I have been through all of the spring 2023 publishers’ catalogues that could lay my hands on (24 so far). I have listed all the books that I really like the look of. The majority on this list are non-fiction, as you have probably come to expect by now, but there is a smattering of fiction, sci-fi and the odd poetry in there.
Abacus
Hidden Valley: Finding freedom in Spain’s deep country – Paul Richardson
Migrants: The Story of Us All – Sam Miller
Follow the Money: How much does Britain cost? – Paul Johnson
Glowing Still: A woman’s life on the road – Sara Wheeler
Edgeland – Sasha Swire
Spies: The epic intelligence war between East and West – Calder Walton
The Crisis Of Democratic Capitalism – Martin Wolf
Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals And The Dream Of A World Without Democracy – Quinn Slobodian
Free And Equal: What Would A Fair Society Look Like? – Daniel Chandler
Twelve Words For Moss: Love, Loss And Moss – Elizabeth-Jane Burnett
Fancy Bear Goes Phishing: A Story Of The Information Age, In Five Parts – Scott J. Shapiro
The Half Known Life – Pico Iyer
The Core Of An Onion – Mark Kurlansky
Operation Chiffon – Peter Taylor
The Book Of Wliding – Isabella Tree
The North Will Rise Again – Alex Niven
The Deadly Balance – Adam Hart
Into The Groove – Jonathan Scott
One Thousand Shades Of Green – Mike Dilger
The Bridleway – Tiffany Francis-Baker
Avocado Anxiety – Louise Grey
Gathering Places – Mary Cowell
Cuddy – Benjamin Myers
Attack Warning Red – Julie McDowall
Being Human – Lewis Dartnell
Shaping the Wild – David Elias
We Are Electric: The New Science Of Our Body’S Electrome – Sally Adee
Grounded: A Journey Into The Landscapes Of Our Ancestors – James Canton
Wolfish: The Stories We Tell About Fear, Ferocity And Freedom – Erica Berry
Why Women Grow: Stories Of Soil, Sisterhood And Survival – Alice Vincent
Beastly: A New History Of Animals And Us – Keggie Carew
The Memory Keeper: A Journey Into The Holocaust To Find My Family – Jackie Kohnstamm
Homelands: The History Of A Friendship – Chitra Ramaswamy
Cacophony Of Bone – Kerri Ní Dochartaigh
Black Ghosts: Encounters With The Africans Changing China – Noo Saro-Wiwa
In Her Nature – Rachel Hewitt
It’s Not About Whiteness, It’s About Wealth: How the Economics of Race Really Work – Remi Adekoya
Wounded Tigris: A river journey through the cradle of civilisation – Leon McCarron
Métropolitain: An Ode to the Paris Métro – Andrew Martin
The Case for Nature – Siddarth Shrikanth
The Possibility of Life – Jaime Green
AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future – Kai-Fu Lee and Chen Qiufan
British Woodland: Discover the Secret World of Our Trees – Ray Mears
The Russia Conundrum: How the West Fell For Putin’s Power Gambit – and How to Fix It – Mikhail Khodorkovsky (with Martin Sixsmith)
The Bleeding Tree: A Pathway Through Grief Guided by Forests, Folk Tales and the Ritual Year – Hollie Starling
And Then What? Inside Stories of 21st Century Diplomacy – Catherine Ashton –
The Future Of Geography: How Power And Politics In Space Will Challenge Our World – Tim Marshall
Taking Flight: A Celebration Of The Miraculous Phenomenon Of Flight – Lev Parikian
A Day In the Life Of The Global Economy – Dharshini David
Free to Obey: How The Nazis Invented Modern Management – Johann Chapoutot Tr. Steven Rendall
Enchantment: Reawakening Wonder in an Exhausted Age – Katherine May
Shy – Max Porter
Emotional Ignorance – Dean Burnett
On Being Unreasonable – Kirsty Sedgman
Ten Birds That Changed The World – Stephen Moss
Floodmeadow – Toby Martinez De Las Rivas – Male
We Saw It All Happen – Julian Bishop
The Naming Of Moths – Tracy Fells
In Yellow Evenings – Jordi Larios Tr. Ronald Puppo
Pharmakon – Almudena Sánchez Tr. Katie Whittemore
Spring Rain – Marc Hamer
Stone Will Answer – Beatrice Searle
Head of Zeus
Quantum Radio – A.G. Riddle
The Best of World SF Volume 2 – Various
Alien Worlds: The Secret Life Of Insects – Steve Nicholls
Stuck Monkey: How The Things We Love Are Killing the Environment – James Hamilton-Paterson
The Known Unknowns: The Unsolved Mysteries of the Cosmos – Lawrence Krauss
The Granite Kingdom: A Cornish Journey – Tim Hannigan
The Vanished Collection – Pauline Baer de Perignon Tr. Natasha Lehrer
Between the Chalk and the Sea – Gail Simmons
The Long View: Why We Need to Transform How the World Sees Time – Richard Fisher
The Queen of Codes – Jacki Ui Chionna
Who Cares – Emily Kenway
The Red Hotel – Alan Philps
Steeple Chasing – Peter Ross
Rivets, Trivets and Galvanised Buckets – Tom Fort
If Nietzsche Were A Narwhal: What Animal Intelligence Reveals About Human Stupidity – Justin Gregg
Defeating The Dictators: How Democracy Can Prevail In The Age Of The Strongman – Charles Dunst
Nuts And Bolts: Seven Small Inventions That Changed The World (In A Big Way) – Roma Agrawal
Echolands: A Journey In Search Of Boudica – Duncan Mackay
Hands Of Time: A Watchmaker’S History – Rebecca Struthers
Undercurrent: A Cornish Memoir Of Poverty, Nature And Resilience – Natasha Carthew
The Tidal Year: A Memoir On Grief, Swimming And Sisterhood – Freya Bromley
Plotters: The UK Terrorists Who Failed – Lizzie Dearden
Proving Ground: The Untold Story of the Six Women Who Programmed the World’s First Modern Computer – Kathy Kleiman
How To Fight A War – Mike Martin
Hermit: A memoir of finding freedom in a wild place – Jade Angeles Fitton
Sea Bean: A Beachcomber’s Search for a Magical Charm – Sally Huband
How to Build Impossible Things: Lessons in Life and Carpentry – Mark Ellison
Wise Gals: The Spies Who Built The CIA And Changed The Future Of Espionage – Nathalia Holt
Unravelling The Silk Road: Travels And Textiles In Central Asia – Chris Aslan
The Jay, The Beech And The Limpetshell: Teaching My Kids About Wild Things – Richard Smyth
Across A Waking Land: A 1,000-Mile Walk Through A British Spring – Roger Morgan-Grenville
India Uniform Nine: Secrets From Inside A Covert Customs Unit – Mark Perlstrom And Douglas Wight
Here Comes The Fun: A Year Of Making Merry – Ben Aitken
The Life Cycle: 8,000 Miles In The Andes By Bamboo Bike – Kate Rawles
Elixir: In the Valley at the End of Time – Kapka Kassabova
Urban Jungle: Wilding the City – Ben Wilson
One Midsummer’s Day: Swifts and the Story of Life on Earth – Mark Cocker
List to follow!!
What is it that will last?: Land and tidal art of Julie Brook – “Julie Brook, Simon Groom, Alexandra Harris, Kichizaemon XV, Raku Jikinyū and Robert Macfarlane”
Sleeping Beauties: The Mystery Of Dormant Innovations In Nature And Culture – Andreas Wagner
Black Ops And Beaver Bombing: Adventures With Britain’s Wild Mammals – Fiona Mathews And Tim Kendall
The Battle For Thought: Freethinking In The Twenty-First Century – Simon Mccarthy-Jones
Goodbye Eastern Europe: An Intimate history of a Divided Land – Jacob Mikanowski
Chicken Boy: My Life With Hens – Arthur Parkinson
Invisible Friends: How Microbes Shape Our Lives and the World Around Us – Jake M. Robinson
Reconnection: Fixing our Broken Relationship with Nature – Miles Richardson
Common Or Garden: Encounters With Britain’S Most Successful Wild Plants – Ken Thompson
Tree Stories – Stefano Mancuso
The Observant Walker: Wild Food, Nature And Hidden Treasures On The Pathways Of Britain – John Wright
George: A Magpie Memoir – Frieda Hughes
Is Maths Real?: & Other Questions That Reveal Mathematics’ Deepest Truths – Eugenia Cheng
The Invention Of Essex: The Making Of An English County – Tim Burrows
My Russia: War Or Peace? – Mikhail Shishkin Tr. Gesche Ipsen
Astray: A History of Wandering – Eluned Summers-Bremner
Travellers Through Time: A Gypsy History – Jeremy Harte
Wind: Nature And Culture – Louise M Pryke
Yew – Fred Hageneder
Red Dog Books
Brittany: Stone Stories – Wendy Mews
The Nature Chronicles – Ed. Kathryn Aalto
Singing Like Larks – Andrew Millham
Two Lights: Walking through Landscapes of Loss and Life – James Roberts
Real Dorset by Jon Woolcott
One Hundred Saturdays: Stella Levi And The Vanished World Of Jewish Rhodes – Michael Frank And Maira Kalman
Lost In The Lakes: Notes From A 379-Mile Walk In The Lake District – Tom Chesshyre
Blue Machine – Helen Czerski
Mother Tongue: The surprising history of women’s words – Jenni Nuttall
On Savage Shores: How Indigenous Americans Discovered Europe – Caroline Dodds Pennock
So many publishers…! You know what might be handy?
Add under the publishers name..the link to their website.
Just a suggestion 🙂
I will edit it, Nancy
Thanks so much, Paul!
BTW… do you have a book about Indian or Atlantic Ocean?
Hi Nancy, if you have a look at my pinned twitter post then you can access the spreadsheet with all the the read and planned books on
Well, I spent an hour going through the publishers you highlighted…and I’m impressed! I found several books I want to read in 2023 (Inside Qatar – Mannerheim (Finland) – Beyond Possible (N. Purja) – Story of Russia (Orlando Fires) – Goodbye Eastern Europe (J. Mikanowski) and this fascinating book Blue Machine (oceans) by Helen Czerski. I noted many more books from the websites and now follow some publishers via Twitter. Many thanks for this blogpost…I’ve found so much to read!
Glad it was some use.
Paul, I love the way you pick so many brilliant books although I’ve recently tried culling my ridiculous TBR mountain.
Needless to say I’ve added loads. Really looking forward to the books by James Canton, Marc Hamer and Katherine May.
Canton in particular is a terrific writer. Thank you so much for going through all the publishers so I don’t have to!
I hope you and your family have a lovely Christmas.
If yours is ridiculous, then I dread to think what mine is! I try and only pick the books that I have an interest in reading, there are a massive number of books being released next year and this is the cream of the crop in my opinion. I am not sure what I would pick from that list as a must-read, will have a look through again! Have sent you a message too
Some wonderful titles there, I’ll look forward to seeing what you read!
I’ve just taken some time to go back through your list and added another 10 to my TBR that I didn’t know about before. Thanks again for all the hard work you put into this project each year! I’m curious: if a book appears on here, does that mean that you plan to write to the publisher to request a copy for review? Or do you choose a subset to ask for, and try to find the rest at libraries? I feel like I need to cut down on review copies because I have a huge backlog from last year still. But of course it’s very hard to resist all these new books!
No problem at all. If a book appears on here, then I might ask for a review copy, but generally it goes onto my TBR spreadsheet and sometimes onto my ever expanding Good Reads list. I am easing back on asking for review copies as, like you, I have too many and a huge backlog going back three or four years in some cases. I also buy a large number of books and really need to get through those too!