Fiction
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
Jaded and adrift: I Want You to Be Happy, by Jem Calder, reviewed
Two lonely residents of east London, well-matched in their attachment to idle dreams, make an awkward stab at a relationship
Mapping the Emerald Isle: Land, by Maggie O’Farrell, reviewed
‘Maps are acts of colonisation, enemy tools,’ says Tomás, a reluctant cartographer in 19th-century Ireland, where cruel English landowners lord it over soulful, downtrodden locals
Signs of impending doom: The Given World, by Melissa Harrison, reviewed
When the cuckoo is no longer heard and even the last badger shuffles off, the inhabitants of Lower Eodham, a village mentioned in Domesday, sense that change can no longer be resisted
The Battle of Cross Street: High and Low, by Amanda Craig, reviewed
A group of writers in north London find themselves under siege in the local café as race riots erupt in a divided neighbourhood
Portrait of an addict: Keshed, by Stu Hennigan, reviewed
Hennigan’s doomed protagonist Sean surveys the wreckage of his past life as he drinks himself into oblivion
A family affair: Love Lane, by Patrick Gale, reviewed
Banished to the Canadian Prairies, Harry Cane lives on the land alone, except for secret nightly visits from his long-term lover and brother-in-law, Paul
Love and loneliness in the Outer Hebrides: John of John, by Douglas Stuart, reviewed
Summoned home to his dying grandmother in Harris, a gay young man is treated with both violence and tenderness by his father, a Calvinist precentor with a guilty secret
The good old bad old days: Prestige Drama, by Seamas O’Reilly, reviewed
Set in 1980s Derry, O’Reilly’s novel vividly captures the rifts and festering resentments within a close-knit community during the Troubles
No one is ordinary: The Things We Never Say, by Elizabeth Strout, reviewed
Writing about the inner lives and struggles of small-town characters, Strout reminds us that we are all battling something, even if we don’t broadcast it
