heart (and with a similarly broad approach to history as Ian McEwan’s Lessons), The Romantic recounts the life of Cashel Greville Ross, born in 1799 and caught up in many of the most important episodes of the 19th century. The book’s heart, though, lies in Italy, where Ross falls in with the Romantic poets, and finds love. Picaresque, big-hearted and moving, this is Boyd at the top of his game. Published 6 October (Viking).
Campaign
Preorder activity is well under way and a huge publication campaign will continue through to Christmas. Readers will be able to hear about the book from Boyd at in-person events in London, Bath, Edinburgh and Brighton, as well as via an online event.
Further reading
Anthony Doerr, Tracy Chevalier and Sebastian Faulks all deliver the same expansive historical pleasures. For another whole-life epic, what about Maggie Shipstead’s Booker-shortlisted Great Circle? Or Honorée Fanonne Jeffers’s The Love Songs of WEB Du Bois, which reaches across space and time on as broad a canvas as Boyd’s.
Kate Atkinson
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Atkinson burst on to the scene in 1995 with her debut novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, which won the Whitbread award. Since then her varied career has seen her write a bestselling series of crime novels – her Jackson Brodie books – and two award-winning titles that used the tools of speculative fiction to shed new light on the 20th century. Both Life After Life and its follow-up, A God in Ruins, won the Costa novel award. Shrines of Gaiety is her 12th novel.
New book in a nutshell
It is the roaring 20s in London and Nellie Coker is the queen of Soho. She has just emerged from a six-month spell in HMP Holloway and is keen to be back managing her string of successful nightclubs and other more nefarious activities. She also needs to keep an eye on her six children. Niven, the eldest, was shattered by the trenches. The plot hinges upon a missing girl, Freda, and the librarian, Gwendolen, who is searching for her. A rich cast of characters, an elegantly intricate plot – this is classic Atkinson. Published 27 September (Doubleday).
Campaign
Kate Atkinson rarely does interviews, but the launch will include a comprehensive preorder campaign, special editions for retailers, book of the month selections, media partnerships, a nationwide advertising campaign, alongside an autumn of activity in partnership with York city libraries for the Big City Read.
Further reading
Selby Wynn Schwartz’s After Sappho, just longlisted for the Booker, is a very funny novel set in the same world. Sarah Churchwell’s Careless People looks at how real life in the 1920s was transmuted into perhaps the greatest novel of the era – The Great Gatsby – while the late, much-missed Kevin Jackson’s Constellation of Genius brings 1922 to life in characteristically erudite fashion.
Robert Harris
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A former journalist, Robert Harris made his name with the multimillion-selling counterfactual thriller Fatherland, which imagines Nazi Germany winning the second world war. His historical novels range widely across time, from the Cicero trilogy in ancient Rome to 20th-century works such as V2 and Enigma. Several of his books have been adapted for film and TV, two directed by Roman Polanski. Act of Oblivion is Harris’s 15th novel.
New book in a nutshell
It’s the 17th century and the hunt is on to track down the killers of Charles I. The Indemnity and Oblivion Act pardoned all those involved in the civil war except, crucially, for the regicides. Moving between England and America (to which several of the regicides fled), it is at once a gripping thriller and a meditation on democracy and republicanism. Released 1 September (Hutchinson Heinemann).
Campaign
A huge preorder campaign is under way that will extend through to the end of the year. There will be 40 events with Waterstones, indie bookshops and literary festivals. Interviews include Radio 4’s Today programme.
Further reading
For a glorious portrait of 17th-century America that chimes nicely with Harris’s novel, read Francis Spufford’s masterly Golden Hill. Or what about AK Blakemore’s The Manningtree Witches, which explores the place of women in the febrile atmosphere of mid-17th-century England? In nonfiction, Tristram Hunt’s The English Civil War at First Hand is compellingly readable and illuminating.
Cormac McCarthy
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Cormac McCarthy published his first novel in 1965 and has since, arguably, become America’s greatest living novelist. He is best known for The Road (2006) and No Country for Old Men (2005), both of which were turned into successful films. McCarthy has won the Pulitzer prize and a National Book award, as well as a MacArthur fellowship. He lives in New Mexico and writes his novels on a mechanical Olivetti typewriter. The Passenger and Stella Maris (released a month apart) are his 11th and 12th novels.
New book in a nutshell
In The Passenger, ostensibly the first of what McCarthy is calling a “duet”, it is 1980 and a plane has crashed off the coast of Mississippi. Our protagonist, Bobby Western, dives down to find that the captain’s bag, the black box, and a passenger are missing. There are many who don’t want Western to discover the truth about the flight, while he must wrestle with the dark legacy of his rocket scientist father.
Stella Maris skips back a decade to find Bobby’s sister, Alicia, in a psychiatric hospital. Told entirely through her medical notes, we delve deeper into the troubled past of this extraordinary family. Published 25 October and 22 November (Picador).
Campaign
There are plans for a year-long celebration of McCarthy’s work (McCarthy’s almost never gives interviews), starting with an autumn season of back-to-back activity, including media and brand partnerships, innovative experiential marketing, and influencer outreach to bring his work to a new generation.
Further reading
Don DeLillo is the obvious nearest relative – White Noise is perhaps the closest to The Passenger, or for something more recent, try the great and terrifying Zero K. Stella Maris puts you in mind of the Booker-longlisted Case Study by Graeme Macrae Burnet – another book that uses the psychiatrist’s notebook as a narrative tool. For another novel set in the 1980s whose plot is gloriously convoluted, try Trust by Hernan Diaz.
