At times over the past year, reality has seemed more surprising than fiction. But the early months of 2009 bring us a rush of new novels to cheer us through winter. The crises these books explore are not the economic travails of our time, however, but the historical moments of yesteryear. The legacy of our colonial pasts remains a theme as Kate Grenville tracks the clash between settling Europeans and aborigines in her native Australia; Lawrence Hill tackles the 18th-century slave trade in America; and Barry Unsworth explores the competing ambitions of European powers in the Middle East of 1914.

Others choose to focus their “faction” – that curious blend of imagination and history – not on famous events but famous people. Jill Dawson brings English poet Rupert Brooke to life with a story of his secret romance – with a woman – while poet Ruth Padel, a descendant of Charles Darwin, celebrates the bicentenary of her ancestor’s birth with a collection of biographical verse.