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A new year means new books and we’re delighted to see so many of our titles picked up by the media as their most anticipated reads of 2022. Whether your to-be-read pile is already sky high or you’re in need of some inspiration to meet this year’s reading goal, our preview guide below shows off a whole slate of upcoming releases. From a YA tale of friendship and rivalry in New York City to a sweeping scientific study of the Earth as it used to exist, we hope to give you a taster of a remarkable year of publishing ahead.

 

Looking ahead to some of the revelatory investigative science writing coming our way, Waterstones recommends Oliver Milman’s The Insect Crisis: The Fall of the Tiny Empires that Run the World (Atlantic, January). ‘Lifting the lid on a quiet catastrophe taking place all around the globe, Milman’s beautifully written volume is both a deeply researched investigation into the worrying patterns of change in insect populations and a celebration of these extraordinary creatures.’

Make a note in your diaries for Otherlands: A World in the Making by Thomas Halliday (Penguin, February): a dazzlingly original, lyric and epic encounter with the Earth as it used to be. As well as being one of Waterstones’s lead non-fiction titles for 2022, Otherlands comes highly recommended from New Scientist, who describe it as the perfect book for anyone who has ever wondered ‘what sound a pterosaur’s wings made in flight’.

Independent Ireland include Otherlands in their list of the hottest books of the year ahead and Mr Porter Magazine praise award-winning palaeobiologist Halliday for writing a book that is ‘epic in scope and executed with charming enthusiasm’.

The Guardian recommend Please Miss: A Staggering Work of Heartbreaking Penis by Grace Lavery (Daunt Books, February) for any readers on the lookout for ‘a smart and funny memoir spanning addiction and gender transition, queer theory and standup comedy’.

Please Miss is also one of Stylist Magazine’s picks, who describe it as ‘dazzling, witty and unlike anything else you’ll ever read’.

If you enjoy entertaining art history books, then The Times encourages you to seek out Constable: A Portrait (Orion, February), which is a ‘lively’ biography of the landscape painter John Constable from curator James Hamilton.

New Scientist include Tim Birkhead’s Birds and Us: A 12,000 Year History, from Cave Art to Conservation (Penguin, March) in their list of the best upcoming science books. This rich and fascinating book is the culmination of a lifetime’s research and ‘laces his own remarkable travels with the story of humanity’s long fascination with birds’.

The Waterstones blog picks Meg Rosoff’s Friends Like These (Bloomsbury, June) as one of its must-read children’s and YA books of the year ahead.  ‘The events of the summer of 1982 threaten to break apart the friendships of a trio of interns in New York City’ in this ‘utterly immersive slice of YA fiction’.

Godmersham Park (Cornerstone, June) is one of The Times’ 2022 fiction picks and will be a much-anticipated treat for any readers hoping to be transported back to Regency Britain after Miss Austen. This new book ‘gives us a glimpse of the great woman and her world through the story of a young governess looking after one of the Austen children’.

Fans of Tigers in Red Weather will be excited to hear that this year will bring a new fiction offering from Liza Klaussmann. This is Gonna End in Tears (July, John Murray) is set in LA and is described by the Waterstones blog as a ‘febrile exploration of the relationship between three old friends in another unputdownable marvel’.

The Irish Times look forward to the release of Bournville (Viking, November), the brilliant new state-of-the-nation novel by Jonathan Coe. In this latest book, Coe ‘follows one family in that Birmingham suburb from VE day to 2020’.