Fiction

Magic tricks

19 August 2023 9:00 am

Five short stories with male narrators – including a seahorse and a vampire – revolve around masculinity’s contradictory demands and the wish to belong

Tangled threads

19 August 2023 9:00 am

The painted-over figure of Baudelaire’s muse eventually emerging from Courbet’s great canvas provides one of many haunting images in this complex novel

Violence in the Valley

12 August 2023 9:00 am

When a man with a machete infiltrates a local synagogue on Rosh Hashanah, the peace of one the ‘greenest, quietest, safest’ places in America is shattered

Other worlds, other lives

12 August 2023 9:00 am

A scientist finds a way to access other realities and bequeaths the secret to her daughter. But a dangerous adversary is on the trail

Adventures in Greeneland

12 August 2023 9:00 am

In skilfully told stories involving luck and changes of fortune, Osborne suggests that it’s not the hand you’re dealt that matters, but how you play it

From revolutionary Paris to the moon

12 August 2023 9:00 am

Thirlwell’s protagonist Celine flees malicious gossip in revolutionary France to ponder on sisterly solidarity, patriarchal violence, motherhood, colonialism and slavery

The good stepmother

5 August 2023 9:00 am

Jean entertains her young stepdaughter Leah with drawings and fairy stories – but the two grow sadly estranged in this haunting novel with its own fairy-tale similarities

Bizarre miniatures

5 August 2023 9:00 am

With flying narrators and women whose hair drags on the floor, there’s something of Leonora Carrington’s weird visions about Williams’s short stories

Sinister siblings

29 July 2023 9:00 am

A brother and sister are dispatched to a relative’s farm in Colorado, and grow up isolated, unfeeling and even estranged from each other

The perils of permissiveness

29 July 2023 9:00 am

The erotic adventures of a teenager who finally meets her match became a succès de scandale in 1920, and will still raise eyebrows today

A cherry orchard, three sisters and a summer romance: Tom Lake, by Ann Patchett, reviewed

29 July 2023 9:00 am

Alex Clark enjoys a poignant story centring on a cherry orchard, three sisters and their mother’s past love affair

Mother trouble: Commitment, by Mona Simpson, reviewed

22 July 2023 9:00 am

Simpson writes from personal experience in this moving story of three children’s commitment to their mentally ill mother

Tabloid fever

22 July 2023 9:00 am

A tabloid journalist desperate for a scoop pursues a young Irish mother whose daughter is rumoured to have killed a child. But is there any truth in the story?

Terrorists you might know or love: Brotherless Night, by V.V. Ganeshananthan, reviewed

22 July 2023 9:00 am

When a Sri Lankan medical student finds her brothers joining the Tamil Tigers, she is caught in a tangle of commitments to family, friends, homeland and vocation

A born storyteller

15 July 2023 9:00 am

Instead of swashbuckling, we get the Parisian art world, trout-fishing, unhappy couples and surrogate parenting – though the 20 stories for children are full of adventure

Love in idleness: The Four Corners of the Heart, by Françoise Sagan, reviewed

15 July 2023 9:00 am

In an atmosphere of languid torpor on a French family estate, an unfortunate relationship develops between a son, a father and a mother-in-law

Friendless, but not unhappy

15 July 2023 9:00 am

A retired librarian reflects on a childhood runaway adventure and a devastating romantic betrayal as he begins to forge new bonds in later life

The inner world of others

15 July 2023 9:00 am

As ever in her short stories, Hadley uses the smallest details – of dress, food and decor – to masterfully convey class, character and the inner world of others

How much worse can it get?

8 July 2023 9:00 am

The hero of many of Ford’s novels, Frank, now 74, is still trying to bond with his son Paul, who has been diagnosed with an incurable neurodegenerative condition

A whale of a problem

8 July 2023 9:00 am

Restoring the painting ‘View of Scheveningen Sands’, an art conservationist uncovers a vital detail, leading her to regret the pact she once made with her husband

The devil comes calling

8 July 2023 9:00 am

The sinister Sergeant Bertrand arrives in a ‘provincial, mediocre’ Russian town to wreak havoc in the lives of a couple mourning the loss of their son

What have we been missing?

1 July 2023 9:00 am

Ge’s short stories set in China are her most adventurous, ranging from politics in the time of Confucius to sex in the aftermath of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake

Too close to home

24 June 2023 9:00 am

Life in a comfortable modern flat with her husband and two young sons leaves Natsumi so depressed she thinks she’s losing her mind

A doomed affair: Kairos, by Jenny Erpenbeck, reviewed

24 June 2023 9:00 am

A young woman and an older, married man fall passionately in love in the last days of the GDR – but abuse and jealousy soon turn things sour

A study of isolation: The Late Americans, by Brandon Taylor, reviewed

24 June 2023 9:00 am

A group of students in Iowa City meet in bars and seminar rooms, but, separated by class, race and wealth, their connection is only fleeting