POPULAR
WENDY HOLDEN
A FAR-FLUNG LIFE by M. L. Stedman (Doubleday £20, 448pp)
This brilliant novel, set on an Australian sheep station, has an emotional scale as huge as the surrounding landscape. When a kangaroo bounds in front of a truck in 1958, there are tragic consequences for the MacBride family.
We follow them through the generations as Matt’s injuries slowly heal and the wonderful Andy is born. The women’s characters are especially well-drawn; stoic Lorna, tragic Rosie and capable Bonnie, who saves them all.
AMERICAN FANTASY by Emma Straub (Michael Joseph £18.99, 336pp)
A cruise with 1990s boy band Boy Talk and their obsessed middle-aged women fans is the last thing fed-up Annie wants. Meanwhile, in the ship’s VIP area, singer Keith is frustrated for different reasons. The band all hate each other and are only doing it for the money. It seems an unlikely scenario for romance, and yet! This superb comedy is one of my favourite reads this year.
THE DECADENCE by Leon Craig (Sceptre £10.99, 320pp)
Six former uni friends flee London in lockdown for a collapsing ancestral mansion that one of them owns. Relations soon unravel, helped along by lots of drugs and a creepy presence in the house. Full of cleverclogs chat, heavy with boho-chic atmosphere and so scary I kept the light on all night while I was reading it. Think Brideshead Revisited meets The Shining by way of Withnail And I.
DEBUTS
SARA LAWRENCE
My Husband And Other Rats by Shelley Klein (W&N £20, 320pp)
When Alison’s husband leaves, she cannot stop sobbing. He was the person she trusted most and she believed he felt the same. Everything else in Alison’s life is going wrong too and people keep telling her to get a therapist. Finding the right person is hard and various sessions veer from the mundane to the absurd. Hilarious and moving.
My Husband and Other Rats is available now from the Mail BookshopÂ
Underspin by E. Y. Zhao (Doubleday £16.99, 272pp)
It’s the funeral of Ryan Lo, a champion table tennis player, tragically dead at 24. Ryan’s parents are waiting for his world-class, ruthless trainer to arrive before starting the service. As the minutes tick by, it’s obvious that Coach is not showing up for Ryan this one last time. Multiple perspectives reveal no one can believe Ryan is dead. Thought provoking.
The Golden Boy by Patricia Finn (Corsair £18.99, 320pp)
Stafford is 58 and recently retired from a high-powered career as a Hollywood executive. When a letter arrives out of nowhere, informing Stafford that an old friend has died and appointed him the guardian of his grandchildren, he can’t believe it. There are four orphans, including a baby. Stafford’s wife insists they’re too old but he’s not sure.
SCI-FI, FANTASY and HORROR
JAMIE BUXTON
The Unicorn Hunters by Katherine Arden (Century £20, 448pp)
There are only hard choices facing the beautiful Anne of Brittany: agree to marry the King of France against the express wishes of her father, or be forced into marriage and lose all sovereignty. So Anne – doughty, beautiful and clever – arranges a unicorn hunt, a brilliant delaying tactic but one that brings fairyland into play.
A magical blend of fact and fancy, rich characters and intricate plotting while pin-sharp observations leave each page brimming with colour and life.
If We Cannot Go at the Speed of Light is available now from the Mail BookshopÂ
If We Cannot Go At The Speed Of Light by Kim Choyeop (MacLehose Press £14.99, 192pp)
Choyeop leads us into imagined futures and leaves us bamboozled and delighted.
Following the example of a beloved aunt, an astronaut prepares to travel across the universe, only to have all her preconceptions shattered. A man bemoans his partner’s reliance on ‘emotional stones’ but what really makes us feel? Answers are never less than human and humane. And nothing is quite what it seems in this otherworldly collection.
Sarafina by Philip Fracassi (Black Crow Books £10.99, 354pp)
Don’t cross the river! Don’t eat the apple! Don’t trust the incredibly beautiful woman who lives in the large house in the middle of nowhere! Suspense is all about anticipation and Fracassi gets that. So when three deserters from the American Civil War stumble into a rural paradise, you know it won’t go well.
One brother dies, another is seduced by the beautiful Sarafina but the third must confront the horrors that befall them.
PSYCHOS
CHRISTENA APPLEYARD
Dead Heat by Sabine Durrant (Century £16.99, 352pp)
A recently sacked journalist is staying with friends in Greece but things take a dangerous turn when a flashy billionaire turns up. We know there is a murder from the start of the story but Durrant keeps us guessing as to who and why throughout this well-observed psychological mystery.
Fellow Creatures by Emma Lowther (HB £20, 416pp)
Shannon is a young working-class girl from Yorkshire struggling to make her way at a posh drama school in London. Victoria, a glamorous upper-middle-class student, looks like she could be the key to her problems. But Shannon’s obsession with Victoria soon ends up taking her into some dark places. Truly original storytelling.
The Model Patient by Lucy Ashe (Simon & Schuster £16.99, 416pp)
Set in the 1960s, a once-successful model starts having therapy to resolve her problems but there are real question marks about the danger she is putting herself in. The therapist encourages her to transfer her emotions onto him. Disturbing questions about the therapist’s real motives propel an intense plot. This is a deep dive into the dangers of therapy. An intelligent and intriguing read.
LITERARY FICTION
STEPHANIE CROSS
This is Where the Serpent Lives is available now from the Mail BookshopÂ
THIS IS WHERE THE SERPENT LIVES by Daniyal Mueenuddin (Bloomsbury £18.99, 368pp)
This superb Pakistan-set debut was published in January, but still plays in my mind. Mueenuddin follows his characters over a number of decades, moving from farms to cities and poverty to luxury as their fortunes rise and fall. The novel’s first two parts were published as standalone stories in The New Yorker, but the addition of a third and indelible fourth, final act adds weight and resonance. A deserved contender for a Booker nod.
JOHN OF JOHN by Douglas Stuart (Picador £20, 416pp)
Stuart’s third novel is gentler, though no less involving, than its predecessors. It’s the early 1990s, and on a remote Hebridean island a young gay man and his taciturn, strict Presbyterian father are more alike than they know or could ever admit, both wrestling with forbidden desires. The prose is joyous in its brilliance, confirming Stuart as a writer of the first rank.
ANTHONY CUMMINS
DISCORD by Jeremy Cooper (Fitzcarraldo £14.99, 248pp)
I loved this quiet novel about two musicians whose temperaments are chalk and cheese.
Rebekah is a composer beset by doubt in middle age; Evie is a young saxophonist at ease with her own talent. We yo-yo between each character’s point of view as they prepare to premiere an experimental work at the Proms.
YOU ARE THE FÜHRER’S UNREQUITED LOVE by Jean-Noël Orengo (Penguin £14.99, 256pp)
From France came this chilling but gripping documentary fiction about the rise and fall of the Nazi architect Albert Speer, jailed after the Nuremberg trials.
The orchestration of the Holocaust is portrayed as a grimly banal workplace drama in which Speer’s seesawing ambition sees him crave entry to Hitler’s inner circle before he strives to minimise his association once their crimes were exposed.
CLAIRE ALLFREE
Natural Disaster by Lisa Owens (Virago £16.99, 208pp)
What a good idea, imagines the narrator of this funny novel, to devote her last 24 hours of maternity leave to a ‘special day’ with her two young sons, aged one and four. What a lovely time they will have. Hmm. Owens updates the tired genre of mum-lit with this perfectly observed comedy about the chaos of early parenthood and the miscommunications of marriage. Almost every line is a zinger.
Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke (Fourth Estate £16.99, 400pp)
This much-hyped debut has sparked furious debate online thanks to its excoriating portrait of a time-travelling trad-wife social media influencer who leverages her old-fashioned family life on a ranch to create utopian content for her millions of followers. Yet the novel is also a savage critique of white Christian nationalism and its pernicious impact on American politics. A beach read with bite.
