Stuff your wallets and load up your debit cards: a welter of titles from familiar and new names are on their way this year.
There will be memoirs/bios from Angela Merkel, Rebel Wilson, Star Wars star Billy Dee Williams, Eric Morecambe, Oz Crossfit star Tia-Clair Toomey, and choreographer extraordinaire George Balanchine. Oxford scholar Karolina Watroba will publish Metamorphoses: In Search of Franz Kafka, 100 years after the writer’s death aged 40. Eighteen months after surviving a vicious attack in upstate New York, Salman Rushdie will publish Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder. It must be some kind of anniversary, as there will be at least three books on the Beatles.
Highlights in science include titles on memory, our evolutionary origins, ageing and medicinal psychedelics. Neuroscientist and psychologist Charan Ranganath offers Why We Remember: The Science of Memory and How it Shapes Us. Oxford anthropology professor Harvey Whitehouse’s Inheritance: The Evolutionary Origins of the Modern World argues three evolutionary biases – conformism, religiosity and tribalism – are responsible for the greatest revolutions in human history and many of our current challenges, from violent criminality to environmental meltdown.
On the pushing-back-on-mortality front are Why We Die, from Nobel prizewinner Venki Ramakrishnan and The Longevity Imperative, by economics prof Andrew J Scott. A History of the World in Six Plagues, by science historian Edna Bonhomme, examines the role confinement has played in fostering and hindering epidemics. Look Again, by Tali Sharot and Cass Sunstein, explains why we are so often oblivious to things around us, from pollution and lying to bias and corruption, and how to fix it. Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up, by Abigail Shrier, points the finger for our kids’ worsening psychological wellbeing at the mental health industry, which has transformed the way we teach, treat, discipline and even talk to our kids.
Books that will have readers’ foreheads knotted in thought in 2024 include Slavoj Žižek’s Too Late to Awaken: What Lies Ahead When There is No Future?, a guide to how AI undermines democracy and what to do about it, and We Have Never Been Woke, from sociologist Musa Al-Gharbi on social justice, inequality and the rise of a new elite.
In history, expect books on Elizabeth I as a young woman, Churchill, Tudor women and World War II resistance fighters. Philippe Sands’ latest is loosely related to his East West Street and The Ratline, and, just in time for the Olympics, a new cultural history of Paris. Smoke and Ashes by the Booker-shortlisted Amitav Ghosh explores the impact of opium on the world and culture. Plus there’s a human history of ice, Cold Spell. More Holocaust memoirs are on the way, plus books putting Nazis and Japanese war criminals on trial, the man who fooled Hitler, and a new book on Stalin.
In fiction, Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Powers has written Playground, about seasteading – creating permanent dwellings at sea. New novels are coming from Louise Penny, Claire Messud, Téa Obreht, Andrew O’Hagan, Rachel Cusk and, of course, Stephen King, as well as the “sexy, funny” All Fours, from film-maker and artist Miranda July, about a semi-famous artist upending her life.
A decade after his death, a new Gabriel García Márquez novel will arrive – Until August, “an extraordinary and profound tale of female freedom and desire”. New blockbusters are expected from James Patterson, Lee Child, Tom Clancy, Marian Keyes, a World War I novel from Robert Harris, Pat Barker, Harlan Coben and Sara Donati. Coming is End of Story, the long-awaited new novel from AJ Finn, the author of The Woman in the Window.
Expect fresh works, too, from Karin Slaughter, Colleen Hoover and Stuart Turton, author of The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle. And Kate Atkinson’s bestselling Jackson Brodie series is back with Death at the Sign of the Rook.
To no one’s surprise, lots of books on health & lifestyle are on their way, including Ali Abdaall’s Feel-Good Productivity: How to Do More of What Matters to You.
On the environmental front there’s Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet, by Oxford data scientist Hannah Ritchie.
More gardening books in 2024 will have an eye to climate change.
In cookbooks, we will be served plant-based, high-protein and gluten-free recipes, ones for salads, delicious cakes, Filipino cuisine, and a new collection of Italian recipes from Stanley Tucci that will no doubt fly out the bookshops.
Local titles in the works
In New Zealand books, we’re likely to see new fiction from Becky Manawatu, Witi Ihimaera and Laurence Fearnley, a historical novel from Lauren Keenan, and Patricia Grace will publish a collection of new and older tales, Bird Child and Other Stories. There will be new novels from Rose Carlyle and Jacqueline Bublitz. A new one from Nicky Pellegrino is due in September. Catherine Chidgey’s next novel, The Book of Guilt, may not be publishing until 2025. Not one but two of Catherine Robertson’s contemporary romcom series, published through HarperCollins UK, will be out in July. There will be novels from JP Pomare, Soraya Lane, Chloe Gong and Eileen Merriman. Kirsty Gunn has new fiction coming, as do Stephanie Johnson, Elizabeth Smither, Stef Harris, Barbara Else and Graeme Lay.
Monty Soutar’s second novel of three, Tree of Nourishment, will arrive. As will Return to Blood, from Michael Bennett, featuring Hana Westerman. More fiction is coming from newish imprint Moa Press, including the sweeping Amma by Saraid de Silva, and the witchy Tonight, I Burn from Katherine J Adams. Debut fiction is coming from Melbourne-based Kiwi Amy Brown, My Brilliant Sister, and from London-based Freddie Gillies, Because All Fades. There’s new work from The Invisible Mile author David Coventry. Sewing Moonlight will be the debut adult fiction by award-winning children’s writer Kyle Mewburn.
In work for younger people, Rachael King will publish a fantasy adventure, The Grimmelings, James Norcliffe has Lost City, and there will be a picture book on Dame Whina Cooper from David Hill.
Expect creative non-fiction from Diana Wichtel and Megan Dunn, and in March, there’s a long-gestating history of feijoas from Kate Evans. Peter Walker uses the extinct Haast’s eagle to explore history, memoir, science and myth. In June comes a biography by Jude Dobson of World War II secret agent Phyllis Latour, who died in Auckland in October.
There will be memoirs from Mike Joy, Susan Devoy, Terence O’Brien, poet and novelist Lynn Davidson, and Hine Toa, from Māori culture scholar and lesbian rights activist Ngahuia te Awekotuku, plus a bio of genius painter Tony Fomison. On Call, by Ineke Meredith, is about the life of a surgeon, daughter and mother. Later in the year, food lovers can dine on Let Them Eat Tripe: The Story of Antoine’s, by Tony Astle with Geraldine Johns.
The university publishers are promising a full slate of offerings, including poetry, fiction, memoir and essays. Coming from Airini Beautrais is an essay collection, The Beautiful Afternoon.
In history, there will be books on Māori art and Te Ata o Tū: The Shadow of Tumatauenga, a compendium of the New Zealand Wars collections at Te Papa; a collection of the earliest photos of NZ; a history of the Wahine disaster; one on women and art in Aotearoa; the rural kitchen until 1940; and accounts of migration and our country’s “experimental” society. And coming is a guide to our economy, BBQ Economics, by the Herald’s Liam Dann.
In health & lifestyle, Niki Bezzant will publish her health guide for women. Judy Bailey’s Evolving will talk about ageing well and with happiness. In the wake of the great success of Fungi, there’s one on foraging in New Zealand.
