BOOKS


PBO, 9781913193782 A young woman defies convention in a small Pakistani village, with devastating results for her and her family. Facing public death for daring to love the “wrong” young man, she escapes to Lahore—and then disappears.


Previews New Titles: Fiction


Brontez Purnell Since I Laid My Burden Down Cipher Press, 12th, £9.99, PBO, 9781838390006 DeShawn leaves San Francisco and travels back to Alabama upon learning of his uncle’s death. While there, he is hit by memo- ries of growing up queer and Black in the 1980s South. One for fans of Paul Mendez’s Rainbow Milk, says the publisher.


A “coming of old age” illustrated novel about a woman whose imaginary conversations with Jane Austen guide her life. Also a meditation on age, literature, friendship, hope, and the joy of new oppor- tunities, says Fentum.


Debbi Voisey Only About Love Fairlight Books, 5th, £7.99, PBO, 9781914148002 Frank has a wonderful wife, and children he loves deeply, yet time and again he keeps risking it all.


Mario Levrero, Annie McDermott (trans) The Luminous Novel And Other Stories, 3rd, £14.99, PBO, 9781913505011 A writer attempts to complete the novel for which he has been awarded a big fat Guggenheim grant, while furiously procrasti- nating: getting an electri- cian to rewire his living room so he can reposition his computer, buying a variety of armchairs. An auto fictional explora- tion of the domestic and the self, says the publisher.


Antonio Muñoz Molina To Walk Alone in the Crowd Tuskar Rock, 5th, £18.99, HB, 9781788161947 An assembly of overheard conversations, subway ads, commercials on public screens and more, shaped into a “poem of contemporary life: an invitation to be carried along by the sheer energy of the digital metropolis”. From the author of Like a Fading Shadow.


Historical Celia Imrie


Orphans of the Storm Bloomsbury, 19th, £14.99, HB, 9781526614919


John D Rutter Approval Contraband, 6th, £9.99, PBO, 9781913393120


Début Winner of the NorthBound


Book Award in 2020, this tells of David’s journey to adopt a child with his partner Cici, as the pair face intense and intrusive scrutiny from the adoption panel. A man’s response to involuntary childless- ness is a perspective rarely explored in fiction, says Saraband.


Jonathan Walker The Angels of L19 Weatherglass Books, 19th, £10.99, PBO, 9781838018139 Liverpool, 1984. Teenager Robert is the same as the other kids hanging out at Garston Chapel, except that he is visited by angels. He can’t tell a soul, and his behaviour becomes increasingly strange as he desperately tries to work out what the angels are asking of him.


will locate the addressee herself, somewhere on the Isle of Wight.


Literary short stories


Bernard MacLaverty Blank Pages and Other Stories Jonathan Cape, 5th, £14.99, HB, 9781787333154 Twelve new stories from the Booker-shortlisted writer whose work is


carving out new lives in California while shoulder- ing the weight of the Khmer Rouge genocide. Immersive, comic and unsparing, says the publisher.


deceptively simple on the surface, but carries a turbulent undertow, as the dark currents of violence, persecution and regret pull at his subject matter: family love, the making of art, Catholicism, the Troubles and ageing.


Orsola Casagrande & Mustafa Göndogdu (eds) Kurdistan + 100: Stories from a Future State Comma Press, 19th, £9.99, PBO, 9781912697366 Ten Kurdish authors (including one currently serving an 183-year prison sentence for his views) commissioned to write stories set in their own versions of the future, in the year 2046, 100 years after the short-lived Kurdish Republic of Mahabad. Winner of an English PEN Translates Award 2021.


Crime & thriller


Trapeze, 19th, £14.99, HB, 9781409198000 Standalone thriller from the author of the Ragdoll series. In 1989, two detec- tives are on the trail of a serial killer who likes to re-create great works of art with the bodies of his victims. They never catch him. In 2006, another detective joins the cold case, but the new inves- tigation brings about a fresh reign of terror…


Simon Conway The Saboteur Hodder & Stoughton, 19th, £16.99, HB, 9781529334296 Spy thriller billed as a “standalone sequel” to The Stranger. Someone is putting into play a terrifying plan to disable and destroy the UK, and MI6 agent Jude Lyon must stop them. Is it someone from the Russian govern- ment? Or the terrorist mastermind Guy Fowle, a.k.a. “the Stranger”?


Heidi Amskinck My Name is Jensen Muswell Press, 5th, £12.99, HB, 9781838110185


Janet Todd Jane Austen and Shelley in the Garden Fentum, 5th, £9.99, PBO, 9781909572270


Loree Westron Missing Words Fairlight Books, 5th, £7.99, PBO, 9781912054039 Postal worker Jenny, with a collapsing marriage and a daughter about to fly the nest, finds a postcard from Australia on her sorting table, begging forgiveness but marked “insufficient address”. She


Anthony Veasna So Afterparties Grove Press UK, 19th, £14.99, HB, 9781611856514


Début Posthumous UK publication of


the much-praised début collection (lauded by George Saunders and Brit Bennett) from the Cambodian-American writer (1992–2020). It examines the lives of the children of refugees


One to Watch


A new departure from the author of the light comic Nice trilogy and Olivier Award-winning actress, this moves her into literary historical fiction territory, with appeal to fans of Victoria Hislop, says Bloomsbury. Inspired by a true story, which the


author pieced together from historical documents, this is the story of a young French woman’s quest to find her two sons, aged three and one, after her marriage collapses and they are abducted by their father, set against the backdrop of the sinking of the “Titanic”. Bloomsbury will support with a “major” marketing and publicity campaign. BookScan


26 7th May 2021 Historical


Sara Sheridan The Fair Botanists Hodder & Stoughton, 5th, £16.99, HB, 9781529336207 Gorgeous jacket for this historical tale, set in 1822 Edinburgh. In the new Botanic Garden, the Agave Americana plant looks set to flower, a rare event that occurs once every few decades. Newly widowed Elizabeth


offers her services as an artist to record the impend- ing bloom, and meets Belle, a secretive young woman who has a passion for botany, but also the lucrative, dark art of perfume creation. Publishing in partnership with the Botanic Garden, which will highlight on its social and retail channels and host an event, pandemic permitting.


Début First crime novel from the


author of the short story collection Last Train to Helsingør. On her way to work, a journalist in Copenhagen stumbles across the body of a murdered homeless man, and calls her ex-lover, a detective.


Daniel Cole Mimic


Robin Cook Viral Macmillan, 19th, £20, HB, 9781529059373 Latest from the master of the medical thriller sees Brian Murphy’s family fall prey to a rare but deadly airbourne virus. With his wife and daugh- ter rushed to ER, Brian is presented with a stag- gering hospital bill, which his insurance company refuses to cover.


One to Watch


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