This preview highlights titles to be published in May


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their family gatherings, will appeal to readers of Ordinary People by Diana Evans, says Pushkin ONE.


This “roiling” chronicle of motherhood and coloniza- tion traces the origins of a mysterious woman who sits naked by the river bordering a dead-end town.


Natalie Sue


I Hope This Finds You Well Te Borough Press, 23rd, £16.99, hb, 9780008604455


Début In this office comedy, a


depressed employee is accidentally granted access to all her colleagues’ emails and starts finding it harder to hate them. This “huge” acquisition will have an ambitious global campaign.


Jiaming Tang Cinema Love John Murray, 9th, £16.99, hb, 9781399810241


Début Spanning post-socialist


China, 1980s Chinatown and contemporary New York, this “sweeping, tender” début explores the forbidden desires and frustrated relation- ships of gay men and their wives in rural China.


Yoko Tawada, Margaret Mitsutani (trans) The Bridegroom Was a Dog Granta Books, 2nd, £12.99, hb, 9781803511320 The winner of the Akutagawa Prize 1992 and the most famous novel by the author of The Last Children of Tokyo is now available in Britain for the first time. In it, Tawada's romance develops between a Japanese schoolteacher and a dog from a fable, who appears to her as a doglike man.


Emily Usher Wild Ground Serpent’s Tail, 5th, £16.99, hb, 9781800815612


Début Centring work- ing-class


women’s experience, this “tender” lead début maps the relationship between two young people in small-town Yorkshire beset by the same forces that plague their families: substance abuse, poverty and racism.


TheBookseller.com


Willy Vlautin The Horse Faber & Faber, 2nd, £18.99, hb, 9780571384754 From the founding member of the bands Richmond Fontaine and The Delines, and the author of six previous novels including The Motel Life and Lean on Pete, comes a “poetic and deeply moving” story about what it really takes to be a musician, reflect- ing on the chequered career of a touring guitarist.


Aimée Walsh Exile John Murray, 23rd, £16.99, hb, 9781399815857


Début In this Northern Irish début, a


young woman’s life enters freefall after a fateful night out in Belfast and she finds herself adrift after moving to Liverpool.


Miranda Darling Thunderhead Scribe UK, 9th, £9.99, pbo, 9781915590428 The fifth book from the author of fiction and non-fiction books includ- ing Spies Like Us and The Siren’s Sting is a black comedy that narrates a day in the life of a young surburban mother leaving her abusive marriage.


Stevie Davies Earthly Creatures Honno Welsh Women’s Press, 23rd, £9.99, pbo, 9781916821019 From the Booker- longlisted author of The Element of Water, this coming-of-age novel is told from the perspective of the Hitler Youth. It follows a bookworm in 1940s Germany who is conscripted to teach in East Prussia amid the lurking threat of the Gestapo.


Nanae Aoyama, Jesse Kirkwood (trans) A Perfect Day to be Alone MacLehose Press, 9th, £10, pbo, 9781529427684 Winner of the Akutagawa Prize, this coming-of-age novel chronicles the uneasy alliance between a 20-year-old and the 71-year-old relative whose Tokyo home she moves into. A microscopic exami- nation of loneliness and heartbreak with flashes of deadpan humour, says MacLehose.


Paulina Chiziane, David Brookshaw (trans) The Joyful Cry of the Partridge Archipelago Books, 14th, £15.99, pbo, 9781953861689 Chiziane was the first woman to publish a novel in Mozambique, and the first African woman to win the principal award for Portuguese literature, the Camões Prize, in 2021.


Jean-Baptiste del Amo, Frank Wynne (trans) The Son of Man Fitzcarraldo Editions, 15th, £12.99, pbo, 9781804270912 Exploring the transmis- sion of violence from one generation to the next, this is the second novel by this prize-winning young French writer to be published in English by Fitzcarraldo, following Animalia.


Judith Heneghan Birdeye Salt, 15th, £10.99, pbo, 9781784633264 A new arrival seems like a lifeline for a hippy commune on the brink of collapse, but who is he really? The second adult novel from the author of Snegurochka is a family drama that exposes the holes in the threadbare hippy dream, 50 years on.


Rachel McRady Sun Seekers Verve Books, 28th, £9.99, pbo, 9780857308634


Début From an Emmy- winning


“Entertainment Tonight” writer comes a tale of memory, storytelling and a broken family united by


crisis, inspired by the author’s relationship with her own grandfather, who died in 2017 after battling dementia.


Empar Moliner, Laura McGloughlin (trans) Beloved 3TimesRebel Press, 23rd, £14.99, pbo, 9781739128753 Winner of the Ramon Llull Prize in Catalan literature, this “moving” novel charts the emotional and physio- logical transformation of a mature woman who fights against ageing, exploring friendship, forgiveness and menopause.


Granta Books, 16, £12.99, tpb, 9781803510804


Début The début from a “voice of Gen Z”


and New York literary It Girl whose stories and podcast have won a cult following, these “provoca- tive” stories engage with life online and the gulf in understanding between Boomers and Zoomers.


Lottie Mills Monstrum Oneworld, 16th, £16.99, hb, 9780861545629 This “chilling and tender” neo-gothic collection draws on the author’s experience to explore otherness and disability. Mills was named 2020 BBC Young Writer of the Year for her short story, “The Changeling”, included here.


Jaap Robben, David Doherty (trans) Afterlight World Editions, 7th, £16.99, pbo, 9781642861471 The fourth novel from the Dutch author of the International Man Booker-longlisted Summer Brother gives voice to the silent grief of the moth- ers of stillborn children and explores the historic impact of repressive reli- gious and social mores.


Christos Tsiolkas The In-Between Atlantic Books, 5th, £9.99, pbo, 9781805461852 The author of The Slap delivers a queer love story about two middle-aged men, burnt by previous relationships, who risk falling in love again.


Literary short stories


Lucy Caldwell Openings Faber & Faber, 16th, £14.99, tpb, 9780571382750 The third collection from the author of Multitudes and Intimacies offers a striking exploration of motherhood and marriage, says Faber. The playwright, novelist and Patron of Belfast Book Festival 2023 is the winner of the 2021 BBC National Short Story Award and the 2022 E M Forster Award.


Honor Levy My First Book


Amor Towles Table For Two Hutchinson Heine- mann, 16th, £18.99, hb, 9781529154108 From the bestselling author of A Gentleman in Moscow, six stories based in New York City around the year 2000, and a novella set in Golden Age Hollywood, following the character Evelyn Ross from Towles’s novel Rules of Civility. BookScan 


Various A Cage Went in Search of a Bird Abacus, 30th, £18.99, hb, 9780349146409 Penned by Ali Smith, Tommy Orange, Naomi Alderman, Helen Oyeyemi, Keith Ridgway, Yiyun Li, Charlie Kaufman, Elif Batuman, Leone Ross and Joshua Cohen, these original stories inspired by Kafka’s work are being published to mark the centenary of his death, 3rd June 1924.


Gianni Washington Flowers From the Void Serpent’s Tail, 5th, £14.99, hb, 9781800816312


Début These gothic tales offer


“provocative rejoinders” to classic novels such as The Picture of Dorian Grey and Frankenstein, from a Black American perspective.


Rita Bullwinkel Belly Up Daunt Books Originals, 9th, £ 9.99, pbo, 9781914198748 This début collection of


“grotesque and tender” stories from the author of the novel Headshot, forthcoming from Daunt in March, was critically acclaimed on US publica- tion in 2016. “Mysterious, strange, and fearlessly funny”, says Lorrie Moore.


Crime & thriller


Alice Bell Displeasure Island Corvus, 5th, £14.99, hb, 9781838958435 The playful follow-up to cosy mystery Grave Expectations, a BBC Radio 2 Book Club pick.


Dugald Bruce-Lockhart Second Skin Muswell Press, 10th, £16.99, hb, 9781739123871 The second thriller from the actor, director and author of The Lizard is a tale of murder, kidnap and mafia set in the Greek island heat.


Linda Calvey Faith Mountain Leopard Press, 9th, £16.99, hb, 9781802794762 The author of the Ruby Murphy series delivers a gritty thriller about a woman who flees her gangster lover in Yorkshire to start afresh in London’s East End. BookScan


Eve Chase


The Midnight Hour Michael Joseph, 9th, £16.99, hb, 9780241633915 The 1998 disappearance of a former model returns to haunt her Notting Hill home’s new owner 21 years later, in the new mystery from the author of The Glass House.


Harlan Coben Think Twice Century, 23rd, £22, hb, 9781529906103 The 12th instalment in the Myron Bolitar series finds the sports agent


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