Not Just Research - Inspiration: Three New Non-Fiction Reads for Creative Writers

May 21
4 min read

I’m looking at non-fiction new releases this month with an eye on works that will assist with creative writing. Research isn’t just about sourcing factual information to build a story but also finding those concepts and imagery that may inspire developing characters and nod toward changes in society and culture. Good background fodder for the imagination!

Photograph of three book covers against a blurred background with golden bokeh lights. Covers include "Good Witch" in red with black and white text, "Kutchinsky's Egg" in red featuring a decorative egg, and "The Ruin of Magic" in black with an illustrated skeleton entwined with flowers. :The Ruin of Magic: Longing and Belonging in Strange Times” by Kate Holden — New releases March ~ April ~ July 2026

Three New Non-Fiction Reads for Creative Writers

Official publisher blurbs below °•*⁀➷

Book cover featuring title "Kutchinsky's Egg" by Serena Kutchinsky on a red patterned background with gold and white text. Central focus is a detailed, ornate Fabergé egg with intricate designs and miniature architectural elements, reflecting themes of family, obsession, love, and loss. — *Kutchinsky’s Egg* by Serena Kutchinsky

Kutchinsky's Egg: A Family Story of Love, Loss and Obsession by Serena Kutchinsky

Release Date: 31 March 2026, Simon & Schuster Ltd.

Genre: travelogue, art history, biography

Blending travelogue, art history and family biography with the narrative thrust of a thriller, Kutchinksy's Egg documents the creation of the eponymous opulent artefact, its disappearance and the consequent mystery of its current location.

What if your father had a dream so immense it led to his downfall? Would you want to know the truth?

When she was eleven years old, Serena Kutchinsky’s father Paul was gripped by a wild idea. The son of generations of jewellers and heir to the legendary House of Kutchinsky, he wanted to make something bigger and more beautiful than anything that had come before him. It was to be the largest, most lavish, most expensive jewelled egg in the world.

Standing two-feet tall, made of solid gold, dripping with rare pink diamonds and housing a tiny enamelled library, his creation was truly astonishing. The problem was: nobody would buy it. The House of Kutchinsky collapsed, Paul’s marriage fell apart – and within ten years he was dead. The egg was seized by its creditors and disappeared without a trace.

For thirty years its location remained a mystery, until it began to obsess Serena, too. Why did her father risk everything for this outlandish creation, and where in the world was it – valued by now at £30 million? Intent on finding answers, she set out on a journey that begins in London’s East End – with the arrival of her great, great grandparents as Jewish immigrants from Poland – and takes her to the most unexpected of places. To the other side of the world, and to a new understanding of her father, her childhood and herself. Kutchinsky’s Egg is a stunning story of obsession and lost glamour, fathers and daughters, for readers of The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal.

Cover art for a book titled "The Ruin of Magic" by Kate Holden featuring a detailed illustration of a human skeleton adorned with various colourful flowers and a small bird perched on one arm. The design uses a dark background with yellow vertical and horizontal text, highlighting themes of longing and belonging in strange times. — *The Ruin of Magic* by Kate Holden

The Ruin of Magic: Longing and Belonging in Strange Times by Kate Holden

Release Date: 07 April 2026, Black Inc

Genre: essays, popular culture

Is it possible to live wondrously by fluorescent light?

In The Ruin of Magic, award-winning writer Kate Holden follows in the footsteps of Katherine May, Maggie Nelson and André Aciman, crafting essays of intimate personal experience and sharply informed rumination on life in strange times.

In gorgeous prose Holden meditates on her instinctive yearning for long-ago Europe versus the natural belonging she feels to the Australian landscape, and asks, What is a home? The strongest shelter or the most lethal trap, a museum of ourselves or a showcase of fashions? What, then, does it mean to make ourselves at home in an Australia still finding its way amidst old and avoided truths? Is nostalgia a reasonable mourning of timeless lore lost or a dangerous fantasy? And what has happened to magic and beauty in the glare of modern life?

Reading Rainer Maria Rilke, Patti Smith, Walter Benjamin and D.H. Lawrence, dreamers and philosophers and poets, pagan history and new criticism, Holden writes with humour and sorrow of all the ways life today warps us under its glare – and how to find a haven in the subtle shadows.

Cover art for a book titled: "GOOD WITCH" at top and smaller white text "IN SEARCH OF OUR LOST FEMININE POWER" on left side, set against a red background. Illustration of a black hand holding a lit match with a visible flame is positioned on the right, symbolising empowerment and awakening. — *Good Wtich* by Lucianne Tonti

Good Witch: In Search of Our Lost Feminine Power By Lucianne Tonti

Release Date: 28 July 2026, S&S/Summit Books

Genre: feminist theory and criticism, women in history

For centuries, the work of women was viewed with suspicion. Their knowledge – of bodies, nature, and community – posed a threat to a masculine order. To men who saw them as something to be contained and controlled.

Good Witch takes us back hundreds of years to the dark times when witch hunts were sweeping Europe and North America. From Salem to England, Scotland to the northern corners of Norway, tens of thousands of women were persecuted, prosecuted and killed.

Today, we can still feel the legacy of the witch hunts: In the way the natural world has been degraded. In the way humans have become disengaged from the things that make us truly happy. A campaign of disenchantment has sought to disconnect us from the earth – and from each other.

But enchantment was never truly lost.

Across the globe, women are reclaiming the skills, practices and stories that masculine societies have tried so hard to diminish or dismiss. Here, Tonti shows us how a return to feminine power is what the world desperately needs now, more than ever.

Good Witch is history and manifesto, reckoning and celebration. It is a powerful exploration of what was lost. And what can be reclaimed.

This look at three new Non-Fiction Reads for Creative Writers shows just some of what is available in book-land to inspire some literary creativity. I'm off to the library to see what they have on the shelves...