Book up your ideas
Turning the page on another year, experts offer HANNAH STEPHENSON their predictions of what’s going to be hot in the world of books for 2021
THIS is going to be a sizzling year for new books, from dazzling debuts and celebrity memoirs to tomes exploring diversity, plus light-hearted reads and even a re-visiting of Bridget Jones.
Many key titles were delayed due to the pandemic, so there should be a bumper crop of books, but keep an eye on changing publication dates as the year progresses.
Caroline Sanderson, associate editor of trade publication The Bookseller, observes: “I suppose if there is a trend, in the wake of Black Lives Matter there are a lot of books looking at race and identity, with lots of interesting stories emerging.” Bea Carvalho, fiction buyer at Waterstones, adds: “The publishing industry has a lot of work to do in representation and diversity, and publishers are getting better at finding talent from more diverse backgrounds.”
“Another trend which is continuing is the ‘locked room’ type mystery, where you have a group of people in a confined space and it’s got to be one of them, which we saw with Lucy Foley’s The Hunting Party,” says The Bookseller’s books editor Alice O’Keeffe.
Here are just some of the titles they suggest to look out for...
POPULAR FICTION
CAN you believe it’s 25 years since Helen Fielding introduced us to the wine-swilling 30-something singleton in London, trying to make sense of life and love in Bridget Jones’s Diary, played by Renée Zellweger in the films?
The new re-issue (Picador, Feb 4) features 100 pages of previously unseen material, so publishers are predicting fans will grab a copy for old times’ sake.
Dipping her toes further into the water of crime novels, popular writer Adele Parks gives us Both Of You (HQ, May 27), in which two women go missing in the same week and the investigating detective has a hunch the disappearances are connected.
LITERARY GEMS
WATERSTONES is predicting Klara And
The Sun by Kazuo
Ishiguro (Faber &
Faber, Mar 2), his first novel since winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2017, is going to be a big seller.
It focuses on Klara, an Artificial Friend who watches customers come in the store to browse, and who
remains hopeful they will choose her. Other big names with new fiction out for 2021 include Haruki Murakami with First Person Singular (Vintage, Apr 6), a collection of short stories, while Jon McGregor gives us Lean Fall Stand (Fourth Estate, Apr 29), which tackles heroism and sacrifice when an Antarctic research expedition goes wrong, with far-reaching consequences.
DEBUTS
THERE’S a buzz around Luster by
Raven Leilani
(Picador, Jan 21), already a hit in the
US. It sees a young black woman navigating life in
New York begin a relationship with an older white man in an open marriage; she becomes embroiled in his family as she also gets to know his wife. Leilani’s voice is fresh, sharp and caustically funny.
Another debut to keep an eye on is Girl A by Abigail Dean (Harper Collins, Jan 21), which was sold in the UK after a nine-way auction – TV and film rights have already been snapped up. It focuses on the eponymous Girl A, now an adult lawyer who survived a horrific upbringing in a house of horrors. When her mother dies in prison, she’s bequeathed the family home where she must come to terms with the past, alongside her six siblings.
DIVERSITY, RACE AND IDENTITY
WATCH out for The Prophets by Robert Jones Jr (riverrun, Jan 5), set
on a plantation in Mississippi, which tells of the forbidden love between two enslaved men who find in each other a refuge and hope in a world dominated by brutal masters.
Yaa Gyasi (author of phenomenal debut Homegoing) brings us Transcendent Kingdom (Viking, Mar
4), a saga following a family of Ghanaian immigrants in Alabama, exploring faith, love and addiction in contemporary America. From Georgina Lawton comes Raceless (Sphere, Feb 4), her story of being raised by white parents and her challenging journey of self-discovery as an adult as she tries to unravel her racial identity, and the deceit her parents wove around her.
Brown Baby: A Memoir Of Race, Family, Home by Nikesh Shukla (Bluebird, Feb 4), is an inspiring memoir about how to find hope and even happiness in a world of grief and racism, explored from Shukla’s perspective as a father.
In spring, social media influencer and Instagram star Sophie Williams brings us (HQ, Apr 15) a much-needed roadmap for young black women striving to progress in the workplace in 2021 and beyond, together with actionable steps to succeed in what can often be hostile environments.
Millennial Black
REFLECTIONS ON COVID
CHILDREN’S author Michael Rosen brings us Many Different Kinds Of Love (Ebury, Mar 18), an account of his battle with Covid-19, in a sort of prose and poetry format.
In The Madness Of Grief (April, Weidenfeld), Richard writes about how he has come to terms with his loss.
BESTSELLING NOVELISTS
FAMILIAR names who always deliver include Kate Mosse, whose new novel The City Of Tears (Pan Macmillan, Jan 21), the second historical epic in The Burning Chambers series, is a story of love and loss, war and displacement sweeping from Carcassonne to South Africa.
The hugely popular Elly Griffiths brings us Nighthawk (Quercus, Feb 4), another tale involving forensic archaeologist Dr Ruth Galloway that finds her investigating the death of a boy whose body is found by a group of metal detectorists. And Slough House ( John Murray, Feb 4), the seventh book in Mick Herron’s Sunday Times bestselling award-winning series, finds Diana Taverner on the warpath a year after a calamitous blunder by the Russian secret service left a British citizen dead. It’s being adapted into a TV series starring Gary Oldman.
THRILLERS
THERE’S a huge publicity campaign for The Push by Ashley Audrain THERE’S a flurry of offerings from (Penguin Michael celebrity names in Joseph, Jan 7) which 2021, from Mel charts the experiences Giedroyc’s debut of a new mother who novel The Best finds motherhood
Things (Headline isn’t what she hoped for. Review, Apr 1), a She starts to fear something is big-hearted story wrong with her daughter but also about a family on the something terrifyingly wrong with her.brink;to The Beauty
Of Living Twice, the Meanwhile, acclaimed author memoir of Sharon Belinda Bauer brings us Exit
Stone (Allen & (Bantam, Jan 21), her first thriller Unwin, Apr 1); and since her Booker Prize long-listed an uplifting, Snap, in which an old man, part of a empowering guide network called the Exiteers, keeps a from Louise dying man company as he takes his Redknapp called final breath – until something goes You’ve Got This wrong and he finds himself on the (Mar 4, Piatkus). run.
For those who love And former top-10 British freestyle pet stories, check out snowboarder Allie Reynolds brings broadcaster Nicky us Shiver (Headline, Jan 21) a debut Campbell’s One Of set in the world of high stakes The Family (Hodder snowboarding, in & Stoughton, Feb 18), which a woman as he recounts how accepts an invitation his faithful labrador, for a reunion in a Maxwell, helped him deserted lodge in the come to terms with French alps with four his difficult journey fellow athletes she as an adopted child. hasn’t seen for a And there’s a decade. heartfelt read from Soon, buried secrets Reverend Richard come to light with dangerous Coles, whose partner consequences. of 12 years, Reverend This one sold after a 10-publisher David Coles, died auction and the TV rights have unexpectedly in 2019. already been bought.
CELEBRITY OFFERINGS
THE PROPHETS
by Robert Jones
Jr, riverrun, £18.99 (ebook £9.99). ★★★★ ★ AT the heart of Robert Jones Jr’s remarkable debut novel is a love story. Samuel and Isaiah, enslaved on an American cotton plantation, build a forbidden bond that inspires and challenges slaves and owners.
Their beautifully described relationship is seen through other
vividly drawn characters. Epic in its scope, the novel portrays a black history that connects African ancestors, nature, spiritualism, sex, love and shared trauma – an ambitious and intense mix. Unflinching depictions of brutal abuse make for difficult reading. While the novel’s elegant lyricism can occasionally confound, overall it carries a powerful emotional resonance.