SEASON HIGHLIGHTS
at home asks him to question his next move. An exhausted nurse struggles to let go, having lost a much-loved patient in isolation. A middle-aged son, barred from his mother’s funeral, wakes to an oncoming hangover of regret.
“house-cooling” party. Effie’s not going, until she remembers something hidden in the house that she wants to get back. Her plan is to leave before they even know she’s there… I’ve been reading Sophie Kinsella since the 1990s, always a delight.
Penelope Lively Metamorphosis Fig Tree, 14 October, hb, £20, 9780241514764
General fiction What a treat: a selection of
Graeme Macrae Burnet Case Study Saraband, 7 October, hb, £14.99, 9781913393199
General fiction The third novel from the author
of the brilliant, and Booker Prize-shortlisted His Bloody Project. In 1960s London, a young woman believes that a charismatic psychotherapist has driven her sister to suicide. Intent on confirming her suspicions, she assumes a false identity as a client. A meditation on the nature of sanity, identity and truth itself, says Saraband. Sounds great.
stories from across Lively’s career, including two never- before published stories, introduced by the author. As Fig Tree says, her stories get beneath the everyday to the beating heart of human experience and she explores with keen insight the ways that individuals can become tangled in history, and small acts ripple through the generations.
Lee Child, Andrew Child Better off Dead Bantam Press, 26 October, hb, £20, 9781787633735
Adventure, crime & horror
Jack Reacher returns in the 26th in the
series—and the second to be written jointly by Lee Child and his brother Andrew. Relentless action, a gripping mystery and a host of evil new enemies are promised. A major Amazon Prime series is expected to air later in 2021.
Bridget Collins The Betrayals Te Borough Press, 28 October, pb, £8.99, 9780008272197
Sagas, romance & historical
The follow-up to her bestseller The Binding is set at an exclusive
Hillary Rodham Clinton, Louise Penny State of Terror Macmillan, 12 October, hb, £20, 9781529079692
Adventure, crime & horror
“High-stakes thriller of international
intrigue” from the former US presidential nominee, this follows a novice Secretary of State who has joined the administration of her rival and must unravel a deadly conspiracy after a series of terrorist attacks. It is, I am told, “informed by details only an insider could know”.
Sophie Kinsella The Party Crasher Bantam Press, 14 October, hb, £20, 9781787632455
Sagas, romance & historical
Effie’s parents have decided to split up and are selling the family
home, but first they are having a 14
academy tucked away in the mountains, where pupils are trained for the grand jeu: an arcane and mysterious contest. “A storyteller of rare imagination… This intricate symphony of a novel is both a disturbing portrait of fascism and a soaring meditation on artistic expression,” said the Mail on Sunday. Now in paperback.
author of Vox and Q. The economy of the United States has collapsed, leaving Miranda without her husband, her job and her home. There is only one place she and her young daughter can go: Femlandia, a female-only community. But it may not be the safe haven she thinks…
Courttia Newland Cosmogramma Canongate, 28 October, pb, £12.99, 9781786897091
Science fiction & fantasy
First collection of speculative short stories from the novelist and
screenwriter (most recently for Steve McQueen’s terrific BBC1 series “Small Axe”) envisages an alternate future as lived by the African diaspora: Robots driven by all-too-human urges, set out to colonise space; Kill Parties roam the streets of a post- apocalyptic world; a matriarchal race of mer creatures depends on inter-breeding with mortals to survive.
November
Salley Vickers The Gardener Viking, 4 November, hb, £16.99, 9780241482797
General fiction Two sisters use the inheritance
left to them by their late father to buy an old house on the Welsh Borders. They hire Murat, recently arrived from Albania, to be their gardener, and unwittingly unleash tensions in the quiet village. Said to be a “beautifully observed” tale of sisterhood, secrets and belonging.
Helen Oyeyemi Peaces Faber & Faber, 4 November, hb, £14.99, 9780571366576
General fiction Latest from the much-admired
Oyeyemi, one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists in 2013, is her first novel for Faber. Peaces is the story of Otto and Xavier Shin, a couple who embark on a mysterious train journey that takes them far beyond any destination they could have anticipated.
Ken Follett Never Macmillan, 9 November, hb, £20, 9781529076936
Adventure, crime & horror
A new direction for Follett, Nibbie-
shortlisted this year for the wonderful historical epic The Evening and the Morning. Never is a contemporary thriller that imagines a global crisis which threatens to lead to World War Three, as seen through the eyes of a female US president, a woman working for the CIA and a Chinese spymaster, among others.
Atlantic Books, 4 November, hb, £20, 9781838954529
Sagas, romance & historical
Third historical novel from the CWA Award- winning crime
writer is set during 1642–49. Jayne Swift, a Dorset physician from a Royalist family, treats the sick and wounded on both sides of the English Civil War and witnesses the brutality and devastation wrought by the conflict.
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 11 November, hb, £12.99, 9781474624398 Latest from the author of The Versions of Us is made up of 12 stories, each linked to the next, set in the run-up to Christmas as the characters strive to find the perfect gift. Maddy needs to find something for her newly-divorced old schoolfriend Peter, and Peter wants to find a make-it-better present for his angry teenage daughter Chloe…
Anne Glenconner A Haunting at Holkham Hodder & Stoughton, 11 November, hb, £16.99, 9781529336405
General fiction Second mystery from
the aristocratic author of Lady in Waiting and Murder on Mustique is set in 1943 at Christmas. Holkham Hall is now an army base as well as home to 11-year-old Lady Anne Coke, who is determined to investigate when mysterious events lead to a murder and a disappearance…
Amitav Ghosh, Salman Toor (illus) Jungle Nama John Murray, 11 November, hb, £12.99, 9781529349351
Sagas, romance & historical
An illustrated fable from the Booker-shortlisted author, this is the
story of an ancient legend about avaricious rich merchant Dhona; poor boy Dukhey; Dokkhin Rai, a mighty spirit who appears to humans as a tiger; and Bon Bibi, the benign goddess of the forest. It has “urgent” relevance to today’s climate crisis says John Murray Press.
Sarah Moss The Fell Picador, 11 November, hb, £12.99, 9781529083224
General fiction I’ve been a devoted reader
Christina Dalcher Femlandia HQ, 28 October, hb, £14.99, 9780008440329
General fiction Third dystopian thriller from the
The Bookseller Buyer’s Guide Fiction
Minette Walters The Swift and the Harrier
since her début Cold Earth, and loved recent novels Ghost Wall and Summerwater, so I am excited about this. It’s said to be a “witty and suspenseful novel that questions the place the world has become”, and follows a woman who takes a furtive fell walk in the middle of a two-week quarantine—one that turns into a mountain rescue operation.
Laura Barnett Gifts
Rose Tremain Lily Chatto & Windus, 11 November, hb, £16.99, 9781784744564
General fiction A “gripping” Victorian
melodrama about an orphan girl and a vengeful murder. Abandoned at the gates of a London park one winter’s night in 1850, baby Lily Mortimer was saved by a young police constable and taken to the London Foundling Hospital. She now works at Belle Prettywood’s Wig Emporium, but is hiding a dreadful secret...
Stephen Cox Our Child of Two Worlds Jo Fletcher Books, 11 November, hb, £18.99, 9781787471627
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