
2022 is shaping up to be THE year of amazing book releases, with new novels incoming from Stephen King, Zadie Smith, Sarah J. Maas, Jennifer Egan, Alexis Wright and more! We’ve done our very best to round up the cream of the crop right here, so read on and prepare to mark your calendars.
(Editor’s note: Some books are not yet available for pre-order, but we’ll update this post as soon as they are so keep it bookmarked!)
February
Again, Rachel by Marian Keyes (A sequel to Rachel’s Holiday) – Back in the long ago nineties, Rachel Walsh was a mess. But a spell in rehab transformed everything. These days, Rachel has love, family, a great job as an addiction counsellor, she even gardens. Her only bad habit is a fondness for expensive trainers. But with the sudden reappearance of a man she’d once loved, her life wobbles.
House of Sky and Breath (Crescent City: Book 2) by Sarah J. Maas – Bryce Quinlan and Hunt Athalar have made a pact. As they process the events of the Spring they will keep things – platonic – until the Solstice. But can they resist when the crackling tension between them is enough to set the whole of Crescent City aflame? And they are not out of danger yet.
Son of Sin by Omar Sakr – An estranged father. An abused and abusive mother. An army of relatives. A tapestry of violence, woven across generations and geographies, from Turkey to Lebanon to Western Sydney. This is the legacy left to Jamal Smith, a young queer Muslim trying to escape a past in which memory and rumour trace ugly shapes in the dark.
The Torrent by Dinuka McKenzie – In Northern New South Wales, heavily pregnant and a week away from maternity leave, Detective Sergeant Kate Miles is exhausted and counting down the days. But a violent hold-up at a local fast-food restaurant with unsettling connections to her own past, means that her final days will be anything but straightforward.
Love and Other Puzzles by Kimberley Allsopp – Rory’s life is perfectly predictable, ordered and on track – just the way she likes it. So why does everything feel so wrong? Deep down, she knows her life and career – not to mention her relationship – are going nowhere, and so Rory, in a moment of desperation, takes an uncharacteristic step: letting the clues of The New York Times crossword puzzle dictate all her decisions for a week. Just for a week, she reasons. Just to shake things up a bit. What’s the worst that could happen?
Reminders of Him by Colleen Hoover – After serving five years in prison for a tragic mistake, Kenna Rowan returns to the town where it all went wrong, hoping to reunite with her four-year-old daughter. But the bridges Kenna burned are proving impossible to rebuild.
The Maid by Nita Prose – Molly the maid is all alone in the world. A nobody. She’s used to being invisible in her job at the Regency Grand Hotel, plumping pillows and wiping away the grime, dust and secrets of the guests passing through. She’s just a maid – why should anyone take notice? But Molly is thrown into the spotlight when she discovers an infamous guest, Mr Black, very dead in his bed.
March
Moon Witch, Spider King (The Dark Star Trilogy: Book 2) by Marlon James – In this stunning follow-up to Black Leopard, Red Wolf, Marlon James draws on a rich tradition of African mythology, fantasy and history to imagine an ancient world, a lost child, an extraordinary hunter, and a mystery with many answers …
Booth by Karen Joy Fowler – an epic novel about the infamous, ill-fated Booth family. Charmers, liars, drinkers and dreamers, they will change history forever.
Loveland by Robert Lukins – Amid the ruins of a fire-ravaged amusement park and destroyed waterfront dwellings, one boarded-up building still stands. May has come from Australia to Loveland, Nebraska, to claim the house on the poisoned lake as part of her grandmother’s will. Escaping the control of her husband, will she find refuge or danger?
The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan – Frida Liu is a struggling mother. She remembers taking Harriet from her cot and changing her nappy. She remembers giving her a morning bottle. They’d been up since four am. Frida just had to finish the article in front of her. But she’d left a file on her desk at work. What would happen if she retrieved it and came back in an hour?
The Atlas Six (The Atlas: Book 1) by Olivie Blake – The Alexandrian Society is a secret society of magical academicians, the best in the world. Each decade, the world’s six most uniquely talented magicians are selected for initiation. Five, they are told, will be initiated. One will be eliminated. If they can prove themselves to be the best, they will survive. Most of them.
Gallant by V.E. Schwab – Olivia Prior has grown up in Merilance School for girls, and all she has of her past is her mother’s journal — which seems to unravel into madness. Then, a letter invites Olivia to come home — to Gallant. Yet when Olivia arrives, no one is expecting her. But Olivia is not about to leave the first place that feels like home. Olivia knows that Gallant is hiding secrets, and she is determined to uncover them.
The Mother by Jane Caro – Miriam Duffy is a respectable North Shore widow, real estate agent and devoted mother and grandmother. She was thrilled when her younger daughter, Ally, married her true love, but as time goes by Miriam watches in disbelief and growing fear as Ally’s perfect husband starts controlling her and their children, and cutting them off from the rest of the world. As the situation escalates and the law proves incapable of protecting them, Miriam is faced with an unthinkable decision.
Australiana by Yumna Kassab – This could be any small town. It aches under the heat of summer. It flourishes in the cooler months. Everyone knows everyone. Their families, histories and stories are interwoven and well-known by one and all. Or at least, they think they are. But no-one sees anything quite the same way.
The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley – Welcome to No.12 rue des Amants. A beautiful old apartment block, far from the glittering lights of the Eiffel Tower and the bustling banks of the Seine. Where nothing goes unseen, and everyone has a story to unlock. There was a murder here last night. A mystery lies behind the door of apartment three. Who holds the key?
Goodnight, Vivienne, Goodnight (The The Eliot Quartet: Book 4) by Steven Carroll – London, June 1940. Vivienne Haigh-Wood, the wife of celebrated poet TS Eliot, is about to effect a daring escape from Northumberland House, the private insane asylum. There is an old law, Vivienne has been told, that if a person can break out of an asylum and stay free for thirty days, proving they can look after themselves, they can’t make you go back. But closing in on Vivienne is the young Detective Sergeant Stephen Minter, a man with a hidden past of his own, who has orders to track her down.
April
The Candy House by Jennifer Egan – It’s 2010. Staggeringly successful and brilliant tech entrepreneur Bix Bouton is desperate for a new idea. He’s forty, with four kids, and restless when he stumbles into a conversation with mostly Columbia professors, one of whom is experimenting with downloading or “externalizing” memory. Within a decade, Bix’s new technology, Own Your Unconscious — that allows you access to every memory you’ve ever had, and to share every memory in exchange for access to the memories of others — has seduced multitudes. But not everyone.
French Braid by Anne Tyler – The Garretts take their first and last family vacation in the summer of 1959. They hardly ever venture far from home, but in some ways they have never been further apart. Yet, as these lives advance across decades, the Garretts’ influence on one another ripples unmistakably through each generation.
Elizabeth Finch by Julian Barnes – Elizabeth Finch was a teacher, a thinker, an inspiration – always rigorous, always thoughtful. With careful empathy, she guided her students to develop meaningful ideas and to discover their centres of seriousness. As a former student unpacks her notebooks and remembers her uniquely inquisitive mind, her passion for reason resonates through the years. Her ideas unlock the philosophies of the past, and explore key events that show us how to make sense of our lives today.
Time is a Mother by Ocean Vuong – In this deeply intimate second poetry collection, Ocean Vuong searches for life among the aftershocks of his mother’s death, embodying the paradox of sitting within grief while being determined to survive beyond it. Shifting through memory, Vuong contends with personal loss, the meaning of family, and the cost of being the product of an American war in America.
The No-Show by Beth O’Leary – 8.52 a.m. Siobhan is looking forward to her breakfast date with Joseph. 2.43 p.m. Miranda’s hoping that a Valentine’s Day lunch with Carter will be the perfect way to celebrate her new job. 6.30 p.m. Joseph Carter agreed to be Jane’s fake boyfriend at an engagement party. Meet Joseph Carter. That is, if you can find him.
Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus – Chemist Elizabeth Zott is not your average woman. But it’s the early 1960s and her all-male team at Hastings Research Institute take a very unscientific view of equality. Except for one- Calvin Evans; the lonely, brilliant, Nobel-prize nominated grudge-holder who falls in love with – of all things – her mind. True chemistry results. But like science, life is unpredictable.
A Solitary Walk on the Moon by Hilde Hinton – Evelyn knows what is going on in her community because she pays attention. The community might not notice Evelyn, because it is easy to overlook the seemingly ordinary. But Evelyn is far from ordinary. She isn’t afraid to put things right, and is always ready to find lost property or lost people – even if that means breaking the rules.
The Lessons by John Purcell – When teens Daisy and Harry meet, it feels so right they promise to love each other forever, but in 1960s England everything is stacked against them: class, education, expectations. When Daisy is sent by her parents to live with her glamorous, bohemian Aunt Jane, a novelist working on her second book, she is confronted by adult truths.
Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart – Born under different stars, Protestant Mungo and Catholic James live in the hyper-masculine and violently sectarian world of Glasgow’s housing estates. They should be sworn enemies if they’re to be seen as men at all, and yet they become best friends as they find a sanctuary in the pigeon dovecote that James has built for his prize racing birds. As they find themselves falling in love, they dream of escaping the grey city.
Sea of Tranquility by Emily St John Mandel – Edwin St. Andrew is eighteen years old when he crosses the Atlantic by steamship. He enters the forest, spellbound by the beauty of the Canadian wilderness, and suddenly hears the notes of a violin echoing in an airship terminal – an experience that shocks him to his core. Two centuries later a famous writer named Olive Llewellyn is on a book tour. Within the text of Olive’s bestselling pandemic novel lies a strange passage: a man plays his violin for change in the echoing corridor of an airship terminal as the trees of a forest rise around him.
People Person by Candice Carty Williams – Dimple Pennington is thirty, and her life isn’t really going anywhere. An aspiring lifestyle influencer with a terrible and wayward boyfriend, Dimple’s life has shrunk to the size of a phone screen. And despite a small but loyal following, she’s never felt more alone in her life. That is, until a catastrophic event brings her half siblings Nikisha, Danny, Lizzie and Prynce crashing back into her life.
May
The Murder Rule by Dervla McTiernan – They think I’m a young, idealistic law student, that I’m passionate about reforming a corrupt and brutal system. They think I’m working hard to impress them. They think I’m here to save an innocent man on death row. They’re wrong. I’m going to bury him.
Book of Night by Holly Black – In Charlie Hall’s world, shadows can be altered, for entertainment and cosmetic preferences – but also to increase power and influence. You can alter someone’s feelings – and memories – but manipulating shadows has a cost, with the potential to take hours or days from your life. Your shadow holds all the parts of you that you want to keep hidden – a second self, standing just to your left, walking behind you into lit rooms. And sometimes, it has a life of its own.
Book Lovers by Emily Henry – Nora is a cut-throat literary agent at the top of her game. Her whole life is books. Charlie is an editor with a gift for creating bestsellers. And he’s Nora’s work nemesis. Nora’s sister has persuaded her to swap her desk in the city for a month’s holiday in Sunshine Falls, North Carolina. It’s a small town straight out of a romance novel, but instead of meeting sexy lumberjacks, handsome doctors or cute bartenders, Nora keeps bumping into … Charlie.
My Heart is a Little Wild Thing by Nigel Featherstone – Patrick has always considered himself a good son. Willing to live his life to please his parents, his sense of duty paramount to his own desires and dreams. But as his mother’s health continues to deteriorate and his siblings remain absent, he finds the ties that bind him to his mother begin to chafe.
Here Goes Nothing by Steve Toltz – Angus Mooney is in a dark place – the afterlife. His days are spent in aching embarrassment; god, religion, the supernatural – he was wrong about everything. He longs for his audacious, fiery wife, Gracie, but can only watch from the other side as she is seduced by his killer, who has stepped seamlessly into Mooney’s shoes. Meanwhile, life after death isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
June
Either/Or by Elif Batuman (a sequel to The Idiot) – Selin is the luckiest person in her family. On the plus side, her life feels like the plot of an exciting novel. On the other hand, why do so many novels have crazy, abandoned women in them? How does one live a life as interesting as a novel – a life worthy of becoming a novel – without becoming a crazy, abandoned woman oneself?
Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh – Little Marek, the abused and delusional son of the village shepherd, never knew his mother; his father told him she died in childbirth. One of life’s few consolations for Marek is his enduring bond with the blind village midwife, Ina, who suckled him when he was a baby, as she did for many of the village’s children. Ina’s gifts extend beyond childcare: she possesses a unique ability to communicate with the natural world.
Horse by Geraldine Brooks – Kentucky, 1850. An enslaved groom named Jarret and a bay foal forge a bond of understanding that will carry the horse to record-setting victories across the South, even as the nation reels towards war. New York City, 1954. Martha Jackson, a gallery owner celebrated for taking risks on edgy contemporary painters, becomes obsessed with a nineteenth-century equestrian oil painting of mysterious provenance. Washington, DC, 2019. Jess, a Smithsonian scientist from Australia, and Theo, a Nigerian-American art historian, find themselves unexpectedly connected through their shared interest in the horse.
Galatea by Madeline Miller – In Ancient Greece, a skilled marble sculptor has been blessed by a goddess who has given his masterpiece the most beautiful woman the town has ever seen the gift of life. Now his wife, he expects Galatea to please him, to be obedience and humility personified. But she has desires of her own, and yearns for independence. In a desperate bid by her obsessive husband to keep her under control, she is locked away under the constant supervision of doctors and nurses. But with a daughter to rescue, she is determined to break free, whatever the cost…
Ghost Lover by Lisa Taddeo – In these twelve riveting stories, two of which have been awarded the Pushcart Prize, Lisa Taddeo brings to life the fever of obsession, the blindness of love, and the mania of grief. Featuring Taddeo’s arresting prose that continues to thrill her legions of fans, Ghost Lover dares you to look away.
Master of Furies (The Firemane Saga: Volume 3) by Raymond E. Feist – War has swept across Marquensas. Ruthless raiders have massacred the inhabitants of Beran’s Hill. Meanwhile Hava is closing in on the whereabouts of those who unleashed the murderous hordes. Her husband, Hatushaly, the last remaining member of the ruling family of Ithrace, the legendary Firemanes, seeks to control the magical powers he has inherited. But will he be able to channel his magic in time?
The Island by Adrian McKinty – You should not have come to the island. You should not have been speeding. You should not have tried to hide the body. You should not have told your children that you could keep them safe. No one can run forever ...
July
The House of Fortune (a sequel to The Miniaturist) by Jessie Burton – Thea Brandt is turning eighteen, and is ready to welcome adulthood with open arms. At the theatre, Walter, the love of her life, awaits her, but at home in the house on the Herengracht, winter has set in – her father Otto and Aunt Nella argue endlessly, and the Brandt family are selling their furniture in order to eat. On Thea’s birthday, also the day that her mother Marin died, the secrets from the past begin to overwhelm the present.
Lying Beside You by Michael Robotham – When a man is murdered and his daughter disappears, forensic psychologist Cyrus Haven must decide if Maya Kirk is running, hiding, or a hostage. Cyrus understands how killers think better than anyone; after all, he’s a survivor. Evie is a troubled teenager with an incredible gift: she knows when someone is lying. She is working at a Nottingham bar when a second woman goes missing, a nurse with links to Maya Kirk. Both women have a secret they have tried to hide, but the past is never history. Evie witnesses the second abduction, glimpsing the driver, but only two people believe her. One is Cyrus. The other is the killer.
The Crimson Thread by Kate Forsyth – Set in Crete during World War II, Alenka, a young woman who fights with the resistance against the brutal Nazi occupation finds herself caught between her traitor of a brother and the man she loves, an undercover agent working for the Allies.
Enclave by Claire G. Coleman – George Orwell meets Margaret Atwood. A powerful novel of disruption, surveillance and control.
August
Love on the Brain by Ali Hazelwood – Like an avenging, purple-haired Jedi bringing balance to the mansplained universe, Bee Konigswasser lives by a simple code: What would Marie Curie do? If NASA offered her the lead on a neuroengineering project-a literal dream come true after years scraping by on the crumbs of academia-Marie would accept without hesitation. Duh. But the mother of modern physics never had to co-lead with Levi Ward.
The Wrong Woman by J. P. Pomare – Reid left the small town of Manson a decade ago, promising his former Chief of Police boss he’d never return. He made a new life in the city, became a PI and turned his back on his old life for good. Now an insurance firm has offered him good money to look into a suspicious car crash, and he finds himself back in the place he grew up – home to his complicated family history, a scarring relationship breakdown and a very public career-ending incident. As Reid’s investigation unfolds, nothing is as it seems …
Girlcrush by Florence Given – In Given’s debut novel, we follow Eartha on a wild, weird and seductive modern-day exploration as she commences life as an openly bisexual woman whilst also becoming a viral sensation on Wonder Land, a social media app where people project their dream selves online. But as her online self and her offline self become more and more distanced, trauma from her past comes back to haunt and destroy her present. Eartha must make a choice: which version of herself should she kill off?
Dancing the Liberty Dance by Tom Keneally
September
Fairy Tale by Stephen King – Charlie Reade looks like a regular high school kid, great at baseball and football, a decent student. But he carries a heavy load. His mom was killed in a hit-and-run accident when he was ten, and grief drove his dad to drink. Charlie learned how to take care of himself—and his dad. Then, when Charlie is 17, he meets a dog named Radar and his aging master, Howard Bowditch, a recluse in a big house at the top of a big hill, with a locked shed in the backyard. Sometimes strange sounds emerge from it.
The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell – Florence, the 1560s. Lucrezia, third daughter of Cosimo de’ Medici, is free to wander the palazzo at will, wondering at its treasures and observing its clandestine workings. But when her older sister dies on the eve of marriage to Alfonso d’Este, ruler of Ferrara, Modena and Reggio, Lucrezia is thrust unwittingly into the limelight: the duke is quick to request her hand in marriage, and her father to accept on her behalf. Having barely left girlhood, Lucrezia must now make her way in a troubled court.
Nona the Ninth (The Locked Tomb: Book 3) by Tamsyn Muir – Her city is under siege. The zombies are coming back. And all Nona wants is a birthday party. In many ways, Nona is like other people. She lives with her family, has a job at her local school, and loves walks on the beach and meeting new dogs. But Nona’s not like other people. Six months ago she woke up in a stranger’s body, and she’s afraid she might have to give it back. And each night, Nona dreams of a woman with a skull-painted face …
Carrie Soto is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid – Carrie Soto is fierce, and her determination to win at any cost has not made her popular. By the time Carrie retires from tennis, she is the best player the world has ever seen. She sacrificed nearly everything to become the best, with her father as her coach. But six years after her retirement, Carrie finds herself sitting in the stands of the 1994 US Open, watching her record be taken from her by a brutal, stunning, British player named Nicki Chan. At thirty-seven years old, Carrie makes the monumental decision to come out of retirement…
The Ink Black Heart by Robert Galbraith – The latest instalment in the highly acclaimed, internationally bestselling Strike series finds Cormoran and Robin ensnared in another winding, wicked case.
The Fraud by Zadie Smith – Per The Bookseller: “The Fraud is inspired by real events from the 1830s to the 1870s England, a time when the streets of North West London still bordered fields and Kilburn’s ‘Shoot-Up Hill’ was named for a highwayman.”
Marshmallow by Victoria Hannan – Per Assembly Label: “A story set to explore how privilege affects how we recover from trauma.”
The Thursday Murder Club: Book 3 by Richard Osman
October
Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng – Twelve-year-old Bird Gardner lives a quiet existence with his loving but broken father, a former linguist who now shelves books in Harvard’s library. For a decade, their lives have been governed by laws written to preserve ‘American culture’ in the wake of years of economic instability and violence. Bird has grown up disavowing his mother, Margaret, and her poems; he doesn’t know her work or what happened to her, and he knows he shouldn’t wonder. But when he receives a mysterious letter containing only a cryptic drawing, he is drawn into a quest to find her.
The Seven Skins of Esther Wilding by Holly Ringland – The last time Esther Wilding’s beloved older sister Aura was seen, she was walking along the shore towards the sea. To seek the truth about her sister’s death, Esther reluctantly travels from Tasmania to Copenhagen, and then to the Faroe Islands. On her journey, Esther is guided by the stories Aura left behind: seven fairy tales about selkies, swans and women, alongside cryptic verses Aura wrote and had secretly tattooed on her body.
It Starts With Us by Colleen Hoover – Before It Ends with Us, it started with Atlas. Colleen Hoover tells fan favourite Atlas’ side of the story and shares what comes next in this long-anticipated sequel to the #1 Sunday Times bestseller It Ends with Us.
Praiseworthy by Alexis Wright – Per Books + Publishing: “Alexis Wright’s first novel since her 2013 ALS Gold Medal–winning The Swan Book. From the only author to have won both the Miles Franklin Literary Award (for her 2006 novel Carpentaria) and the Stella Prize (for 2018 biography Tracker)”.
Limberlost by Robbie Arnott – Per The Bookseller: “Ursula Le Guin meets Richard Flanagan in a gorgeous, casually brutal coming-of-age about fathers and sons, the animals we kill and those we care for, and the mysterious gravity of things we don’t understand”
Escape From Children’s Hospital by Jonathan Safran Foer – A fictionalised account of a life-changing event that happened to the author as a nine-year-old – an explosion in a summer camp science class, which left his best friend without skin on his face or hands, and whose brunt the author avoided by inches and for no good reason.
November

Pip Williams
The Bookbinder of Jericho by Pip Williams – Per Affirm Press: “In early twentieth-century Oxford, cracks appear in the normal order of things when World War I is declared. The Bookbinder of Jericho tells the story of that change from the perspective of a young woman, Peggy, who works in the bindery of the Oxford University Press. Peggy has been told that her job is to bind the books, not read them, but Peggy has never much liked being told she can’t do something.”
Which 2022 novel are you looking forward to the most?
Tell us below in the comments!
About the Contributor
Olivia Fricot
Olivia Fricot (she/her) is Booktopia's Senior Content Producer and editor of the Booktopian blog. She has too many plants and not enough bookshelves, and you can usually find her reading, baking, or talking to said plants. She is pro-Oxford comma.
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