What's coming up next? Some books to look out for in 2019.

Before I started book blogging I always wondered where people find out about all those upcoming books. I thought I'd found a pretty slick way myself - I would go through my old Amazon reviews and check for new books by the same authors. It wasn't a bad way, but was rather time consuming and did tend to be self-reinforcing.

How do I do it now? I do get emails from publicists telling me what's coming up, but I also look at catalogues - which are mostly online - and this weekend I've been catalogue diving as many publisher catalogues for Spring/ first half of 2019 are out now.

I have though also added in new books by authors I particularly follow, as well as tips from other bloggers, or authors' or publishers' Twitter. And browsing online booksellers is still fruitful! Finally, I've already got a number of books lined up on NetGalley and I've added those in too, where I didn't know about them otherwise.

Some caveats: They're not all there yet, and this mainly covers the bigger publishers so it's far from a definitive list. In particular I haven't yet explored the riches of publishers like Orenda Books, Salt Publishing and Fox Spirit Books from whom I expect many gems. Also, I'm working mainly from UK catalogues, but the power of Twitter means that stuff also gets into the lists that might be published elsewhere first - so some of these might not land in the UK when I think.

Of course, any mistakes here are mine only: if I've got anything wrong I'm happy to correct.

I have linked at the bottom to the catalogues I consulted.

January (7)

Josiah Bancroft: The Hod King (Orbit). Fantasy. Third part of his Books of Babel - deeply, Baroquely weird fantasy about a self-contained world in a vast tower.

Steph Broadribb: Deep Dirty Truth (Orenda). Crime/ thriller. I'm on the blogtour for this, looking forward to more adventures with indefatigable bounty hunter Lori Anderson.

Gareth Harrahan: The Gutter Prayer (Orbit). Fantasy which I've seen compared with China Mieville in its inventively detailed city setting.

Will Dean: Red Snow (Tuva Moodyson 2) (Oneworld - Point Blank). Crime. Also on the blogtour for this. More of Tuva Moodyson, who Dean introduced this year in Dark Pines. The blurb: Two bodies. One suicide. One cold-blooded murder. Are they connected? And who’s really pulling the strings in the small Swedish town of Gavrik?

Jane O'Reilly: Deep Blue (Piatkus). SF. Space opera - sequel to last year's Blue Shift featuring space adventurer Jinnifer Blue.

Alastair Reynolds: Shadow Captain (Gollancz). SF. More space piracy, following up on Revenger last year. (copy from NetGalley).

Diane Setterfield: Once Upon a River (Transworld). Crime? Horror? One of my NetGalleys. I'm hoping for something really creepy to match The Thirteenth tale and Bellman and Black.

February (8)

Pierce Brown: Dark Age (Hodder). SF. Next instalment in the Red Rising series, so a TOTAL must-read.

SA Chakrabortty: The Kingdom of Copper. Second in her Daevabad sequence and not to be missed.

Jane Harper: The Lost Man (Little, Brown). Crime. A third book from Harper in her Australia-set crime series and one I'm really, really pleased to have a blogtour copy of.

Ann Leckie: The Raven Tower (Orbit). SF. I don't know much about this, but a new Lecie is bound to be good.

Rebecca Levene: The Sun's Domain. Fantasy. Third part of her Hollow Gods fantasy sequence - I've been waiting for this for a long time, very excited to read it finally!

Jenn Lyons: The Ruin of Kings. Fantasy.

SJ Morden: No Way (Gollancz). SF. Sequel to One Way, a story about survival on Mars which (to me) was all the things The Martian wasn't but should have been. So I'm eager to read more.

Ed. Jared Shurin & Mahvesh Murad: The Outcast Hours. (Rebellion). SF.

March (6)

Nina Allan: The Dollmaker (Riverrun, 4/4). Fantasy. One of my must-reads for 2019. I was just blown away by The Race and The Rift so am really, really keen to see what Allan does next. (And if Riverrun is reading this, PLEASE approve me for it on NetGalley!)

Zen Cho: The True Queen (Macmillan). Fantasy. Another Sorcerer to the Crown book! Yessss!

Craig Russell: The Devil Aspect (Constable). Crime? Horror? Described as "a standalone psychological tale of horror and suspense..."

Ali Smith: Spring (Penguin). Modern fiction. My son is keenly waiting for the third part in Smith's quartet, and that's got me interested...

Ed. Nisi Shawl New Suns. (Rebellion). SF. "Original Speculative Fiction by People of Colour showcases emerging and seasoned writers of many races telling stories filled with shocking delights, powerful visions of the familiar made strange."

Tade Thompson: Rosewater Insurrection (Orbit). SF. Another followup - I loved Rosewater and am desperate to see where Thompson takes his future of an Africa with aliens and mind-readers.

April (8)

Lauren Beukes: Motherland (Mulholland). SF. Really loved her previous books and it's exciting to see this coming but I'm not sure it has a UK release date yet? "This is America, but not like you know it. Years after the decimation of the male population by a super-virus, the country has refashioned itself with new laws, new customs, and new methods of shame and punishment. Now, hiding a living and healthy male is one of the gravest offenses, rivaled only by the murder of a man. Cole is a mother on the run, guilty of both crimes, and desperate to find a safe life for her adolescent boy Miles."

Melissa Caruso: The Unbound Empire (Orbit). Fantasy. Final part of her Swords and Fire trilogy which has been truly epic. Kenny awaiting this!

John Connolly: A Book of Bones (Hodder). Crime/ horror. Of course I want to read the latest Charlie Parker.

Dominic Dulley: Morhelion (The Long Game Book II) (Jo Fletcher). SF. Sequel to The Shattered Moon. "An alien exile. A lethal secret. The hunt is on... When a dying agent of the emperor’s shadowy Seventh Secretariat tells Orry Kent there’s a traitor at the highest levels of the Ascendancy, she has little choice but to take on the mission. Which is why she finds herself stranded among the floating bubble habitats of Morhelion, where pollution- spewing smokers ply their trade in the beautiful but toxic atmosphere."



CA Fletcher: A Boy and his Dog at the End of the World (Orbit). SF. A boy living amidst the end of things sets out to find his missing dog, taken from him by a thief. "A fiercely compelling tale of survival, courage and hope." I suspect this one will have me in tears...

Ragnar Jónasson: The Island (Michael Joseph). Crime. "Told backwards The Island is the second thrilling book in Ragnar Jónasson's Hidden Iceland trilogy. This time investigator Hermannsdóttir is at the peak of her career and is sent to discover what happened when a group of friends visited the island of Elliðaey, but one failed to return."

Emma Newman: Atlas Alone (Gollancz). SF. This series by Newman has to be one of the stand out SF sequences of recent years. "Six months after she left Earth, Dee is struggling to manage her rage toward the people who ordered the nuclear strike that destroyed the world. She's trying to find those responsible, and to understand why the ship is keeping everyone divided into small groups, but she's not getting very far alone..."

Ashely Poston: The Princess and the Fangirl (Quirk). Following on from Geekerella, Poston locates another fairytale in the world of fandom, geekery and modern romance. Excellent. I can't wait! (And I don't know how to classify this - YA? Romance? Modern fairytale? Who knows...)

Scarlett Thomas: Galloglass (Canongate, 4/4). Third in the Worldquake sequence of children's fantasy, in which Thomas is having some serious fun (if that's a thing?) with genre, books and realities. Not to be missed.

May (6)

Ben Aaronovitch: The October Man (Gollancz). Crime/ Fantasy Another in his Rivers of London series, a novella taking the story to... Germany! Unmissable.

James Brogden: The Plague Stones (Titan). I've really enjoyed Brogden's recent horror stories set in the English midlands and this looks compelling.

Damian Dibben: Tomorrow (Michael Joseph). "A wise old dog travels through the centuries in search of the master who granted him immortality." How can ANYONE resist that?

Fonda Lee: Jade War (Orbit). Fantasy. Lee's Jade City was such an imaginative, genre-bending and mixed up weirdness of a fantasy novel that I have to have more. Soon.

Elizabeth Macneal: The Doll Factory (Pan MacMillan -  Picador) Historical. "An intoxicating story of art, obsession and possession".

Syd Moore: Strange Tombs (Essex Witch Museum Mysteries, 4) (Oneworld - Point Blank) "In Essex a writing course is thrown into chaos when the course administrator is found dead early on All Saints Day. Why would anyone, dead or alive, want to kill mild-mannered Graham?"

I just love Moore's stories combining the supernatural (and the eponymous Museum itself - which holds its own secrets) with crime and, of course, feature the indomitable Rosie Strange.

June (7)

RJ Barker: The Bone Ships (Orbit). Fantasy. A new series, after the triumph of the Wounded Kingdom trilogy - good to see that RJ has been keeping busy!

Chris Brookmyre: Fallen Angel (Little, Brown). Crime. A new standalone from an author I never miss.

Andrew Caldecott: Lost Acre (Rotherweird Book III) (Jo Fletcher). Fantasy, set in the strangest city in England. Except that it isn't. Delightful, weird and compellingly readable books. "Wynter is here... and if he isn’t stopped, this could be the end of Rotherweird – for good."

Aliette de Bodard: The House of the Sundering Flames (Gollancz). Third part of her Dominion of the Fallen saga. I'm dreadfully guilty that I haven't read the first two books, I have to catch up so I can get onto this next year!

Mick Herron: a so-far untitled Slough House novel (John Murray). Crime/ espionage/ thriller.

SK Vaughn: Across the Void (Sphere). SF. A story of survival and abandonment in space...

Rest of the year

I'm also aware that Christina Henry has books coming out in 2019 and 2020 from Titan (Red, and The Ghost Tree) so I'll be looking out for those and there's Sing Your Sadness Deep by Laura Munro which I saw highly recommended on Twitter (Undertow, September). Erin Morgenstern (author of The Night Circus) has The Starless Sea out in November (Harvill Secker) and I hope to see the sequel to The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson at some point.


Catalogues

Here are some links to the catalogues where I gathered these titles. You need to be aware that the different imprints you see on your books may belong to the same publisher - but they aren't always placed in a catalogue with all the others!

Quercus (covers Quercus itself, Jo Fletcher Books, Riverrun and Maclehose)

Little, Brown (covers Little, Brown and also Abacus, Virago, Fleet, Corsair, Dialogue, Sphere, Piatkus, Constable, Robinson, Orbit and Atom).

Oneworld (Oneworld, Point Blank, Rock the Boat)

Orion (Weidenfeld & Nicholson, Orion, Gollancz, Trapeze) (interactive catalogue, not document)

Hodder & Stoughton (page gives links to separate interactive catalogues for John Murray and, Hodder & Stoughton)

Penguin (page gives links to separate catalogues for many different Penguin imprints, including but not limited to Cornerstone, Michael Joseph, Penguin, Random House, Transworld and Vintage).