January

1 Centenary of the birth of The Catcher in the Rye author JD Salinger.

7 Winners of Costa category awards announced.

11 Release of the biopic Colette, starring Keira Knightley.

12 50th anniversary of the publication of Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint.

14 TS Eliot prize for poetry awarded.

29 Costa prize-giving with book of the year revealed. Germaine Greer turns 80.

Fiction

The Wall by John Lanchester (Faber)

Capital took on the financial crisis; this latest novel imagines a future rocked by global migration and climate disaster, in which a wall has been built around Great Britain to keep out “the Others”.

Once Upon a River by Diane Setterfield (Doubleday)

The follow-up to the bestselling The Thirteenth Tale is a hugely pleasurable 19th-century mystery combining folklore and scientific discovery, set around the Thames.

Border Districts by Gerard Murnane (& Other Stories)

First UK publication for the cult Australian author who, at nearly 80, is gaining international recognition; his 1974 debut Tamarisk Row follows in February.

The Redeemed by Tim Pears (Bloomsbury)

Set in 1916, the conclusion to Pears’s bucolic West Country trilogy imagines a world in the grip of war.

The Chestnut Man by Søren Sveistrup (Michael Joseph)

A debut thriller from the creator of The Killing opens with a gruesome discovery in a Copenhagen suburb.

Non-fiction

Quicksand Tales: The Misadventures of Keggie Carew (Canongate)

Carew, the author of Dadland, which won the 2016 Costa biography award, returns with an account of her most humiliating, awkward, funny moments.

Epping Forest – one of the subjects of Luke Turner’s Out of the Woods. Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian

Out of the Woods by Luke Turner (W&N)

A powerful memoir, centred on Epping Forest, about sexual abuse, a religious upbringing and life as a bisexual man.

Jeremy Corbyn biography by Tom Bower (William Collins)

The biographer of more than 20 public figures, including Prince Charles, Tony Blair and Richard Branson turns his eye to the current Labour party leader. The title has yet to be announced.

The Library Book by Susan Orlean (Atlantic)

The New Yorker staff writer uses a 1986 fire at the Los Angeles Central Library as a starting point for a study of the history and meaning of all libraries.

Happy Ever After: Escaping the Myth of the Perfect Life by Paul Dolan (Allen Lane)

The behavioural scientist and author of Happiness by Design argues that such imperatives as “be ambitious; find everlasting love; look after your health” can trap as easily as inspire.

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff (Profile)

A long awaited and game-changing book that is devastating about the extent to which Big Tech sets out to manipulate us for profit.

Our Universe: An Astronomer’s Guide by Jo Dunkley (Pelican)

A professor of astrophysical sciences at Princeton clearly and entertainingly discusses the universe, and our place in it, from the basics to the latest research.

February

8 Bicentenary of the birth of John Ruskin in 1819.

Release of James Baldwin adaptation If Beale Street Could Talk, by Moonlight writer/director Barry Jenkins.

20 20th anniversary of death of Blasted playwright Sarah Kane, aged 28.

Fiction

Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James (Hamish Hamilton)

The Man Booker winning author of A Brief History of Seven Killings begins a fantasy trilogy set in a mythical Africa.

Marlon James. Photograph: Katherine Anne Rose/The Observer

The Wych Elm by Tana French (Viking)

The Irish crime writer’s first standalone novel, about a young man whose life collapses, is a brilliant examination of male privilege and family secrets.

Where Reasons End by Yiyun Li (Hamish Hamilton)

Grief and motherhood are explored in this slim novelfrom the author of The Vagrants, written as an imagined dialogue with a teenage son who has killed himself.

Adèle by Leïla Slimani, translated by Sam Taylor (Faber)

The follow-up to last year’s bestselling nanny thriller Lullaby is a scorching portrait of a Parisian woman in the grip of sex addiction.

The Spirit of Science Fiction by Roberto Bolaño, translated by Natasha Wimmer (Picador)

A newly discovered novel from the late author of 2666, about two young poets adrift in Mexico City.

Mouthful of Birds by Samanta Schweblin, translated by Megan McDowell (Oneworld)

Short stories from the Argentinian author of 2017’s extraordinary horror fable Fever Dream, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker international prize.

Late in the Day by Tessa Hadley (Cape)

A sudden bereavement reconfigures the lives and loves of two long-married couples.

The Freedom Artist by Ben Okri (Head of Zeus)

The new novel from the Booker winner is set in a world of oppression and imprisonment – one rather like our own.

The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon (Bloomsbury)

This epic fantasy about a world on the brink of war with dragons has been described as “a feminist successor to The Lord of the Rings”.

To Kill the Truth by Sam Bourne (Quercus)

In the followup to his Trump-baiting thriller To Kill the President, journalist Jonathan Freedland takes on the era of fake news, as a conspiracy to destroy evidence of historical crimes is unearthed.

Young adult

On the Come Up by Angie Thomas (Walker)

The follow-up to the acclaimed The Hate U Give (2017) features a young American girl who wants to be a rapper.

Poetry

Counting Backwards: Poems 1975-2017 by Helen Dunmore (Bloodaxe)

Work from 10 collections over four decades from the posthumous winner of last year’s Costa poetry prize.

Non-fiction

The Uninhabitable Earth: A Story of the Future by David Wallace-Wells (Allen Lane)

The deputy editor of New York magazine expands his viral 2017 article, arguing that the consequences of global warming are even worse than you think.

Eric Hobsbawm: A Life in History by Richard J Evans (Little, Brown)

A biography of the celebrated Marxist historian, which ranges from communist resistance to Hitler, to revolution in Cuba, to the Soho jazz scene and the rise of New Labour.

Walter Gropius: Visionary Founder of the Bauhaus by Fiona MacCarthy (Faber)

The acclaimed author of biographies of William Morris and Eric Gill considers Gropius and Bauhaus as the beginning of a new approach to art and design.

Toni Morrison. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian

Engines of Privilege: Britain’s Private School Problem by David Kynaston and Francis Green (Bloomsbury)

A social historian and professor of education point out the damage done and the inequalities entrenched by fee-paying schools.

Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World by Anand Giridharadas (Allen Lane)

A former McKinsey analyst exposes the corporate titans who pursue the inequality-promoting neoliberal agenda yet claim to be solving the world’s problems.

Time Song: Searching for Doggerland by Julia Blackburn (Cape)

Stories of the huge area that connected the entire east coast of England with mainland Europe, before being submerged by the sea.

A Mouth Full of Blood by Toni Morrison (Chatto)

The Beloved author and cultural icon brings together essays and speeches from more than four decades about race, gender and globalisation.

March

1 Release of Chaos Walking, based on Patrick Ness’s Guardian award winner The Knife of Letting Go. Tom Holland and Daisy Ridley star.

12 London Book Fair, until 14th.

Fiction

Spring by Ali Smith (Hamish Hamilton)

“The dawn breaks cold and still but, deep in the earth, things are growing … ” Following Autumn and Winter, Smith’s third playful juxtaposition of art, literature and contemporary life.

Ali Smith. Photograph: Antonio Olmos/The Observer

New Daughters of Africa edited by Margaret Busby (Myriad)

Twenty-five years after her original groundbreaking anthology, Busby draws on more than 200 female writers of African descent, working in every genre and all over the globe, from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie to Jesmyn Ward.

Lanny by Max Porter (Faber)

With shades of Ali Smith and Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood, and bursting with imagination, the second novel from the author of Grief Is the Thing with Feathers is a portrait of an English village, an unusual little boy and an ancient presence.

The Snakes by Sadie Jones (Chatto)

A suspenseful, beautifully written thriller about the corruption of money and abuse within a dysfunctional family.

The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell (Hogarth)

This fantastical debut from a Caine prize-winner tells the epic story of three Zambian families.

Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli (4th Estate)

The English-language debut from the Mexican-born author of The Story of My Teeth intertwines two journeys: a New York family’s road trip south, and thousands of migrant children travelling north towards the US border. Luiselli is a writer to watch.

Memories of the Future by Siri Hustvedt (Sceptre)

A writer looks back on her early notebooks, written when she was a young woman in 1970s New York, in a thought-provoking novel about time, memory and change.

Poetry

Discipline by Jane Yeh (Carcanet)

“Haunting and hilarious” explorations of identity and performance prompted by videos and paintings, animals and street life.

Non-fiction

Horizon by Barry Lopez (Knopf)

The long-awaited follow-up to the classic Arctic Dreams by the American environmental writer takes the reader almost pole to pole, across extraordinary landscapes and decades of lived experience.

Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez (Chatto)

The activist and journalist on the discriminatory consequences of men being treated as the default and women as atypical, in a book that casts a new light on homes, workplaces and public buildings.

The Good Immigrant USA, edited by Nikesh Shukla and Chimene Suleyman (Dialogue)

The follow-up to 2016’s UK anthology collects essays from first- and second-generation immigrants to the US, and explores a divided nation.

Maoism: A Global History by Julia Lovell (Bodley Head)

The Birkbeck professor argues that Maoism has a fascinating global, not just Chinese, history, and that it is a set of ideas that still exerts much influence today (in China, India and Nepal).

The Way We Eat Now by Bee Wilson (4th Estate)

The award-winning writer surveys food around the world, and argues that the way most people currently eat is not sustainable – either for human health or the planet.

Doing Justice: A Prosecutor’s Thoughts on Crime, Punishment and the Rule of Law by Preet Bharara (Bloomsbury)

The former US attorney for the southern district of New York gives the inside story on cases that inspired the TV shows Billions and The Americans.

April

5 Release of The Sisters Brothers, starring John C Reilly and Joaquin Phoenix, based on Patrick deWitt’s Booker-shortlisted novel. And of Pet Sematary, the second film version of Stephen King’s horror tale.

21 Bicentenary of the start of Keats’s “great year”, including most of his Odes.

22 Fifty years since Booker prize first awarded in 1969, to PH Newby.

23 300th anniversary of the publication of Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, often called the first novel in English.

Fiction

Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan (Cape)

McEwan’s latest asks what it means to be human by taking us to an alternative 1980s London, where Britain has lost the Falklands war and Alan Turing is developing artificial intelligence, and a young couple are caught up in a love triangle with a synthetic being.

Ian McEwan. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/Murdo Macleod

Queenie by Candice Carty‑Williams (Trapeze)

One of the buzziest debuts of the year: a witty comic novel about a young black journalist negotiating love, work and identity in contemporary Britain.

The Dollmaker by Nina Allan (Riverrun)

An unnerving love story about trauma, fairytales and some very lifelike dolls, from the award-winning SF author.

The Confessions of Frannie Langton by Sara Collins (Viking)

Page-turning gothic debut about a young slave girl’s journey from a Jamaican plantation to the Old Bailey: an exciting new take on a familiar genre.

You Will Be Safe Here by Damian Barr (Bloomsbury)

Exploring a secret colonial history, the debut novel from the author of Maggie & Me follows two timelines in South Africa, a century apart.

The Half God of Rainfall by Inua Ellams (4th Estate)

The being of the title is Demi, part Nigerian boy, part Greek god, in a fantastical epic of male pride and female revenge from the award-winning poet and playwright behind Barber Shop Chronicles.

Metropolis by Philip Kerr (Quercus)

Nazism is on the rise in the 14th and final outing for Berlin detective Bernie Gunther, published posthumously after Kerr’s death last year.

Sunfall by Jim Al-Khalili (Transworld)

The quantum physicist’s first novel is set in 2041 at the possible end of the world, as the Earth’s magnetic field fails and a group of scientists race to reactivate it.

The Parisian by Isabella Hammad (Cape)

Hotly tipped epic debut about a young Palestinian man travelling from the Middle East to France between the wars.

Poetry

The Book of Baruch by the Gnostic Justin by Geoffrey Hill (Oxford)

A final sequence of poems that takes in autobiography, anger at Brexit and the summing up of a lifetime’s engagement with poetry.

Non-fiction

Black, Listed: Black British Culture Explored by Jeffrey Boakye (Dialogue)

A writer and teacher examines more than 60 words, many hugely contentious, that are used to describe black men and women, with a particular focus on black masculinity.

Outrages: Sex, Censorship and the Criminalisation of Love by Naomi Wolf (Virago)

The Beauty Myth author has researched the Obscene Publications Act of 1857, which effectively invented modern obscenity and the impact of which is still felt today.

Constellations: Reflections from Life by Sinéad Gleeson (Picador)

A memoir and debut from the Irish writer and broadcaster that explores the female body and experiences of sickness, health and motherhood.

Catch and Kill by Ronan Farrow (Fleet)

A book that continues Farrow’s award-winning investigation into sexual misconduct and the machine deployed by powerful men to silence survivors of abuse.

May

6 Centenary of the death of L Frank Baum, author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

16 International Dylan Thomas prize winner announced

20 Rathbones Folio prize awarded.

21 Man Booker international prize awarded.

23 Hay festival opens, until 2 June.

31 Bicentenary of birth of Walt Whitman.

Hay festival, in Hay-on-Wye. Photograph: Joseph Albert Hainey

Fiction

The Porpoise by Mark Haddon (Chatto)

A newborn baby, the only survivor of a plane crash, is raised in isolation from the world, in Haddon’s eagerly awaited new novel, inspired by the story of Pericles.

The Book of Science and Antiquities by Thomas Keneally (Sceptre)

Millennia-spanning novel about the connections between two men: a contemporary Australian, and one of the first humans to walk the Earth.

The Heavens by Sandra Newman (Granta)

A time-travelling double love story moving between New York at the millennium and plague-stricken London in 1593.

The Farm by Joanne Ramos (Bloomsbury)

Golden Oaks is a baby farm – or “a luxury retreat transforming the fertility industry”. This topical, provocative debut anatomises class, race and the American dream.

A Stranger City by Linda Grant (Virago)

The discovery of a body in the Thames is the starting point for a novel about contemporary London and the meaning of home.

New novel by Thomas Harris (William Heinemann)

No title as yet, but the first in 13 years from the creator of Hannibal Lecter will be a standalone thriller.

Frankissstein by Jeanette Winterson (Cape)

Winterson’s take on Mary Shelley’s horror classic, partly written in Shelley’s voice, partly a modern-day nightmare, as she tackles issues of technology and the self.

Poetry

Sandettie Light Vessel Automatic by Simon Armitage (Faber)

Newly awarded the Queen’s Gold medal for poetry, Armitage brings together his commissioned and collaborative work in this collection.

Manchester Happened by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi (Oneworld)

Short stories set in Manchester and Kampala from the acclaimed author of Kintu.

This Storm by James Ellroy (Heinemann)

The second novel in Ellroy’s second LA Quartet is set in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor.

Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo (Hamish Hamilton)

From a Newcastle orphan in 1905 to a feminist squatter in 1980 and beyond, Evaristo tells vibrant stories of black British women.

Non-fiction

Underland by Robert Macfarlane (Hamish Hamilton)

The highly anticipated new book from the author of Landmarks and The Old Ways travels across space and through time as it goes underground, and questions human treatment of the Earth.

Faber & Faber: The Untold History of a Great Publishing House by Toby Faber

The story of the publisher of TS Eliot, William Golding, Sylvia Plath and Seamus Heaney on the occasion of its 90th anniversary.

Clear Bright Future: A Radical Defence of the Human Being by Paul Mason (Allen Lane)

The journalist and author of Postcapitalism resists ideas of people as merely consumers or sequences of DNA and offers a vision of a better world.

Kerry Hudson, author of the upcoming book Lowborn. Photograph: Richard Saker/The Observer

Upheaval: How Nations Cope with Crisis and Change by Jared Diamond (Allen Lane)

The last book in the geographer’s trilogy – following Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse – wonders how some nations recover from trauma better than others, and the lessons to be learned.

Superior: The Fatal Return of Race Science by Angela Saini (4th Estate)

The author of Inferior, a study of how science got women wrong, returns with a report on the resurgence of race science, even though it has been shown to be flawed.

Lowborn: Growing Up, Getting Away and Returning to Britain’s Poorest Towns by Kerry Hudson (Chatto)

The novelist looks back at her impoverished childhood, and travels around Britain asking what being poor means today.

June

5 Women’s prize for fiction winner announced.23 Bicentenary of publication of Washington Irving’s The Sketch Book, including “Rip Van Winkle”.

Fiction

Big Sky by Kate Atkinson (Doubleday)

After a nine-year hiatus, Jackson Brodie, Atkinson’s much loved curmudgeonly private investigator, is back for a new mystery.

Gun Island by Amitav Ghosh (John Murray)

A rare books dealer makes an extraordinary journey from Kolkata to Los Angeles and Venice, musing on the Bengali legends of his childhood.

Bookshops in Kolkata. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong (Cape)

Written as a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read, the poet’s fiction debut is an autobiographical novel about his family’s past in Vietnam.

Stalingrad by Vasily Grossman, translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler (Harvill)

The prequel to the classic saga of the Soviet war years Life and Fate, in English for first time.

Night Boat to Tangier by Kevin Barry (Canongate)

Another black comedy from the author of Beatlebone, about two former gangsters stuck in a southern Spanish port.

City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert (Bloomsbury)

Young women come of age in wartime New York, in the new novel from the author of Eat Pray Love.

This Green and Pleasant Land by Ayisha Malik (Zaffre)

When accountant Bilal Hasham’s dying mother begs him to build a mosque in his sleepy Dorset village, the stage is set for an inquiry into faith, identity and the meaning of home.

Children

The Good Thieves by Katherine Rundell (Bloomsbury)

In the follow-up to the Costa-winning The Explorer, an English girl in New York must hone some very unusual skills in order to take revenge on the man who swindled her family.

My Name Is Monster by Katie Hale (Canongate)

In this debut about motherhood and apocalypse, Monster washes up on the coast of Scotland believing herself the last creature left alive.

New Elif Shafak novel (Viking)

No title as yet for the latest from the Turkish-British writer and activist.

This Brutal House by Niven Govinden (Dialogue)

A queer protest novel set among the drag ball community of New York.

Poetry

Surge by Jay Bernard (Chatto)

The debut collection from the winner of the Ted Hughes award for new work mines the archive of black British history from the 1981 New Cross fire to Grenfell.

Non-fiction

Now We Have Your Attention: Inside the New Politics by Jack Shenker (Bodley Head)

The former Egypt correspondent for the Guardian reports from inside the UK’s new campaign groups and protest movements and profiles a young activist generation.

Dressed: The Secret Life of Clothes by Shahidha Bari (Cape)

The scholar and broadcaster examines clothes as objects of fashion and means of self-expression, in a book that ranges across art, film and literature.

Afropean: An Encounter With Black Europe by Johny Pitts (Allen Lane)

The presenter, writer, musician and photographer describes his meetings with Europeans of African descent, and his travels to Moscow and a Muslim neighbourhood in Stockholm, among other places.

The Heartland: Finding and Losing Schizophrenia by Nathan Filer (Faber)

The former mental health nurse’s non-fiction follow-up to his Costa book of the year-winning novel, The Shock of the Fall.

July

15 Centenary of the birth of Iris Murdoch.

31 Centenary of Primo Levi’s birth.

Fiction

Sweet Sorrow by David Nicholls (Hodder)

Fresh from adapting the Patrick Melrose books for TV, Nicholls has written a bittersweet account of friendship, family and first love, set during a 16-year-old boy’s life‑changing summer.

Howard Jacobson. Photograph: Simone Padovani/Awakening/Getty Images

Live a Little by Howard Jacobson (Cape)

A funny, provocative novel about falling in love at the very end of your life, from the Man Booker winner.

I Am Sovereign by Nicola Barker (Heinemann)

Boutique teddy bear makers and Llandudno estate agents: a typically out-there novella from the author of the Goldsmiths-winning H(a)ppy.

Non-fiction

We Need New Stories by Nesrine Malik (W&N)

The Guardian columnist intervenes in the culture wars with an exploration of gender and race politics, freedom of speech, political correctness and the myths that maintain the status quo.

Last Witnesses: Unchildlike Stories by Svetlana Alexievich, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (Penguin Classics)

The Belarusian journalist and oral historian presents one of her distinctive collages of interviews, on Soviet childhood during the second world war.

Three Women by Lisa Taddeo (Bloomsbury)

In a much anticipated book an American writer and journalist reports on the sex lives and desires of three “ordinary” US women.

August

1 Bicentenary of birth of Herman Melville, best known for Moby‑Dick.

3 75th anniversary of 1944 Education Act gaining royal assent.

9 Kenneth Branagh-directed film Artemis Fowl, based on Eoin Colfer’s 2001 YA fantasy novel.

10 Edinburgh international book festival, until 26th.

16 Bicentenary of the Peterloo massacre, which inspired a Shelley poem and led to the founding of the Manchester Guardian newspaper.

25 75th anniversary of the liberation of Paris.

Fiction

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead (Fleet)

The follow-up to the mighty The Underground Railroad features two young black boys – one holding on to his idealism, one bitterly cynical – who are sent to a horrific reform school, based on a real establishment, in Jim Crow‑era Florida.

Colson Whitehead. Photograph: Ibl/REX/Shutterstock

The Man Who Saw Everything by Deborah Levy (Hamish Hamilton)

Twice Man Booker-shortlisted, Levy returns with a narrative that slips between recent London and the German Democratic Republic in the late 1980s.

Serotonin by Michel Houellebecq (Heinemann)

Gallic fiction’s leading misanthropist publishes a riff on the “happiness neurotransmitter” in France this January: we’ll have to wait for the translation.

Platform Seven by Louise Doughty (Faber)

Suicide at Peterborough railway station: a high-concept thriller from the author of Apple Tree Yard.

This Poison Will Remain by Fred Vargas, translated by Sian Reynolds (Harvill Secker)

Three elderly men, linked by their childhood at an orphanage in Nîmes, are killed by spider venom in the latest thriller from the French crime writer.

Poetry

The Tradition by Jericho Brown (Picador)

Follow-up to The New Testament, this second collection presents work that deals with freedom and fatherhood, queerness, race and worship.

Non-fiction

How to Be an Anti-Racist by Ibram X Kendi (Bodley Head)

The winner of the National book award for his historical study Stamped from the Beginning has written a part-memoir, part-treatise that reframes what being racist means.

Sex Power Money by Sara Pascoe (Faber)

The award-winning comedian gets anthropological on serial dating, pornography and sex education.

This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality by Peter Pomerantsev (Faber)

The Soviet-born author of Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible tackles the rise of information warfare, from Fox News to the KGB.

Mudlarking: In Search of London’s Past Along the River Thames by Lara Maiklem (Bloomsbury)

A history of London and its people, told through objects found on the banks of the Thames, by a mudlarker of more than 20 years standing.

Legacy by Thomas Harding (Heinemann)

The author of Hanns and Rudolf and Blood on the Page charts the rise and fall of the restaurant and hotel chain Lyons and Co.

September

27 Release of Joe Wright’s film of AJ Finn’s bestselling thriller The Woman in the Window, starring Amy Adams.

Fiction

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood (Chatto)

The literary event of the year: a sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, narrated by three women and set 15 years after Offred drove off into a mysterious future at the close of the original novel.

Margaret Atwood. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian

Rusty Brown by Chris Ware (Cape)

The new book from the master of graphic novels was 17 years in the making and is, he says, “a fully interactive, full-colour articulation of the time-space interrelationships of six complete consciousnesses on a single midwestern American day”.

To Calais, in Ordinary Time by James Meek (Canongate)

Billed as “Chaucer meets Cormac McCarthy”, an examination of love, faith and gender against the arrival of the black death in Europe, from the author of The People’s Act of Love.



Girl by Edna O’Brien (Faber)

The doyenne of Irish literature imagines the lives of the girls abducted by Boko Haram in Nigeria.

Heaven, My Home by Attica Locke (Serpent’s Tail)

In the sequel to Bluebird, Bluebird, Texas Ranger Darren Matthews must investigate the disappearance of the young son of a neo-Nazi, as historical racial tensions re-erupt in Trump’s US.

A new novel by Jessie Burton (Picador)

No title confirmed, but the latest from the author of The Miniaturist will tackle love, sex, work, motherhood.

Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout (Viking)

The follow-up to the much-loved Olive Kitteridge, which focused on a retired schoolteacher in Maine and won the 2009 fiction Pulitzer.

Ta-Nehisi Coates’s first novel (Hamish Hamilton)

There is no title as yet, but a move into fiction by the US thinker and author of We Were Eight Years in Power is an exciting prospect.

Poetry

Frolic and Detour by Paul Muldoon (Faber)

Muldoon’s customary linguistic energy and tangential take on the “subtle threads of history and geography”.

Non-fiction

Autobiography by John Cooper Clarke (Picador)

The title is as yet unfixed, but this is the long-awaited memoir of the punk performance poet, who toured with Linton Kwesi Johnson, and appeared on the same bill as the Sex Pistols, Joy Division and many other bands.

Autobiography by David Cameron (William Collins)

The former PM built a new “shepherd’s hut” in his Oxfordshire garden in which to write his memoirs, and secured an £800,000 contract with his publishers, but still failed to deliver on schedule last year. Perhaps he is waiting for Brexit before adding the finishing touches. The title is as yet unknown.

Lucian Freud by William Feaver (Bloomsbury)

The first in a two-part biography of the major British postwar artist, written by his confidant, to whom he spoke on the phone for at least an hour a day for almost 40 years.

Coventry by Rachel Cusk (Faber)

A series of essays that reflect on themes central to Cusk’s fictional writing, including life choices, politics, womanhood and art.

The Sword and the Pen: War, Constitutions and Designing the Modern World by Linda Colley (Profile)

The historian discusses the relative newness of the idea of constitutions, and points out that most have been the product of armed conflict, from the barricades of revolutionary France to the Māori-settler conflicts.

Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind by Tom Holland (Little, Brown)

A “how we came to be what we are” book, which focuses on Europe but ranges from the Persian invasion of Greece in 480BC to today’s migration crisis.

How to Be a Dictator: The Cult of Personality in the Twentieth Century by Frank Dikötter (Bloomsbury)

The Dutch historian, best known for Mao’s Great Famine, which won the 2011 Samuel Johnson prize, looks at the rise and fall of dictatorships.

October

4 Cheltenham literature festival, until 15th.

11 Film adaptation of Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch, starring Ansel Elgort and scripted by British screenwriter Peter Straughan.

14 Man Booker prize ceremony.

22 100 years since birth of Doris Lessing, winner of Nobel prize in 2007.

Zadie Smith. Photograph: Craig Barritt/Getty Images

Fiction

Grand Union by Zadie Smith (Hamish Hamilton)

Her first short story collection brings together 10 new pieces and 10 written over the past two decades; a historical novel about highwaymen will probably follow next year.



Agent Running in the Field by John le Carré (Viking)

Set in London in 2018, the 25th novel from the master of spycraft tackles contemporary political rage and division.



Cilka’s Story by Heather Morris (Bonnier Zaffre)

This follow-up to the controversial Tattooist of Auschwitz, scheduled for the autumn, is another “true story in narrative form” about the concentration camps, this time focusing on a 16-year-old Slovakian girl who survived Auschwitz only to be charged as a conspirator and sent to a gulag.



Nudibranch by Irenosen Okojie (Dialogue)

The second collection of stories from the author of Speak Gigantular features women in extraordinary situations.

The Topeka School by Ben Lerner (Granta)

This prequel to Leaving the Atocha Station explores the schooldays of a boy “not unlike” the author himself.

Blue Moon by Lee Child (Bantam)

The 25th outing for thriller legend Jack Reacher.

Non-fiction

Vesper Flights by Helen Macdonald (Cape)

A collection of essays about the natural world, from the author of the prizewinning H Is for Hawk.

Twas the Nightshift Before Christmas by Adam Kay (Picador)

Following on from the enormously successful This Is Going to Hurt is this collection of 25 intriguing and shocking tales of what an NHS junior doctor can face at Christmas time.

Who Am I Again? by Lenny Henry (Faber)

The comedian’s memoir, which takes in being a child of the Jamaican diaspora, growing up in the Black Country, family secrets, the pressure to integrate and racism.

Lenny Henry. Photograph: Andy Mundy-Castle/BBC/Burning Bright Productions

The Windrush Betrayal by Amelia Gentleman (Guardian Faber)

The prize-winning Guardian reporter builds on her investigative journalism to tell the story of the scandal that has exposed disturbing truths about modern Britain.

The Alternative: And How We Build It by Owen Jones (Allen Lane)

Another Guardian star and the author of the powerfully argued Chavs and The Establishment tackles the global struggle for progressive change.

Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister: Three Women at the Heart of Twentieth‑Century China by Jung Chang (Cape)

A biography of three key figures who helped shape the course of modern Chinese history by the Wild Swans author.

Outgrowing God: A Beginner’s Guide to Atheism by Richard Dawkins (Transworld)

The scientist and controversial commentator on religious and cultural questions presents an accessible, “junior” version of The God Delusion (2006).

The Anarchy by William Dalrymple (Bloomsbury)

While schools continue to teach that the British conquered India, in reality it was at first a private company, the East India Company, argues the historian in his latest book on the subcontinent.

The Mark of Cain by Margaret Macmillan (Profile)

The Canadian’s well-received Reith Lectures that set out to challenge received wisdom on war and society appear in book form.

November

Centenary of JM Keynes’s The Economic Consequences of the Peace.

10 Quatercentenary of René Descartes’ famous night of three dreams in 1619, revealing the shape of his new philosophy.22 Bicentenary of the birth of George Eliot. 150 years since birth of André Gide.

Fiction

The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern (Doubleday)

A fantastical love story set in an underground world, from the author of the 2012 smash hit The Night Circus.

Oligarchy by Scarlett Thomas (Canongate)

Her first adult novel in four years: a tale of power and privilege set in a girls’ boarding school.

Grandmothers by Salley Vickers (Viking)

A bittersweet novel about four women whose lives – along with those of their grandchildren – become entangled.

The Bass Rock by Evie Wyld (Cape).

It has been five years since All the Birds, Singing; Wyld’s new novel explores connections between three women’s lives, in the 18th century, the aftermath of the second world war, and recent times.

The Eighth Life by Nino Haratischwili, translated by Charlotte Collins and Ruth Martin (Scribe)

An “international phenomenon” comes to the UK: the 1,000-page epic of six generations of a Georgian family living through the turbulent Soviet 20th century.

Carmen Maria Machado, whose memoir is due in November. Photograph: Murdo Macleod/The Guardian

Poetry

Selected Poems by Denise Riley (Picador)

Previously uncollected work from this most arresting and moving poet.

Non-fiction

A House in the Mountains by Caroline Moorehead (Chatto)

The concluding part of the author’s acclaimed quartet about Europe features Italy from 1943 to 1945 – Mussolini falls, the Germans occupy, and the country is in chaos. Women in the resistance take centre stage.

Brexit: Volume 3 by Tim Shipman (William Collins)

The journalist’s previous books charting the past few years of high drama in British politics, Fall Out and All Out War, have been highly praised bestsellers. Presumably this volume is yet to be written.

In the Dream House: A Memoir by Carmen Maria Machado (Profile)

A memoir that reflects on domestic abuse from the American author of the short story collection Her Body and Other Parties.

She Said by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey (Bloomsbury)

An account of the beginning of the #MeToo movement from the New York Times reporters who investigated Harvey Weinstein.

The Outlaw Ocean by Ian Urbina (Bodley Head)

A Pulitzer prize-winning journalist emerges from deep research into the lawless world of international waters, with stories of crimes and violence that often go unpunished.

December

One hundred and fifty years since the publication of War and Peace.

10 Quatercentenary of René Descartes’ famous night of three dreams in 1619, revealing the shape of his new philosophy.

20 Film of Cats, directed by Tom Hooper and reworking the TS Eliot-based musical.

26 Release of The Call of the Wild, based on Jack London’s tale of a dog.

Poetry

A Christmas Poem by Carol Ann Duffy (Picador)

The by then former poet laureate’s annual and lavishly illustrated festive verse.