Page turners

BY MARK BROATCH

January

ELIZABETH GILBERT, she of zillion-seller "spiritual memoir" Eat, Pray, Love, kicks off the year with a personal take on the subject of marriage, Committed (Bloomsbury/A&U).

February

MARTIN AMIS releases his latest, The Pregnant Widow (Random House), set in a long, hot summer in Italy in 1970.

For those who can't afford the sumptuous – and expensive – new lovingly annotated collection of the 905 letters of Vincent Van Gogh, there's respected and reportedly amusing British critic Tim Hilton's Van Gogh: His Life and Work (HarperCollins), a much-overdue serious bio of the bonkers Dutch genius.

Dating, sex and the male mind – what could be simpler? Samantha Brett, who blogs on the Sydney Morning Herald website on all things relationship, offers The Chase (Arena), a kind of "user's guide to the modern man". Good luck with that.

March

BILL MANHIRE releases his latest collection of poetry, The Victims of Lightning (VUP), with a launch at Writers and Readers Week in Wellington.

The first of the New Zealand Popular Penguins will be launched in March 2010, featuring the likes of Ronald Hugh Morrieson, Maurice Gee, John Mulgan and Shonagh Koea at thoroughly decent prices.

Aussie brainbox Clive Hamilton reckons that, global warming-wise at least, we've already cooked our goose (and the human race) in Requiem for a Species (Allen & Unwin). We prevaricated, procrastinated and obfuscated, and it's now too late. The book looks at why we ignored the warnings, what the consequences will be, and what we can do now.

Jenny Pattrick has achieved that rare description: successful New Zealand historical novelist. With Inheritance (Random House) she follows on from her Denniston and Wanganui novels. Expect the revelation of family secrets, Samoa in the 1960s "and the dark violence that arises from the conflict between truthfulness and love".

Those who found The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society charming are likely to favour Major Pettigrew's Last Stand (Random House). First-time author Helen Simonson's retired widowed major tries to ignore the village women, his horrible son and the shrinking countryside. But the 21st century arrives in an unexpected way.

In possibly a not dissimilar vein is Mr Rosenblum's List (Hachette) by Natasha Solomons. Subtitled "Friendly Guidance for the Aspiring Englishman", the tale of Jack Rosenblum trying to figure out what it means to be an Englander was inspired by the author's grandparents, who were German Jewish refugees.

Susan Abulhawa's Mornings In Jenin (A&U) opens in 1941 in what is now modern Palestine and examines the region's troubles through three generations of one family.

There are no second acts in American life, F Scott Fitzgerald apparently said, quite erroneously. In New Zealand they are almost compulsory. In a memoir touted as "inspirational and candid" and "no-holds-barred", former Telecom CEO Theresa Gattung reveals a tale of personal ambition and professional challenge. Now that she's out of the other end of seven years of telco madness and running a couple of new businesses, she tells her story in Second Act (Random House).

There are very few Dan Browns around and, despite many imitators, only one Twilight. But the publisher of that supernaturally successful series has high hopes for a reissue of Blue Bloods by Melissa de la Cruz and its sequels (Hachette), concerning cool young fangers in New York City.

If you are a father or grandad who thinks your female offspring are aliens in pink, Fathers Raising Daughters by Nigel Latta (HarperCollins) is the book for you. The clinical psychologist and general go-to guy for all things reasonable about parenting explains what the hell they are talking about and how to stop them marrying an idiot.

Colin McCahon is arguably our greatest painter, and surely the best known abroad. Gordon Brown, a McCahon scholar, provides a new view into the artist and his life in March Towards a Promised Land (AUP).

This month also sees a new history of one of the ways this most urbanised of nations keeps alive our rural mythology: shearing. With the perhaps inevitable title of Shear Hard Work (AUP), by historian and qualified wool classer Hazel Riseborough, it charts the rise of shearing from lowly job to source of world record-holding pride.

April

TV AND print crime investigator Bryan Bruce is going after the ultimate in whodunnits in Jesus: The Cold Case (Random House). Bruce reckons the Gospels' account of the arrest, trial and execution of Jesus is so flawed that the traditional Easter story in which the Jews set Jesus up to be executed by the Romans does not make any sense. Bound to sell truckloads to believers, disbelievers and not-surers alike.

An investigator of another stripe, Kelvin Cruickshank, from TV show Sensing Murder, has a new book due (HarperCollins) and an eight-day tour planned.

Right on the social-concern money again, Jodi Picoult has written House Rules. It concerns Jacob Hunt, a teenager with Asperger's Syndrome and a penchant for crime scenes. Too much of one – some of the hallmark behaviours of Asperger's such as not looking someone in the eye, twitches, inappropriate responses – look so suspicious to the cops that Jacob finds himself accused of murder.

Nicky Pellegrino, author of The Italian Wedding and other novels, returns with Recipe for Life (Hachette), a story of food, fear and friendship on an Italian coast.

Michael Chabon, the Pulitzer-award winning writer of The Yiddish Policeman's Union, offers Maps & Legends (HarperCollins), a collection of essays on books and why they matter.

"There is no place in normal New Zealand society for the man who is different," wrote Bill Pearson, who had good reason to think so. A sensitive thinker not given to rugby, a gay man born in a small town in 1922, Pearson has his position in New Zealand intellectual and social life re-examined in No Fretful Sleeper (AUP), a biography by University of Canterbury academic Paul Millar.

May

CHARITY NORMAN, a Brit who's relocated here, has produced Freeing Grace (A&U), another title in the growing NZ "chick-lit" genre. David, a London vicar, and Leila, his Nigerian-born wife, can't have children but find Grace up for adoption. But Grace's family change their minds, and charming Kiwi Jake Kelly is enlisted to help.

William Taylor, one of the country's leading children's and teenage writers, has written a memoir, Telling Tales (HarperCollins), that is being described as "warm, witty and erudite".

Chris Laidlaw, Rhodes scholar, former diplomat and radio host, was an All Black in the 1960s. In Somebody Stole My Game (Hachette), he has much to say on our national sport and obsession.

CKStead, poet, author and critic, has produced the first part of a memoir covering the years until he was 24 in South West of Eden (AUP).

June

A MONTH later, Stead's daughter, Charlotte Grimshaw, releases her latest novel, The Night Book (Random House). Roza Hallwright leads a quiet, comfortable life, working in publishing. But the latest polls say her politician husband David looks like being the next PM, meaning trouble's ahead.

Mid-year will see the release of Katherine Mansfield: The Story-teller (Penguin), said to be the first definitive biography of the writer for two decades. It's to be written by Kathleen Jones, an English writer already with biographies of Margaret Forster, Catherine Cookson and Christina Rossetti under her belt.

From Waikato-based historical novelist Deborah Challinor arrives Band of Gold (HarperCollins), the latest in the "Kitty" series, the historical tale in Victorian NZ and Australia.

In roaming his old Norfolk rectory, Bill Bryson, he of the endless curiosity and fastidious research habits, came up with At Home (Random House), an informal history of small-scale private endeavours such as eating, sleeping and having sex. The human flipside of A Short History of Nearly Everything.

Acid-tongued contrarian Christopher Hitchens is, at the age of 61, issuing a political memoir with Hitch 22 (A&U). The once-left supporter of the Iraq invasion, round-vowelled Brit turned new American citizen, traces his journey from a Portsmouth military family to Oxford, his famous friendships and terrific obsessions.

Also coming in 2010

Expect new works from Rohinton Mistry, DBC Pierre, Michael Connelly and Paul Auster.

Other authors due to deliver include Lee Childs, Sara Donati, Joanne Harris, Kate Atkinson, Clive Custler, Frederick Forsyth, Rose Tremain, James Patterson with the ninth in the Women's Murder Club series, Xue Xinran and Patricia Cornwell.

Jonathan Franzen will release Freedom, his fourth novel, about which not much is known but he has said Germany plays an important role.

Jamie Oliver has two new titles in the works (HarperCollins).

Dawn French, whose Dear Fatty topped the charts here for weeks, has another book due (HarperCollins).

Bret Easton Ellis has finished his new novel, titled Imperial Bedrooms, which follows the characters of Less Than Zero into middle age.

There's an untitled collection of essays coming from agent provocatrice Sarah Silverman.

Lionel Shriver, of We Need to Talk About Kevin, is due with So Much For That, about a marriage both tested and strengthened by a serious illness.

Jack Kerouac's The Sea Is My Brother, a book the famed author wrote during his days in the merchant navy, will be published in the first half of the year.

New Yorker staff writer Atul Gawande (who wrote Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance) returns with a look at the humblest of techniques in The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right.

Philip Pullman, who wrote the anti-organised religion trilogy His Dark Materials, has written The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, a "fiercely subversive" retelling of Jesus's life. It's due out overseas at Easter, of course.

Look out for a new biography of Coco Chanel by British journalist Justine Picardie, who had "unprecedented" access to the Chanel archives.

Ethnobotanist James Wong, the author of Grow Your Own Drugs, a book that sat on the bestsellers list here for a few weeks despite having limited distribution, returns with A Year with James Wong.

Rock wife Sharon Osbourne makes her fiction debut with Revenge, about two sisters who dream of fame.

Michael Caine will be out and about with a new volume of autobiography.

Origins: Human Evolution Explained combines the expertise of Dr Douglas Palmer with "the most accurate facial reconstructions available", while zoologist Desmond Morris has written Child, exploring the world of children aged two to five.

- © Fairfax NZ News