TEN NOT TO MISS Ten titles not to miss Highlights of the Season


(Artificial Friend) who observes in minute detail the world she can see from the window of the store, where she waits for a customer with the right child. When she is chosen, and moves in with her new family, Klara’s devotion will lead to a heart- breaking request.


Sagas, romance & historical


Hurrah! A sequel to her thoroughly charming début Dear Mrs Bird, a


Zakiya Dalila Harris The Other Black Girl Bloomsbury Publishing, 10 June, hb, £14.99, 9781526630377


General fiction I don’t tend to include débuts I


haven’t read yet here, but the pitch for this is so enticing: “‘Get Out’ meets The Devil Wears Prada”. It was acquired in a nine-way auction in the UK, and a 14-way auction in the US. Editorial assistant Nella is fed up of being the only Black employee at an all-white New York publishing house, and so is delighted when Hazel starts work in the cubicle next door. But things deteriorate, and hostile notes start to appear on Nella’s desk, turning the civilised atmosphere of a publishing house into a slowly unravelling, threatening horror. Both a whip- smart thriller and sly social commentary, says Bloomsbury. Roll on June!


Lucy Jago A Net for Small Fishes Bloomsbury Publishing, 4 February, hb, £16.99, 9781526616623


Sagas, romance & historical


Sumptuous début historical fiction set in the court of James I which


revisits a notorious scandal: the poisoning of courtier and poet Sir Thomas Overbury in the Tower of London in 1613. Those charged with his murder included Mistress Anne Turner, a society dresser; and aristocratic beauty Frances Howard, married to a brutish Earl. All of London was agog at the salacious details aired at trial— lust, sorcery, witchcraft and murder—but here Jago explores the friendship between the two women and the reckless risks they took in pursuit of their individual happiness—an almost unknown concept at the time. Highly recommended.


Book of the Month for me in 2018. Set in wartime London, this continues the adventures of Emmeline Lake now that the formidable editor Henrietta Bird has left Women’s Friend magazine and Emmy herself is now the advice columnist. When the Ministry of Information calls on Britain’s women’s magazines to help recruit desperately needed female workers to the war effort, Emmy is thrilled to help. But when she and best friend Bunty meet a young woman who shows them the very real challenges that women war workers face, Emmy must tackle a life-changing dilemma. Sounds like the perfect escapist read.


Taffy Brodesser-Akner Long Island Compromise Wildfire, 1 June, hb, £18.99, 9781472273031


General fiction I am very excited about


this, the second novel from the New York Times journalist whose début Fleishman is in Trouble was, hands down, one of the most entertaining, incisive and brilliant novels I read last year. Her second is billed as a “darkly exhilarating” novel about an American family and its inheritance. In 1982, a wealthy businessman and father-of- three was kidnapped and held for ransom. Later released, he tried to forget all about it, but now, nearly 40 years later, he is dwelling on both the trauma and a question: where did the ransom go? And if he were ever to find the money, would it finally give him and his family the closure they have been yearning for?


Kazuo Ishiguro Klara and the Sun Faber & Faber, 2 March, hb, £20, 9780571364879


General fiction Expect acres of coverage for


this, the first novel from the Booker Prize-winning author since he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature 2017, “who, in novels of great emotional force, has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world”. Narrated by Klara, an AF


Yaa Gyasi Transcendent Kingdom Viking, 4 March, hb, £14.99, 9780241433379


General fiction I loved Gyasi’s phenomenal


A J Pearce Yours Cheerfully Picador, 24 June, hb, £12.99, 9781509853946


début Homegoing, a Book of the Month for me in 2017 and this, her second novel, although very different in terms of scope, is surely that book’s equal in terms of storytelling, structure and emotional heft. It is the story of a family, narrated by Gifty, a neuroscientist at Stanford University. As the story unfolds, we learn that Gifty’s mother left


Ghana as a young woman with a baby (Gifty’s older brother), followed by her husband, for a new life in Alabama. But that family of four is now two and, as Gifty relates her family’s story, which includes financial struggles, addiction and devastating loss, we see how her childhood has led to the life she has built for herself as an adult. Powerful and deeply moving, this is an absolute must-read.


Jon McGregor Lean Fall Stand Fourth Estate, 29 April, hb, £14.99, 9780008204907


General fiction I’ve been a fan of McGregor’s


writing since the beginning, so this will be a real highlight of 2021. When an Antarctic research expedition goes wrong, the consequences are far-reaching—for the men involved and for their families back home. Robert “Doc” Wright, a veteran of Antarctic field work, holds the clues to what happened, but he is no longer able to communicate them. While Anna, his wife, navigates the sharp contours of her new life as a carer, Robert is forced to learn a whole new way to be in the world. Hilary Mantel has already read it: “Beautiful. It leaves the reader moved and subtly changed, as if she had become part of the story.”


Leone Ross This One Sky Day Faber & Faber, 15 April, hb, £14.99, 9780571358007


General fiction An impressive 15 years in the


writing, I’m told, this is the third novel from Jamaican-British writer Ross and is set over the course of a single day on the fictional archipelago of Popisho, where the islanders are born with cors (magical abilities). Xavier Redchoose is the macaenus, a chef with a special gift, who has a wedding feast to conjure for the Governor’s daughter. Meanwhile, Anise investigates her husband’s infidelity and a wider cast of islanders go about their business. A love story, and a masterful blend of magic realism, satire and sheer joy: every page has something new to enchant the reader.


Maggie Shipstead Great Circle


February 2021–July 2021 09


Doubleday, 27 May, hb, £14.99, 9780857526809


General fiction This, the third novel from the


author of the wonderful Seating Arrangements, will go straight to the top of my May reading pile. Seven years in the writing, it tells of orphan Marian Graves, who grows up in 1920s Montana and becomes a daredevil female aviator, culminating in a doomed attempt to fly from pole to pole, after which she is never seen again. Marian’s story is interwoven with that of Hadley Baxter, a troubled Hollywood starlet who will play Marian 50 years later: a role that will lead her to probe the deepest mysteries of the vanished pilot’s life. A story of two defiant women in search of an undefinable freedom, says Transworld.


Francis Spufford Light Perpetual Faber & Faber, 4 February, hb, £16.99, 9780571336487


Sagas, romance & historical


The dazzling second novel from the author of Golden Hill (which


won the Costa First Novel Award, the RSL Ondaatje Prize and the Desmond Elliott Prize) begins one Saturday lunchtime in 1944, when a flying German bomb explodes in a branch of Woolworths in south-east London, killing everyone inside. Among the dead are five little children: twins Jo and Valerie, Alec, Ben and Vern. Light Perpetual imagines the futures of these working-class children, if they had been permitted to live their ordinary lives, against the backdrop of the tumultuous events of the 20th century. It shows both the mutability of individual lives—their jobs, love affairs, ambitions and failures— and also the ever-changing city over the past 50 years. Intimate, absorbing and technically brilliant. I loved it.


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