This preview highlights titles to be published in March


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hallucinogenic qualities capable of eliminating the psychic limits between one human mind and another, and 2024 Argentina, where the government is about to be able to track every movement of its citizens using sensors that identify DNA at a distance.


E M Reapy SKIN Head of Zeus, 5th, £8.99, 9781789540963 Natalie, who is obsessed with her shape, travels the world trying to find her place. “Unvarnished, wry and almost wincingly clear-eyed, the narrative covers acres of emotional terrain—from comedy, to tragedy, and the churned-up borderlands in between,” said the Mail.


our nature,” said the Wall Street Journal.


Namwali Serpell The Old Drift Vintage, 19th, £8.99, 9781784703998


Début Writing in the New York Times


Book Review, Salman Rushdie called this début from the Nigerian writer “dazzling”, and “an impressive book, ranging skillfully between histori- cal and science fiction, shifting gears between political argument, psychological realism and rich fabulism”.


Helen Oyeyemi Gingerbread Picador, 5th, £8.99, 9781447299424 The prize-winning author of Boy, Snow, Bird tells of Perdita Lee and her mother, Harriet, who live in a gold-painted 17th-floor flat with some rather verbal vegetation. “Rich, clever... lively and playful... both thoughtful and lavish... a bold book with a great deal of depth and mischief,” said the FT.


Sue Rainsford Follow Me To Ground Black Swan, 5th, £8.99, 9781784164942


Début Ada, who was made by her


father from a patch of Ground with healing quali- ties, spends her days with him healing the local folk. When she embarks on a relationship with one of them, everything will change. This blend of horror and feminist theory by a young Irish writer was called “beautiful and terrifying” by the Sunday Times.


Alvydas Šlepikas In the Shadow of Wolves Oneworld, 5th, £8.99, 9781786077042


Andrew Ridker The Altruists Vintage, 5th, £8.99, 9781784707545


Début Midwestern professor Arthur


Alter unleashes a Pandora’s Box when he invites the children who won’t speak to him back home under the guise of a reconcilation. “A whip- smart, wickedly funny and psychologically acute novel about the cost of doing good,” said the Mail.


Lila Savage Say Say Say Serpent’s Tail, 5th, £8.99, 9781788162234


Début The author, a home carer


herself, writes of a young woman who finds herself in an unintended career as a care worker, hired by a man to look after his beloved wife after a car accident causes a brain injury. “It is a book written for the better angels of


Thriller Adrian McKinty


The Chain Orion, 5th, £8.99, 9781409189602


One to Watch


Honestly, this thriller about a woman whose daughter is kidnapped, with the only way to get her back to kidnap another child and so forth down the


chain, is irresistible. It’ll be huge, and it deserves to be. Orion promises “an unmissable and innova- tive concept-led campaign that will make this one of the biggest breakout thrillers of the year”. Sold in auctions and pre-empts in 30 territories, with a seven-figure film deal from Paramount.


Ali Smith Spring Hamish Hamilton, 12th, £8.99, 9780241973356 The third instalment in Smith’s novel cycle inter- weaves the fate of three


Début As the Russians advance into


East Prussia, the “wolf children” secretly cross the border into Lithuania to beg for food. “This novel’s unflinching portrait of a forgotten tragedy is haunting,” said the Times. The Lithuanian author, who based this on real-life events, speaks English and is keen to be involved in promotion, says Oneworld.


people. Penguin says 2016’s Autumn has sold 177,000 copies and 2017’s Winter over 113,000 copies across all editions.


9780008194444


Pajtim Statovci Crossing Pushkin Press, 5th, £8.99, 9781782275121 Shortlisted for the National Book Award in Translated Literature, this follows two young men as they flee Albania. “The brutal beauty of Crossing comes from its almost cellular understanding of belonging and exclusion, love and cruelty,” said the Guardian. The paperback campaign will include bookseller and reader outreach, targeted social media and influencer campaigns, building on the author’s growing international reputation, says Pushkin.


Saskia Vogel Permission Dialogue Books, 5th, £8.99, 9780349700427


Début When Echo’s father dies, she


tries to lose herself in the lives of strangers, turning to a dominatrix named Orly. An “alternative femi- nist love story for the modern age” said Big Issue. By a former Granta publicist.


Will Wiles Plume 4th Estate, 5th, £8.99,


Literary


Max Porter Lanny Faber & Faber, 5th, £8.99, 9780571340293


One to Watch


Porter, author of the extraordinary Grief Is the Thing with Feathers, tells of a village not far from London, where Dead Papa Toothwort has


woken from his slumber in the woods. “Amazing and unforgettable,” said the Times. Faber has high hopes for this—Grief... has sold 140,000 copies across all editions, it says, and Lanny is “broader in its focus and will be even more wide-reaching in its appeal”. Rights have sold in 29 territories.


Journalist and alcoholic Jack Bick uncovers a huge story when he interviews a reclusive cult novelist, but the novelist knows some- thing about Bick, and the two men are drawn into a bizarre and violent partnership. “A superbly observed ‘how we live now’ satire on life and media in contemporary London,” said the Sunday Times. Wiles is the author of the darkly excellent Care of Wooden Floors.


Literary short stories


Julia Armfield Salt Slow Picador, 19th, £8.99, 9781529012590 A fantastical début collec- tion of short stories from the winner of The White Review Short Story Prize 2018.


Penguin Classics, 5th, £12.99, 9780241299852 A selection of the greatest Italian short stories of the last century, edited by Lahiri.


Commercial


Emma Burstall The Girl Who Came Home To Cornwall Head of Zeus, 5th, £8.99, 9781786698889 Chabela Penhallow visits the Cornish fishing village of Tremarnock to find out more about her roots, setting the cat amongst the pigeons.


Nicole Flattery Show Them A Good Time Bloomsbury Publishing, 19th, £8.99, 9781526611932


Début The Spectator said that in this


collection of short stories, Flattery is “like Sally Rooney... adept at captur- ing millennial culture, but her voice is more distinc- tive in its daring, eccentric intelligence”.


Jhumpa Lahiri The Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories


Claudia Carroll Women of Primrose Square Zaffre Books, 19th, £7.99, 9781785767760 Frank, who lives at number 79 Primrose Square, is about to turn 50, and makes the deci- sion to transition into life as a woman. The Secrets of Primrose Square was a number two bestseller in Ireland, says Bonnier.


Linda Holmes Evvie Drake Starts Over Hodder Paperbacks, 19th, £8.99, 9781473679276


Début A year after Evvie Drake’s


husband dies, former sports star Dean Tenney moves into an apartment at the back of her house, and the two become


TheBookseller.com


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