Dear Reader,

I am troubled. It seems like only moments ago that we were looking back at the year that was 2015, checking our reading diaries, assembling our list of the books that were the best of the year, and comparing our assessment of writing achievements to that of others. And now I find myself needing to forget all about last year, turn my attention in the opposite direction, and produce instead a new list: this time a register of books to anticipate. From living in the reading past I must now focus on living in the reading future; but what, dear reader, becomes of the reading present? Please forgive this digression…

February’s new releases already give a hint of the rich year we have ahead of us in 2016. Fiona McFarlane’s 2013 debut novel, The Night Guest, was shortlisted for both the Miles Franklin Literary Award and the Stella Prize as well as our inaugural Readings Prize. Her follow-up book is a wonderful new collection of short stories, The High Places, and it’s our book of the month. This work joins that of a number of other early career Australian writers, including Dominique Wilson with her second novel, That Devil’s Madness, and a debut-short story collection from Michelle Michau-Crawford, Leaving Elvis, while former ALP Member for Melbourne, Lindsay Tanner, turns his talents to fiction with Comfort Zone.

Howard Jacobson contributes the second instalment of Hogarth’s series of novels that rework Shakespeare’s plays, with Shylock is My Name, using The Merchant of Venice as inspiration. Two other previous winners of the Man Booker Prize, Julian Barnes and Yann Martel, also have new novels this month (The Noise of Time and The High Mountains of Portugal respectively).

I’m very keen to read Larissa Behrendt’s Finding Eliza: Power and Colonial Storytelling, an exploration of the impact of colonial literature’s representations of Indigenous peoples. Terri-Ann White has edited a book that records the results of some fascinating-sounding workshops held between writers and people living in remote communities in Desert Writing: Stories from Country. Meanwhile, everyone’s favourite public intellectual, Barry Jones, reflects on the works of literature and music that have carried him on his life’s journey in The Shock of Recognition. The demise of the Abbott government will continue to intrigue for years to come, with the gaze this time turning to the former PM’s relationship with advisor Peta Credlin. Black Inc. publishes Aaron Patrick’s assessment, Credlin & Co: How the Abbott Government Destroyed Itself this month and then Scribe brings us Niki Savva’s analysis in March, The Road to Ruin: How Tony Abbott and Peta Credlin Destroyed Their Own Government.

I must further recommend a couple of books that have been in store since January: Sunil Yapa’s Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist is an accomplished debut set during the protests at the 1999 WTO meetings in Seattle; and Chris Kraus’s 1997 feminist masterpiece and cult classic/memoir-fiction-theory mash-up, I Love Dick, is finding a new audience with a republication by Tuskar Rock Press. And a hearty congratulations to one of the many multi-talented Readings staff, Leanne Hall, on the publication of her new book for kids, Iris and the Tiger!

So much for February…

There’s also the rest of the year to think about, so hold onto your hats for this whirlwind (and absolutely, terrifyingly incomplete) run-down of what’s ahead in 2016. March is already clearly in view for us book buyers, with some major titles hitting our shelves next month, including David Dyer’s highly anticipated debut, The Midnight Watch, a novel which will have us all talking about the fortunes of Titanic again (and again, and again); he joins some other notable Australian fiction releases including books from Kirsten Tranter, Olga Lorenzo, Josephine Rowe, Jennifer Down, Sarah Kanake and Robyn Mundy.

Stan Grant’s Talking to My Country builds on his piece published in the Guardian last year, and is set to be essential reading. The appearance of the fifth book in Karl Ove Knausgaard’s ‘My Struggle’ epic, Some Rain Might Fall, will please his many fans. I suggest you keep a lookout for Work Like Any Other, a powerful debut from a graduate of the famed Michener Center for Writers, Virginia Reeves, set in the age of electrification in Alabama. Throw in a Quarterly Essay from George Megalogenis, a fortieth anniversary edition of Anne Summers’ classic, Damned Whores and God’s Police, an Italian-English bilingual memoir from Jhumpa Lahiri, and a saucy crime debut from the UK with a publishing story to end all publishing stories (L.S. Hilton’s Maestra), and you’ll see it’s set to be a monster March.

I could go month to month from here on out, but I’m afraid my editor has given me strict instructions about word length, so I will have to be brief. Indeed, I’m going to need to resort to list format at some point so please bear with me.

Jane Harper won the Victorian Premier’s Award for an Unpublished Manuscript, and the resulting book, The Dry, will be published in June. Hannah Kent follows up her monumentally successful Burial Rites with a new novel in the second half of the year. We here at Readings also loved Maxine Beneba Clarke’s debut, Foreign Soil, and she follows that stunning short-story collection in August with a memoir, The Hate Race. I’m fascinated by the idea of Thornton McCamish’s passion project to be published by Black Inc. in April: an excavation of the life and importance of a famed but forgotten figure in Our Man Elsewhere: In Search of Alan Moorhead. Musician, writer and national treasure Robert Forster is working on a book called Grant & I for Penguin, due later in the year.

My predecessor Martin Shaw was an early champion of Steven Amsterdam’s incredible 2009 debut, Things We Didn’t See Coming; Amsterdam’s third novel is out this year with Hachette and I can’t wait to read it. New work from Helen Garner is always an event in which to rejoice: she publishes a collection of essays, Everywhere I Look, in April. Scribe brings us two excellent Berlin-themed books, both translated into English from the original German for the first time: Hans Fallada’s The Nightmare (June) and Franz Hessel’s Walking in Berlin: A Flaneur in the Capital (July), as well as a fantastic-sounding memoir from Kim Mahood, Position Doubtful: Mapping Landscapes and Memories in August. Journalist Clementine Ford publishes her debut, Fight Like a Girl, a book that unpicks the negative connotations of that phrase (and others intended to demean women) with a memoir/call to arms. MUP has a collection of essays from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander thinkers on constitutional reform, It’s Our Country (eds Megan Davis and Marcia Langton) in May, and the same month philosopher Damon Young turns his attention to the act in which you are now engaging with The Art of Reading.

Elena Ferrante’s many devotees will swoon at the thought of Frantumaglia: Bits and Pieces of Uncertain Origin, a collection of her non-fiction writing due in November from Text. Text is also publishing a recently discovered manuscript from the author of Wake in Fright, Kenneth Cook (called Fear is the Rider), as well a local edition of buzz book The Argonauts (by Maggie Nelson) in April, and work from the 2015 Nobel Prize winner, Svetlana Alexievich, in June. I love the title of Aden Rolfe’s forthcoming poetry collection through Giramondo, False Nostalgia. UQP will be publishing a debut book of poems by 2015 Readings Prize shortlister Ellen van Neerven called Comfort Food in June. And looking well ahead, Readings’ own A.S. Patric has a new novel through Transit Lounge in November, Atlantic Black, following his acclaimed novel from last year, Black Rock White City.

And now I’m really running out of room so list form must kick in to whet your appetite even further … Expect books from: Georgia Blain; Arnold Zable; Inga Simpson; Henry Reyonlds; Jacinta Halloran; Patrick Holland; Emily Maguire; Toni Jordan; David Brooks; AND: Don DeLillo (Zero K due in May!); Curtis Sittenfeld (does Pride and Prejudice in Eligible!); Lionel Shriver; Annie Proulx; Julie Myerson; Jesse Ball; Jonathan Safran Foer; Chris Cleave; Aravind Adiga; Tracy Chevalier; Simon Sebag Montefiore (on the Romanovs!); Elizabeth Strout; Alain de Botton (returns to writing fiction!); Zadie Smith; Marie Darrieussecq; Muriel Barber; Nicola Barker; Justin Cronin (finishes his vampire trilogy with The City of Mirrors!); and what will come of the rumours of a new Cormac McCarthy …?

Truly, this is nowhere near the end of the list, but it’s all that will fit.

But while it is a treat to reflect on what has been read, and a thrill to anticipate reading that is yet to come, please, dear reader, don’t forget about your reading present: the most important book at any time is the one you are reading right now …

Alison Huber