People are outsiders for all sorts of reasons: class, sexual orientation, political status, but for Polly Barton’s anonymous narrator in What Am I, A Deer? it’s a little more complicated. Outwardly successful, inwardly wondering whether she will always be…

I got two klaxon alerts on reading this debut novel. The gist of the story is that Clare and Phoebe’s relationship is under severe strain when Clare miscarries their baby girl. They up sticks to the countryside (after left a relation’s house in a will), h…

“PG danced a kind of four-step around Jerome’s legs as he phoned his secretary to cancel an invitation to a warlock.” This wonderful novel – first published in 1965 – is tumbling with such sentences, and I hope this reprint from the redoubtable Faber Edit…

Mallory Maddox is an author who, following her wildly successful debut novel, has been stuck in writer’s no-man’s land for years. Her peers used to rave about her talent; now they call her ‘Meek Mal’ owing to her inability to follow through and her stay i…

This ambitious slice of science fiction dystopia deftly balances issues surrounding severe climate breakdown with Deb Olin Unferth’s signature sharp wit. The novel is set on a severely depopulated Earth, sometime in the future, with humanity splintering. …

Following the massive success of novels such as ‘The Marriage Portrait’ and ‘Hamnet’, Maggie O’Farrell returns with a sweeping, multi-viewpoint historical epic set in Ireland. The action begins in 1865, roughly a decade after the devastation of the Great …

Irish writer Paul Murray catapults us right into the centre of a family drama in this novel. The Barnes family are on the cusp of their demise. Dickie Barnes is still grieving the death of his younger brother while facing the closure of the family busines…

So yeah? Yeah? Hugh works for this company in Berlin whose virtual head honcho madman/genius has bought a planet just like earth, only problem is there’s no safe way to travel to it. Hugh’s problem is exactly that problem too, and he fears his space race …

What does the Pacific Northwest produce in the 1970s? Well, among other things, serial killers and serial amounts of deadly pollution. In Murderland, Caroline Fraser suggests that these two facts are not unrelated. “Recipes for making a serial killer may …

Adele Bertei’s memoir isn’t a comprehensive history of the women who played a huge part in the culture of No Wave, but a series of extraordinary snapshots that become a very satisfying whole over this book’s wonderful three hundred pages. Adele Bertei arr…

When George Michael died – nearly ten years ago now – a slew of stories came out about his generosity (he was once watching ‘Deal or No Deal’ on TV, and when a woman didn’t win the £15,000 she hoped, for IVF treatment, Michael gave her the money with the …

In Famesick, writer, actor, and creator of the critically acclaimed television show ‘Girls’ reflects on the 17 years she has lived (often controversially) in the limelight, and the side effects of fame that she was too young to comprehend. Whether it’s an…

India, 2013. Ved has just turned 13 and he lives with his non-biological father – the titular ‘Da’. The pair share a fierce bond – full of tenderness and affection – but it also becomes apparent that ‘Da’ is gay. Ved, who narrates the tale with all the na…

Unlike several of her recent novels, which centred on the recurring characters of Lucy Barton and Olive Kitteridge, the latest from Elizabeth Strout is a stand-alone work that captivates right from the off. The story follows Artie Dam, a high school histo…

Thai writer Pitchaya Sudbanthad is a master at weaving timelines and characters together in this debut novel. It’s a cocktail of historical, science, and climate fiction which sees stories from characters across centuries linked by their relationship to t…

The debut novel from this Uruguayan novelist (translated by Miriam Tobin) is a compelling addition to the New Latin American Gothic genre. Set in the fictional town of Paso Chico, the story concerns Marga, a 13-year-old girl who lives with her grandmother…

Simon Goddard’s latest in his series of brilliant Bowie biogs is set in 1976, when Britain’s long hot summer brought racial tensions to the boil helped by the lies of Enoch Powell and the idiocy of rock stars like Eric Clapton and David Bowie (among other…

Somewhere at the start of this great “anti-memoir”, there’s a line about addiction which is a reminder that bad stuff in the world could be sorted if there was a will to sort it, “The problem with prevention is that it would require a full-scale revolutio…

Agnes Martin (1912-2004) was a Canadian-American painter known for her minimalist abstracts. She did her most famous work while living rather reclusively in the desert environment of New Mexico – in a house she built herself. She never expressed her sexua…

In this follow-up to her highly acclaimed 2017 novel ‘Butter’, Asako Yuzuki is back with another dark story (translated by Polly Barton). ‘Hooked’, like ‘Butter’, is set in Tokyo and revolves around two thirty-year-old women: Eriko is a highly strung perf…

On the coast of present-day Ireland, a family gather to mourn the death of their long-estranged father (or, in the case of Vyonne, her ex-husband). There’s the teen daughter and son, Gemma and Matthew, who are trying to figure out their place in the world…

Scottish-based author Tariq Ashkanani was responsible for one of the best thrillers of 2025 with ‘The Midnight King’ – a twisty (and twisted) new take on the serial killer genre – and he’s followed it up with another doozy. Just as he did with ‘The Midnig…

The titular Anna in Tracy Maton’s sizzling debut thriller has never known the good life. She grew up in an unstable environment where drink, drugs and then – when she hit her twenties – dead-end jobs were the norm. But when she meets Ben, the two become a…

‘This is Also a Love Story’ sees Sally Hayden reflect on her career as an international correspondent to ask, ‘Might the world be a different place if we more regularly told news stories through the prism of love?’ She explores the light she saw in some o…

A book that smells of male sweat, male privilege, barrooms, drug-dens, music venues and cigarette smoke. I’m not sure I liked What Do You Do When You Are Lonely, mainly because I’m not sure I liked Justin Townes Earle very much, which isn’t Jonathan Berns…

The fiery age-gap, on again, off again relationship first seen in The Lesser Bohemians has taken a sombre, yet no less intense turn in Eimear McBride’s follow-up novel, The City Changes Its Face. Stephen and Eily are still in love, but are still battling …

It’s little wonder that Emma Glass’s ‘mrs jekyll’, which totally dismantles and rebuilds the Robert Louis Stephenson classic, was nominated for the Gordon Burn Prize, because it’s a wholly original, boundary-pushing piece of work. It concerns a schoolteac…

This new novel from novelist and journalist John Lanchester (‘Capital’) is narrated through the perspectives of two women. Kate is a devoted wife who is grieving the death of her perfect husband Jack, their thirty-year marriage and the secret language the…

Dilara lives in modern day Italy. She and her family are exiled from Turkey, largely because of the authoritarian regime of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan who has reordered society along religious lines. When Dilara becomes aware that her father is suffering from d…

I love a thriller and ‘Catch!’ was a real curve-ball for me – quite literally. That’s because it involves Dani, an Italian who is due to play the games of his life in the baseball World Series in the US. Meanwhile, his mother, Roberta, who runs a laundry …

Siân Hughes was Booker-longlisted for her debut novel ‘Pearl’ and I expect ‘No Such Thing As Monday’ to be similarly lauded. It’s the present day in the West Midlands. Steffie – a 50-something woman – arrives at Stanley’s house (Stanley being her father) …

Art Cure has recently been longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Non-fiction, and after reading it, I can’t say I’m surprised. Armed with decades of research and a passion for the arts, award-winning scientist Daisy Fancourt shares touching case studies wh…

The rumours are that white male writers are becoming extinct, but the reality is that rumours of their extinction have been greatly exaggerated. Take David Szalay. White and male and privately educated and Oxbridge and, phew, a Booker Prize winner! The fu…

I wouldn’t describe myself as a David Keenan fanboy and if this comment makes me persona non grata to the Memorial Device nation, well, I’m sorry, but them’s the breaks. Volcanic Tongue, a compilation of David Keenan’s writings about late 20th century und…

Look, I’m not an expert about women’s art although I’m a fan of The White Pube, Nan Goldin, Jenny Saville, Cindy Sherman, the artists of Women in Revolt etc. Not a total neophyte then, and yet much of the art and many of the women artists mentioned in Lou…

Swiss writer Michelle Steinbeck made a splash with her debut novel ‘My Father Was a Man on Land and a Whale in the Water’ (it was selected as Best Book of the Edinburgh Book Festival in 2019). Her latest (translated by Jen Calleja) begins with a young wom…

Seventeen-year-old Waldo is hungry, and her unexceptional town in Alaska, Post-its from her absent mother, and nightly Shein shopping binges just won’t cut it. Enter Mr Korgy, her new creative writing teacher, whose failed dream to be a writer and married…

Fatima Bhutto has previously been longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction (for ‘The Shadow of the Crescent Moon’), but this memoir sees her tackling a period of her life (which encompasses the various Covid lockdowns) in which she’s in a relationship…

US author Stefan Merril Block has published three well received novels, and for ‘Home Schooled’ – a memoir of his early years – he’s also taken a novelistic approach. The results are utterly engrossing as he details his life growing up in Texas with his m…

In James Alistair Henry’s debut novel, Britain is divided into ancient tribes; but this is also a Britain of office blocks, mobile phone apps, and vapes. In short, ‘Pagans’ is a high-concept alternate history thriller in which the Norman Conquest of 1066 …

During the pandemic, when life stopped, and nature continued, author of ‘Hark’, Alice Vincent, asked women online why they garden. What followed was an influx of stories from women across the world. In ‘Why Women Grow’, Vincent travels to meet these women…

The premise of Ali Smith’s brilliant, dystopic novel Gliff doesn’t seem that far-fetched in a world where, currently, the forces of evil are riding high on the hog. In Ali Smith’s fictional England a few years down the political road, the sibling protagon…

Erin Somers, author of ‘Stay Up with Hugo Best’, brilliantly plays with timelines in her second novel, ‘The Ten Year Affair’. It follows Cora, who lives in a small town with a husband she doesn’t desire, two young children, and a strange mushroom that int…

This US set horror-thriller takes place in Nowhere, a verdant valley that is fairly inaccessible to most unless they know the lie of the land. Years ago, a famous movie star, Leaf Winham, lived in the valley – in Nowhere House – which he had built as a re…

Caroline Hulse has found favour with readers through her first four books, but – writing under the C.E. Hulse moniker – ‘Vivian Dies Again’ is her first crime novel. The titular, mid-30s protagonist, is something of a black sheep, certainly to her family,…

England. 1976. Jean – a teenage boy – is getting a mild dressing down in the headmaster’s study at Compton Manor. The headmaster is David Larkin, although he insists that the boys – and they’re all boys at his school – call him Davey. (It’s that type of s…

To write ‘False Calm’, María Sonia Cristoff returned to her birthplace, Patagonia, two decades after she left it. She wanted to understand why it has a global reputation for being a place of isolation, so she visited the people living in the ‘ghost towns’…

Larissa Pham is an artist and writer based in Brooklyn. She’s previously had success with her non-fiction book ‘Pop Song: Adventures in Art and Intimacy’, but ‘Discipline’ is her first novel. It concerns Christine, a young author who is criss-crossing the…

Partly about America’s forgotten people and the economic and ecological disaster foisted on them by capitalist fundamentalism, Joanna Pocock’s Greyhound is also a compelling, brilliantly written (and photographed) personal journey in the slipstream of Sim…

Erin White scored a hit with her non-fiction work ‘Memoir of Love, Belonging, and Belief’ in which she discussed reconciling faith and sexuality as she grappled with her desire for both divine love and romantic love (she spent time with her girlfriend whi…

Neil Rollinson has previously published four well-received volumes of poetry, but ‘The Dead Don’t Bleed’ is his first novel. It begins in 2003 in the city of Córdoba in southern Spain. Frank is visiting the grave of his wife, Lucía, who had died a number …

My first thoughts on looking through this sumptuous coffee-table book was “Wow!” Mark Savage’s photographs are awesome (in the truest sense of the word) and capture the almost fearsome beauty of the Northumberland landscape, as well as the hardy climbers …

The premise of John Tottenham’s debut novel, ‘Service’, is ironic. It’s about Sean, a failed writer and self-proclaimed misanthrope who works in a bookstore, surrounded by customers and the work of successful writers. For Sean, everything is moving on wit…

How do you make ordinary life sound interesting? That’s a question that the author of ‘Walking on the Ceiling’ and ‘White on White’, Ayşegül Savaş, beautifully answers in ‘The Anthropologists’, a novel about married couple Asya and Manu navigating love, f…