New Vintage books this week

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The latest fiction, non-fiction, paperbacks and classics

Looking for your next great read? Every week, Vintage publishes new books that inform, entertain and spark conversation, from award-winning fiction and thought-provoking nonfiction to beautifully produced classics.

This regularly updated guide brings together the latest releases from across the Vintage list, helping you discover standout new books from established authors and exciting emerging voices. Whether you’re searching for literary fiction, memoir, history, science, politics or culture, you’ll find the newest Vintage books to add to your reading list right here.

What are the best new books to read right now?

This week brings new fiction from Karl Ove Knausgaard, Jo Nesbo, Tom McCarthy and Robin Brookes; illuminating non-fiction spanning conspiracy theories, creativity, climate change and the history of humankind; plus new editions of two enduring classics.

Uncover the real history behind the world’s most notorious secret society in Michael Taylor’s Illuminati, or explore the ideas and revolutions that have shaped our world with Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens: A Graphic History, Volume 4 and Elizabeth Kolbert’s Life on a Little-Known Planet. Edmund de Waal reflects on creativity and starting again in How to Begin, while Tessa Hadley celebrates a lifetime of reading and writing in Alone with a Book. In fiction, return to the world of The Morning Star with Karl Ove Knausgaard’s Arendal, enter the unsettling world of Tom McCarthy’s The Rhyl Poster, or turn to darker thrills with Jo Nesbo’s Kill Shot and Robin Brookes’ The Arrival. Plus, rediscover Bernard MacLaverty’s Cal in a new Vintage Classics edition and Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles as the latest Vintage Collector’s Classic.

New in fiction

Arendal by Karl Ove Knausgaard

On a bitterly cold night in 1976, Syvert’s car breaks down outside the Norwegian city of Arendal. Almost home to his wife and sons, he instead finds himself wandering its frozen streets, drawn back into memories of his doomed love affair with Asya. Set in Knausgaard’s Morning Star universe, Arendal is a haunting novel about love, memory and the uncertain territory between the known and unknown.

Read if you like: The Morning Star and The School of Night by Karl Ove Knausgaard; Jon Fosse.

Kill Shot by Jo Nesbo

Harry Hole has left the police force and his old life behind. But when a woman is murdered in a killing staged like a scene from a famous film, followed by two more bodies, homicide investigator Oleg Fauke needs Harry’s help. The fourteenth Harry Hole novel draws the former detective back into an increasingly disturbing investigation where murder and the movies collide.

Read if you like: the Harry Hole series; Stieg Larsson; Scandinavian crime fiction such as The Bridge.

The Rhyl Poster by Tom McCarthy

Gulf War veteran Benjamin Stanton is a celebrated legal theorist working in one of Europe’s highest courts. An encounter with the mysterious Pirotti, however, draws him into a new existence as a double agent, passing on court documents while becoming increasingly consumed by drugs, visions and memories of Iraq. As Stanton is entrusted with a landmark ruling, he begins writing something very different: an extraordinary confession that could threaten the world around him.

Read if you like: Remainder by Tom McCarthy; John le Carré; intellectually ambitious literary fiction.

New in Non-fiction

Illuminati by Michael Taylor

Who were the real Illuminati – and how did a short-lived eighteenth-century secret society become one of history’s most persistent conspiracy theories? Michael Taylor traces the Order of the Illuminati from its foundation in 1776 through its suppression and the centuries of speculation that followed, exploring how moments of political and social upheaval have repeatedly breathed new life into the myth.

Read if you like: The Ministry of Truth by Dorian Lynskey; A History of the World in 22 Traitors by Sinclair McKay; histories of conspiracy theories and political ideas.

Sapiens A Graphic History, Volume 4 by Yuval Noah Harari

The graphic adaptation of Sapiens reaches the modern age, travelling from the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions to the beginnings of the AI revolution. Through characters including Skyman, Mx Computer and Detective Lopez, this fourth volume asks how science, technology, empire and economics transformed human life – and whether all that progress has actually made us happier.

Read if you like: Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari; the previous volumes of Sapiens: A Graphic History; accessible illustrated history and big ideas.

How to Begin by Edmund de Waal

A discovery in his family archive leads Edmund de Waal to a remarkable correspondence between his grandmother Elisabeth Ephrussi and poet Rainer Maria Rilke. Beginning in Vienna in 1921, their letters about poetry and the creative life become the starting point for de Waal’s own meditation on becoming an artist. Moving between generations, How to Begin explores apprenticeship, failure, advice and the difficult business of starting again.

Read if you like: The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal; Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet; books about art and the creative life.

Alone with a Book by Tessa Hadley

What does a lifetime of reading teach us about writing – and about ourselves? In this collection of essays, Tessa Hadley reflects on the books and art that have shaped her, from a childhood spent in libraries to her life as a writer and teacher. Along the way she considers writers including George Eliot, Tolstoy, Elizabeth Bowen and George Saunders, offering a deeply personal celebration of reading, writing and looking closely.

Read if you like: George Eliot, Elizabeth Bowen and George Saunders; Zadie Smith’s Feel Free; essays about books, art and the reading life.

New in Paperback

The Arrival by Robin Brookes

Leo goes to sleep at home in London and wakes up naked and alone in an Australian hotel room. Before he can return home, it happens again. Someone with access to extraordinary technology is transporting people around the world – and killing them one by one. As Leo fights to survive, his wife Viv begins uncovering secrets that make her question how well she knows the man she is trying to save.

Read if you like: Dark Matter by Blake Crouch; Black Mirror; high-concept speculative thrillers.

Life on a Little-Known Planet by Elizabeth Kolbert

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Elizabeth Kolbert reports from the front lines of a rapidly changing planet. Encountering newly discovered species, animals facing extinction and people working in conservation and rewilding, she examines both the scale of the climate crisis and the possibilities for action. A wide-ranging exploration of the natural world, its extraordinary resilience and what stands to be lost.

Read if you like: The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert; Underland by Robert Macfarlane; nature writing about climate change and conservation.

New in Classics

Cal by Bernard MacLaverty

In Northern Ireland during the Troubles, young Catholic Cal sees few possibilities for his future and is drawn towards the IRA. But when he falls in love with the widow of a Protestant man murdered by his friends, desire, guilt and violence become impossible to separate. Bernard MacLaverty’s acclaimed novel returns in a new Vintage Classics paperback edition.

Read if you like: Milkman by Anna Burns; Trespasses by Louise Kennedy; novels about love, guilt and the Troubles.

Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy’s tragic classic follows Tess, whose visit to the wealthy D’Urberville family sets in motion a devastating sequence of events. When she later falls in love with Angel Clare, the possibility of a new beginning is threatened by the past she has been unable to escape. This new Vintage Collector’s Classic hardback features foiled covers, marbled endpapers, sprayed edges and a silk ribbon.

Read if you like: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë; Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë; classic novels of love, social convention and tragedy.

New Vintage books this week

The latest fiction, non-fiction, paperbacks and classics

What are the best new books to read right now?

New in fiction

New in Non-fiction

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