Fiction
A house of secrets: Where Are the Kings, by Donal Ryan, reviewed
When his mother’s suicide and father’s insanity leave young Jack effectively orphaned, other family members take him in. But will he always be haunted by whispers of scandal and ‘bad blood’?
An exhilarating chase: The Runner, by Scarlett Thomas, reviewed
Modern capitalism is this philosophical thriller’s dominant theme, with the protagonist on the run from assassins chasing a Bitcoin bounty
Journey of discovery: Beginning Middle End, by Valeria Luisella, reviewed
On a road trip to Sicily, a recent divorcee and her daughter make a new start of sorts, but one fringed by darkness both past and present
Into the wild: Country People, by Daniel Mason, reviewed
A Californian family, newly arrived in Vermont, face the harsh realities of the countryside and deeply alarming neighbours
Whimsical defence mechanisms: Sail Away Land, by Ben Pester, reviewed
Facing nightmarish scenarios, Pester’s characters respond with twee, online-inflected stoicism intended to soften an unforgiving world
A broken bond: Gaining Ground, by Joan Barfoot, reviewed
An absentee mother is tracked down to a remote Canadian cabin and held to account for abandoning her family many years earlier
Unlucky break: All In, by Claire Powell, reviewed
For an unhappily married couple on holiday with extended family the tensions just get worse
New York crime caper: Cool Machine, by Colson Whitehead, reviewed
The violent black demi-monde of the 1980s is thrillingly evoked in this gritty finale to Whitehead’s Harlem trilogy
Adolescent anxieties: Schoolgirl, by Osamu Dazai, reviewed
In this collection’s titular story, the tormented Dazai, who committed suicide aged 38, transfers his own existential crises into the private thoughts of an unhappy Tokyo schoolgirl
An alternative Paris: Château Rouge, by Amit Chaudhuri, reviewed
A writer, newly arrived in France on a visiting fellowship, is determined to explore the capital with fresh eyes
The past yields up its secrets: The Red Mouth, by Sheila Armstrong, reviewed
The dark power of an Irish peat bog lies at the heart of Armstrong’s story, with ancient bones revealing a mysterious, violent history
The appeal of asymmetry: Contrapposto, by Dave Eggers, reviewed
In his portrait of an incongruous friendship, Eggers explores the imbalances that constitute adult life – creativity vs commerce, talent vs discipline and solitude vs companionship
An ill-fated romance: Dark is the Morning, by Rupert Thomson, reviewed
In Italy’s rugged Abruzzo, prone to superstition and magical thinking, a doomed couple are bound together in a covenant ‘written in the stars’
The art of betrayal: Exhibition, by Alex Hyde, reviewed
Two young women artists in the 1990s collaborate in an affectionate, creative partnership – until one appropriates the other’s work and passes it off as her own
Distant shadows: Frame 37, by Nicholas Shakespeare, reviewed
The former journalist John Dyer is persuaded to investigate the death of old friend in an apparent hit-and-run. But is there a connection with Argentina’s Dirty War decades ago?
Too close for comfort: Family Friends, by Chloë Ashby, reviewed
Past secrets emerge to test the long-standing friendship of two couples on holiday together in the south of France
Family Tyrant: The Anniversary, by Andrea Bajani, reviewed
A middle-aged Italian contemplates his traumatic childhood, lived in constant fear of his abusive father
The uncertainty principle: The Interpreter’s Secret, by Andrew Rosenheim, reviewed
An interpreter working for the State Department hears of a clandestine arrangement between Washington and Moscow. But who to trust – and are seeming allies in fact adversaries?
A grandmother’s twisted mind: The Passage of Roses, by Tie Ning, reviewed
An ambitious, controlling matriarch will do anything to curry favour during the Cultural Revolution – even to the extent of deliberately harming her vulnerable young granddaughter
No fairytale: The Children, by Melissa Albert, reviewed
What caused the devastating house fire that killed a bestselling children’s author, leaving her son and daughter – the stars of her books – suddenly orphaned?
Vigilante justice: Pure Men, by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, reviewed
The grotesque posthumous lynching of a homosexual by a frenzied mob prompts Sarr’s protagonist to investigate the shadow world of gay life in Senegal
French letters – Albert Camus’s great epistolary love affair
To read the 15-year correspondence between Camus and the actress Maria Casarès is to experience a vertiginous roller-coaster between transcendent joy and abject suffering
Nothing works: The End of Everything, by John M. Harrison, reviewed
Set in ‘one of the well-known seasonal waterside art towns of Kent’, Harrison’s novel is both a bracing vision of environmental collapse and a post-Brexit cri de coeur
Tuscan escapades: Villa Coco, by Andrew Sean Greer, reviewed
An American archivist, hired to catalogue an elderly baronessa’s antiques, finds himself drawn into increasingly absurd adventures in the Italian countryside
The agonies of an abandoned wife: Mrs Dickens, by Emily Howes, reviewed
Charles Dickens is cast as a cruel, coercive controller, accusing the mother of his ten children of idleness and stupidity before discarding her for a younger woman
