for the Royal Ballet, finds life is dictated by his status as an Earthstronger, a person whose body is not adjusted to Mars’ lower gravity and so poses a danger to those born on the planet.
Curtis Sittenfeld Romantic Comedy Penguin (Transworld), 28 March, pb, £9.99, 9781804991916
General fiction
As a longtime fan of Sittenfeld, I loved this and I think it’s her
most commercial novel yet. Successful TV sketch writer Sally Milz is done with love, but when a pop idol with a reputation for dating models is a guest host on the legendary late-night TV comedy show she writes for, things get interesting. A total joy from beginning to end, treat yourself!
three ingeniously linked but distinct narratives which, taken together, explore themes of freedom, responsibility and ethics, and the myth of individual choice. The novel asks: what happens when market values replace other notions of value and meaning? “A masterpiece of the highest order”, says A M Homes.
David Nicholls You Are Here Sceptre, 23 April, hb, £20, 9781444715446 I’ve been a massive fan of Nicholls’ tender, pin-sharp storytelling from the beginning (how on earth can it be 20 years since his début, Starter for Ten?!) so I am very much looking forward to this second chance romance between two lonely people who meet on a hiking trip.
Andrew O’Hagan Caledonian Road Faber & Faber, 4 April, hb, £25, 9780571381357
General fiction
From the author of Mayflies, this is a lead title for Faber this
Stuart Turton The Last Murder at the End of the World Raven Books, 28 March, hb, £20, 9781526634955
Adventure, crime & horror
Latest high- concept crime from the
author of the Costa Book Award-winning author of The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle is set on the last island in a world wiped out by a poisonous fog. When one inhabitant is found stabbed to death, there’s a race against time to solve a murder that no one can remember committing.
April
spring. “A brilliant state-of-the- nation novel that pulls down the facades of high society and knocks over the ‘good liberal’ house of cards. O’Hagan is not only a peerless chronicler of our times, but has other gifts—of generosity, humour and tenderness—which make this novel a joy to read”, says Monica Ali.
Naomi Wood This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things Phoenix (Orion Publishing Group), 4 April, hb, £16.99, 9781399615891
General fiction
I am really looking forward to this, the first short story
collection from novelist Wood (The Godless Boys, The Hiding Game and Mrs Hemingway, a R&J pick) which “illuminates the lives of malicious, subversive and untamed women” who refuse to behave how society expects them to. Includes the story “Comorbidities”, winner of the BBC Short Story Award.
Erin Kelly The House of Mirrors Hodder & Stoughton, 4 April, hb, £16.99, 9781399711968
Adventure, crime & horror
Building on the success of her last novel,
Neel Mukherjee Choice Atlantic Books, 4 April, hb, £18.99, 9781805460497
General fiction
The Booker- shortlisted author weaves a story from
The Skeleton Key, a Waterstones Thriller of the Month, this is billed as a dark and suspenseful novel about deadly family secrets in which the violent events of the sweltering summer of 1997, when conscientious student Karen first met glamorous aspiring actress Biba, reverberate in the present day.
Tea Obreht The Morningside Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 11 April, hb, £20, 9781399619899
Susan Stokes-Chapman The Shadow Key
General fiction
Latest from the author of the Orange Prize-winning The
Tiger’s Wife is set in the near- future in a dying world, where Silvia and her mother find themselves living and working at a luxury tower block, the eponymous Morningside, where Silvia becomes obsessed with one mysterious resident. A big, ambitious novel imbued with the joys of storytelling, says W&N, which has high hopes.
Stacey Halls The Household Manilla Press, 11 April, hb, £16.99, 9781838776817
Sagas, romance & historical
London, 1847. In the countryside beyond the city, Urania Cottage
offers a refuge to fallen women: prostitutes, petty thieves, the destitute. A few miles away, in a mansion in Piccadilly, one of the wealthy benefactors of Urania makes a chilling discovery. From the author of The Familiars, The Foundling and Mrs England.
Kevin Jared Hosein Hungry Ghosts Bloomsbury Publishing, 11 April, pb, £8.99, 9781526644459
Sagas, romance & historical
A masterful novel set in 1940s Trinidad which tells of the
Changoors and the Saroops. As the story unfolds the fates of the two families become dangerously intertwined as violence, religion and class come into play, motives are revealed, and the novel builds to a gripping climax. The Times agreed: “A shimmering slice of Trinidadian gothic... Sumptuous, brilliantly written”. Now in paperback.
Kate Atkinson
Normal Rules Don’t Apply Penguin (Transworld), 11 April, pb, £9.99, 9781804990803
General fiction
Atkinson’s first short story collection since Not the End of the
World is a “gemlike” collection in which nothing is quite as it seems. “What really binds these stories is their underlying theme, which has perhaps always been Atkinson’s true subject: the nature of storytelling itself”, said the TLS. Now in paperback.
SEASON HIGHLIGHTS May
Harvill Secker, 11 April, hb, £16.99, 9781787302907
Sagas, romance & historical
Gothic mystery. A London physician washes up in a remote
Welsh village where the locals believe in magic and treat him, a man of science, with suspicion. When Henry Talbot discovers that his predecessor died under mysterious circumstances, he is determined to find answers. From the author of Pandora.
Ingrid Persaud The Lost Love Songs of Boysie Singh Faber & Faber, 25 April, hb, £16.99, 9780571386499
General fiction
Second novel from the author of the Costa First Novel
Award-winning Love After Love is set in 1930s Trinidad and based on real historical figures. It tells of four very different women whose lives are connected and controlled by one man; the notorious, charismatic gangster Boysie Singh. An epic of wonder, danger and risk, says Faber.
Jo Hamya The Hypocrite Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 25 April, hb, £18.99, 9781399613224
General fiction
Hamya follows her début Three Rooms —“One of the most
candid and subtle explorations of class by an English novelist in recent years” according to the TLS—with this examination of the generational divide through the relationship between a novelist father and his playwright daughter. Hamya co-hosts the Booker Prize podcast.
Clare Pooley How to Age Disgracefully Bantam (Transworld), 25 April, hb, £14.99, 9781787637146
General fiction
I enjoyed The Authenticity Project, a genuinely heart-
warming read about the importance of connection. This concerns a popular social club for senior citizens, and the pensioners who are sorely underestimated by the council that attempts to close the club down.
Brandon Taylor The Late Americans Vintage, 25 April, pb, £9.99, 9781529922073
General fiction
The author of the Booker- shortlisted Real Life
returns with a deeply involving new novel of young men and women in a university town in the Midwest trying to work out who they are and what they want out of life. “Assures Taylor’s position as one of the most important novelists of his generation”, according to the Guardian. Now in paperback.
Val McDermid Lady Macbeth Polygon, 2 May, hb, £10, 9781846976759
Sagas, romance & historical
The Darkland Tales series reaches book five with peerless
crime writer Val McDermid plunging the reader into 11th- century Scotland where Gruoch Ingen Boite, granddaughter of the king, must scheme in order to survive the plotting of ruthless and ambitious men in a world of vicious intrigue.
Lissa Evans
Small Bomb at Dimperly Doubleday, 2 May, hb, £18.99, 9780857528292
Sagas, romance & historical
I am a fan of Evans’ witty, cleverly plotted and engaging
historical fiction (Old Baggage, V for Victory) so am very much looking forward to this. It tells of young Valentine Vere-Thissett who, after returning from the Second World War, unexpectedly becomes the seventh baronet and reluctant heir to Dimperly Manor, a gigantic, debt-ridden liability of a grand country house, stuffed with dependent relatives intent on clinging to an outdated way of life.
Daniel Mason North Woods John Murray, 9 May, pb, £9.99, 9781399809306
General fiction
Mason’s virtuosic fourth novel is the story of a single
house deep in the woods of New England, built by runaway Puritans, which will stand for 400 years in one form or another. This tells of those who inhabit it over the centuries, both human and animal, alive and spirit. An extraordinary achievement unjustly overlooked by certain literary prize committees. Now in paperback.
Alison Weir
Mary I: Queen of Sorrows Headline Review, 9 May, hb, £25, 9781472278135
Sagas, romance & historical
The story of Mary I, at first the adored only child of Henry VIII and
Katherine of Aragon, who is exiled from her father’s court when his marriage to her mother breaks down. Later, when the king promises to restore her to favour, his love comes with a condition and the choice Mary faces will haunt her for years to come…
Jilly Cooper Tackle! Penguin (Transworld), 9 May, pb, £9.99, 9780552177849
Sagas, romance & historical
Rupert Campbell- Black is back! Jilly Cooper’s legendary race-
February 2024–July 2024 11
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