Pro tip: Don't read this gothic horror right before bedtime, especially if you're prone to nightmares. When Beatriz arrives at Hacienda San Isidro, she hopes it'll be her salvation. But almost right away, strange and terrifying happenings reveal that there's something very wrong at the home. With her husband away and that might be for the best , she relies on a young priest, Padre Andréz, to help her. But he's no ordinary priest, and this is nothing a little holy water will fix. Jameela wants to see her memoir on the best-seller list. But when she asks her imam for help, it sets off a chain of events that involve tangling with a terrorist organization called D.

and a rescue operation to Syria. This black comedy takes aim at American foreign policy in the Middle East in a hilariously inventive way. Delightfully weird and full of the richly painted characters and captivating story that makes Moshfegh a master of her craft, this historical fiction throws readers back into Medieval times so completely, you can smell the sheep dung. You'll meet a motherless shepherd, a sadistic lord, a wet nurse with occult powers and a priest whose own faith is tested by devastating famine and drought. Ava Wong has always played by the rules, but all that's gotten her is a dusty law degree, an unsatisfying marriage and a toddler whose tantrums are seriously out of control. When her former college roommate Winnie Fang recruits Ava to help move counterfeit handbags from her native China, she's drawn into a scheme that's larger than life.

But once Winnie disappears, Ava is, quite literally, left holding the bag. This one's as flashy as a designer store window, and just as enticing. With prescient themes like climate change, government surveillance and the power of connection, Yuknavitch's latest is a tour de force that spans centuries and continents. It's not quite historical fiction, not quite speculative, not exactly dystopian and somehow all of the above — and more. In this charming rom-com, med school student Angie is a child of Ghanian immigrants with sky-high standards.

That is, until the handsome Ricky shows up. Angie has sworn to focus on her studies, but Ricky might just force her to rearrange her priorities. If you're looking for a swoon-worthy beach read, you've found it. RELATED: 20 More New Books to Add to Your Summer Reading List. As Lia confronts a devastating diagnosis, secrets from her past begin to infect her present just as illness overtakes her body. As its voice grows stronger and stronger, Lia and her family have their own battles to fight in its wake. In these luminous stories, Afghan characters both in the homeland and in the diaspora grapple with their heritage and the scars war has left on their bodies, minds and families. Whether or not you're a gamer, you'll never look at video games the same way again.

When a fire tears through Spokane in , shysters and opportunists rise from the ashes. One of those is banker Barton Heydale, who sees shaking down his fellow citizens as a renewed reason to live. That, and sheltering the prostitute Roslyn with whom he's fallen madly in love. But when the fire investigator and con man Quake Auchenbaucher comes to town, he and Roslyn fall for one another, too. This story is darkly funny, deliciously devious and hugely inventive, a magical twist on the allure of the American West and who goes there to seek their fortune. Provocative, fast-paced and darkly funny, this irreverent novel follows controversial folk singer Aviva Rosner through her shocking album release to mixed reviews, international tours and fertility struggles as she tries to reconcile her own longing for a baby with her distrust of technological intervention.

It's an energizing read for anyone who's ever been told, "Oh, you're just on your period," albeit a challenging one. When Mika gets a call from Penny, the daughter she placed for adoption 16 years ago, she tells a few lies just to impress her. Then, when Penny visits, Mika constructs an elaborate ruse to uphold her story. When it all comes crashing down, mother and daughter have to rebuild their faith in each other. Gentrification looms large for the residents of the Banneker Homes, a Harlem high rise where the threat of eviction looms. You'll find yourself chuckling, tearing up and shaking your head along with the vividly painted characters in these stunning interwoven stories. While attending a progressive upstate New York college, Shay and her two best friends fell under the spell of a man who said he could teach them the ways of the world.

That is, until it all goes wrong. Years later, Shay teams up with a childhood friend-turned true crime podcaster to uncover a ring of depraved predators that goes deeper and higher than anyone knew. I barely breathed through most of this horrifyingly engrossing story, so consider yourself warned. Can you ever really go home again? In this story that alternates between our protagonist, Ana's, childhood and early twenties, we see the impact of mental illness, isolation and class on a family. It's a story of mothers and daughters, love and what belonging really means. This is a novel about change on stages large and small, figurative and literal, as it explores the tensions between a mother's expectations and her daughters' dreams for themselves against the backdrop of a gentrifying San Francisco.

It will get inside your heart, break it wide open and stay there for a long time. Besides, the music that runs through their lives is basically a character of its own. If you've read the eerily familiar plague novel Severance , you probably already smashed the preorder button. This delightfully strange dip back into Ma's brain is as wonderful as you expect. It touches on what amounts to the greatest hits of human existence: friendship, love, the meaning of home and why we need each other. Read it. Just read it. You don't need to read the amazing Less to have a blast picking back up with Arthur Less on a foible-filled roadtrip across America.

After the death of an old lover, the moderately successful author finds himself careening across the country in a dilapidated camper van with an elderly pug, finding himself in the kinds of scrapes that won the hearts of readers everywhere in the first installment. Growing up together in Karachi, Maryam and Zahra are polar opposites. But their differences don't define them, even after a scary incident threatens to derail both of their futures. Decades later, each has carved out her own path in London society when their shared past comes home to roost. This poignant story asks what happens when we're forced to choose between friendship and principles. This sweeping force of nature reminiscent of Charles Dickens' David Copperfield follows an Appalachian boy born into difficult circumstances.

Demon finds himself battling hunger, drugs, child labor and the foster care system. The Times also praises the author: "[Lisa McInerney has] high-voltage verve and an acute understanding of Ireland. Credit: John Murray. Longlisted for the Booker Prize, this New York Times bestseller weaves together the stories of two women living decades and continents apart: Marian Graves, an intrepid pilot whose plane goes missing while she attempts to circle the globe, and Hadley Baxter, a scandal-racked Hollywood actress recently sacked from a Twilight-alike movie franchise, who is drawn to Graves's story. Great Circle, according to The New York Times , "grasps for and ultimately makes something extraordinary", while The Guardian found it "moving and surprising at every turn".

In Second Place, the narrator invites a famous artist to use her guest house in the grounds of her family home in the coastal countryside. But as the summer unfolds, his presence begins to interrupt the tranquillity of her household. The novel is a comedic study of gender and privilege, and an exploration of art, relationships and morality. The Guardian describes the novel as "exquisitely cruel", and Cusk as "our arch chronicler of the nullifying choice between suffocation and explosion". The New Statesman also praises the novel, comparing it favourably with her previous works: "Second Place feels more exposing than anything Cusk has written in recent years". The third and final instalment of her genre-bending "living autobiography" trilogy, Levy follows Things I Don't Want to Know and The Cost of Living with another impressive and immersive blend of memoir, cultural analysis and feminist critique.

In Real Estate, we find the writer approaching 60, travelling the world, reflecting on her past, the writers who have influenced her, and women's status in a patriarchal society. The Evening Standard called it "a beautifully-crafted and thought-provoking snapshot of a life," while the FT described it as "a manifesto for living and writing". Credit: Bloomsbury. Akwaeke Emezi is the author of three novels, and their latest work, a memoir, is structured as a collection of letters addressed to friends and family — both biological and chosen — and fellow writers.

The gradual unfolding of identity is at its centre, as the writer describes the experience of a non-binary life lived in parallel realities. The New York Times describes it as "an audacious sojourn through the terror and beauty of refusing to explain yourself". The memoir is "not for the faint-hearted" and has "gruesome" moments, says The Washington Post. There is a "pretentiousness" and "arrogance" about the book, but ultimately, says the Post, "Emezi delivers a sharp, raw, propulsive and always honest account of the trials they endure as a person 'categorised as other'. In this new work of non-fiction, subtitled A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America, the poet, scholar and Atlantic staff writer Smith visits nine key sites linked with the legacy of slavery in the US, from Thomas Jefferson's Monticello in Charlottesville, Virginia to Angola, a Louisiana penitentiary and former plantation where inmates work the land for next-to-no payment.

Blending academic research with a vast array of in-person interviews, Smith's sweeping survey is "a reckoning with reckonings" and "an extraordinary contribution to the way we understand ourselves," wrote the New York Times. Credit: Little, Brown and Company. The New York Times said: "The naked and fearless emotions that made Sinead O'Connor such a riveting artist, shine through her words and self-awareness in the end, she emerges as a survivor. George Saunders, the acclaimed US novelist, short story writer and Booker prize-winning author of 's Lincoln in the Bardo, has been teaching creative writing at Syracuse University for the past 20 years.

A condensation of Saunders' course on the 19th-Century Russian short-story in translation, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain takes the reader through seven stories by Tolstoy, Chekhov, Gogol and Turgenev with a line-by-line analysis that is part writing seminar, part humorous and optimistic life philosophy. If that sounds like hard work, it's anything but. Vanity Fair describes the book as "generous, funny, and stunningly perceptive," while The Telegraph calls it "enormous fun to read". The acclaimed Klara and the Sun is Ishiguro's eighth novel — and his first since being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in The narrator is Klara, an "Artificial Friend" who observes the world around her with an android mix of intelligence and naivety.

When she is chosen by a family to live with them, she must adjust her thinking — and the novel's underlying theme of what it means to love is explored. The Observer says: "Ishiguro has written another masterpiece, a work that makes us feel afresh the beauty and fragility of our humanity". The strange relationship between Edie, a struggling year-old black artist, and a middle-aged white couple she moves in with is the focus of Luster, the striking debut novel from US writer Raven Leilani — released in the US in , and in the UK in Described by The New Yorker as "a highly pleasurable interrogation of pleasure," Leilani skewers 21st-Century sexual, racial and office politics with a dry, dark and frequently absurd comic style.

Aftershocks: Dispatches from the Frontlines of Identity tells the true story of Owusu's peripatetic upbringing, as she moves across the globe — to Tanzania, England, Italy, Ethiopia and Uganda among others — with her diplomat father. The narrative sweeps forward and back in time, and the thematic structure echoes an earthquake, as each upheaval forces the ground beneath her to shudder. The New York Times calls it "a gorgeous and unsettling memoir". Twelve pieces written between and by one of America's most revered and influential writers are brought together here for the first time.

They include descriptions of trips to William Randolph Hearst's San Simeon castle and a Gamblers Anonymous meeting in Las Vegas, along with essays on Ernest Hemingway, Nancy Reagan and the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. The volume also includes Didion's iconic Berkeley lecture 'Why I write', in which she explained: "I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means". This new collection, according to Vox , "works like a skeleton key to unlock Didion's continued significance in American culture. Nominated for the Women's Prize, Destransition, Baby tells the story of Reese, a year-old trans woman who longs to be a mother, her ex-partner Amy — who has detransitioned and become Ames — and Ames's boss and girlfriend Katrina, who he has impregnated.

The evolving dynamics between the three are explored as they ponder the idea of raising a baby as a trio. London's Evening Standard praises the book's "irreverent, zeitgeist-nailing quality", and describes it as "an exuberant novel of ideas, desire and life's messy ironies". Situated on an antebellum Mississippi plantation known as "Empty", Robert Jones Jr's debut centres on a group of enslaved people and slave owners, their stories interwoven with voices from the past. At its heart is a queer love story between Isaiah and Samuel that, according to the New York Times , is its "most tender and stunning achievement".

In both its form and content, The Prophets is reminiscent of and inspired by the work of Toni Morrison, its narrative reaching back and forth, as The Guardian writes , "wedded to its period but also of our times, exploring the pressing questions that have plagued America since its founding". Patricia Lockwood's modern meditation is a genre-defying book that asks the question "is there life after the internet? A woman who has become well-known for her social-media posts attempts to negotiate the new language of what she calls "the portal", and becomes increasingly overwhelmed. When real life comes crashing into her world, questions about love and human connection are raised. The New York Times Book Review describes it as "a book that reads like a prose poem, at once sublime, profane, intimate, philosophical, witty and, eventually, deeply moving".

In his third novel, US writer Rumaan Alam conjures up an apocalyptic novel with a twist, subverting genre expectations by never revealing the true nature of the disaster that unfolds. We follow a middle-class white family from their Brooklyn home to an idyllic holiday Airbnb on Long Island, whose owners — a rich black couple in their 60s — knock at the door late at night asking to shelter from a cataclysmic event in the city. What follows is a neatly plotted and cuttingly observed drama about race and class, interrogating how people really act in a crisis. Published in the US in , and in the UK earlier this year, Leave the World Behind, described as "enthralling" by The New Yorker , could not be more relevant, creating, says The Irish Times , "an eerily believable world of apocalypse now".

It tells the story of year-old Rachel who works for a talent agency and measures out her days in calories consumed, as her mother had taught her growing up. When Rachel meets the overweight Miriam her desires both spiritual and sexual come to the fore. As The Washington Post puts it: "Broder's second novel combines her singular style with adventures of the calorie-and-climax-filled kind, sumptuous fillings surrounded by perfectly baked plot. With his debut Open Water — ostensibly a love story between a young photographer and a dancer — Azumah Nelson uses his central romance to explore themes of race, class and London life, while taking risks with form the narrative is in the second-person, neither central character is named. It's a celebration of black artistic excellence, weaving in the photography of Roy DeCarava , Barry Jenkins, Solange and Kendrick Lamar; Zadie Smith even makes a cameo.

It is described as a "bracing and nuanced exploration of black masculinity" by the i newspaper , while The Guardian praises Azumah Nelson's "elegance of style" and "exciting ambition". In 10 short stories set in contemporary China, Te-Ping Chen evokes the lives of various characters, from an anti-government blogger and her twin brother, a competitive gamer, to a call-centre worker and a young woman thwarted in her real ambition and working as a florist. The stories mix sharp social observation with magical realism. The LA Times describes the debut story collection as "wildly inventive" and "elegant". Chen's stories are "magistic and elemental, a reflection on how we all live, no matter where we live. The logic of her observations can be terrifying". The nameless narrator discovers that her boyfriend is an anonymous internet conspiracy theorist, the first in a series of twists that depict how truth can be shaped by lies.

She flees to Berlin and embarks on her own manipulations and deceptions. It is, says The Guardian "a dark comedy about a dark time, and a prismatically intelligent work of art". Credit: 4th Estate. Let us know in the comments what your favourite books have been. Read the full list Best fiction of Imogen Russell Williams on reimaginings of King Arthur and Medusa, luminous fairytales and the conclusion to the unforgettable Noughts and Crosses series - plus books for young readers by Ben Okri and inaugural poet Amanda Gorman. Read the full list Best crime and thrillers of Adam Roberts selects five of the best science fiction novels of the year - from murder on a spaceship to a feminist utopia. Read the full list Best science fiction books of Fiona Sturges rounds up the best celebrity autobiographies, from Brian Cox to Miriam Margolyes, as well as a poignant account of a woman who helped Aids patients and terrific studies of DH Lawrence and Barbara Pym.

This website is produced by BBC Global News, a commercial company owned by the BBC and just the BBC. No money from the licence fee was used to create this website. Following two acclaimed, heavyweight and Pulitzer Prize-winning novels, 's The Underground Railroad, made into a TV series this year , and 's The Nickel Boys, Colson Whitehead's latest is a crime caper, set partly against the backdrop of race riots in s Harlem. Its protagonist is Ray Carney, a young furniture-seller caught up in a jewel heist. London's Evening Standard praised the novel's entertainment value, writing, "A more purely enjoyable novel is unlikely to emerge this year. Credit: Penguin Random House. In the Booker Prize-shortlisted A Passage North the narrator looks back at a lost love affair, and reflects on the mysterious death of his grandmother's carer, who had lost her young sons in the Sri Lankan civil war.

Booker judge Horatia Harrod describes how the author "turns his poetic sensibility and profound, meticulous attentiveness to the business of living in the aftermath of trauma". She adds: "In hypnotic, incantatory style, Arudpragasam considers how we can find our way in the present while also reckoning with the past. The third instalment in Strout's popular "Amgash" series, Oh William! finds the year-old, newly-widowed writer Lucy Barton reconnecting with her first husband, with whom she shares two daughters. Through the novel's time-switching narrative, confessional asides and spare prose, Strout explores the nature of William and Lucy's bond, and much more besides, with "quiet virtuosity", writes The Guardian. The Fortune Men by Nadifa Mohamed. The novel The Fortune Men explores a real-life case of a seaman, Mahmood Mattan, from British Somaliland — living in Wales — who was wrongfully convicted of murder, and then executed.

Set in the multiracial community of s Tiger Bay, Cardiff, the novel has been praised for evoking the past while also highlighting present-day injustice. The Guardian says: "In her determined, nuanced and compassionate exposure of injustice, Mohamed gives the terrible story of Mattan's life and death meaning and dignity". The novel was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and judge Maya Jasanoff describes the book as "exhilaratingly global", adding: "Grippingly-paced, and full of complex, richly-drawn characters, the novel combines pointed social observation with a deep empathetic sensibility. This is the second time Tóibín has fashioned a novel out of a celebrated author's life — his first, in , was The Master, inspired by Henry James.

With The Magician, Tóibín turns to the great German writer Thomas Mann, whose works include Buddenbrooks, The Magic Mountain and Death in Venice. The New York Times called Tóibín's sweeping biographical tome "a symphonic and moving novel" that brings the rather austere author to vivid life, exploring his closeted sexual desires he was married with six children but desired men and a life lived in exile from Hitler's Germany. Credit: Simon and Schuster. At the age of 51, twins Jeanie and Julius still live with their mother Dot in isolated, rural poverty.

Self-sufficient in their own small world, they have created a sanctuary of sorts. But when their mother dies suddenly, threats to the twins' livelihood emerge as the outside world starts to encroach on their seclusion, and a lifetime of secrets unravels. Fuller's "impressive" novel is full of a "fierce, angry energy" says The Guardian. Shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction, Unsettled Ground is "her strongest yet," according to The Times. The Inseparables is not exactly new, but a newly-discovered short novel from the iconic French feminist existentialist. It was published in English for the first time this year it came out in France in , nearly 60 years after de Beauvoir mentioned it in her memoir, Force of Circumstance.

Its central narrative — on the relationship between two young girls — was drawn from de Beauvoir's own life inspired by and in tribute to her great friend Élisabeth Lacoin or "Zaza", who died when she was 21 and has drawn comparisons with the Neapolitan novels of Elena Ferrante. Billed as "too intimate" to be published in her lifetime, in The Inseparables, writes The New Yorker , "the distinction between friends and lovers, straight love and queer love, pales before the difference between loving a friend who is alive and one who is dead. Cherie Jones's debut novel was shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction, and is set on Baxter's Beach, Barbados.

As a child, protagonist Lala has been told the story of the one-armed sister — a cautionary tale about what happens to girls who disobey their mothers. As an adult she lives with her husband Adan, and the story explores the aftermath of two mysterious crimes. Themes of class, loss, domestic violence and the legacy of trauma are undercurrents throughout. Jones's prose is supple, often luxuriant, but the structure of her novel is even more impressive… Here's the launch of a stellar literary career. Credit: Little Brown. In the follow-up to her last two highly acclaimed novels, Irish author Sally Rooney explores friendship, art, the price of fame and the meaning of life — all through the stories of two couples.

The Irish Times says: "Written with immense skill and illuminated by an endlessly incisive intelligence. Anthony Doerr follows up his bestseller and Pulitzer Prize-winner, All the Light We Cannot See, with this ambitious, epic novel. Spanning centuries and continents, it weaves in excerpts from a fictional ancient Greek text, the "Cloud Cuckoo Land" of the title, taking in the history and future of mankind and climate change along the way. It is above all, writes The Guardian , "a tribute to the magic of reading," which The New York Times called : "a wildly inventive novel that teems with life, straddles an enormous range of experience and learning, and embodies the storytelling gifts that it celebrates.

When her early novels were published, Gayl Jones was widely hailed by the likes of John Updike and James Baldwin. Then she went quiet. Now Jones's fifth novel — and her first in 22 years — has been published. Set in the late s, it explores the re-enslavement of the last settlement of free black people in Brazil, and is also the story of one woman's quest, told in retrospect by narrator Almeyda. The story "moves to rhythms long forgotten," says the New York Times. It "chants in incantations highly forbidden. It is a story woven with extraordinary complexity, depth and skill. Latin American novelist Mario Vargas Llosa is the winner of the Nobel among other prizes, and his latest book Harsh Times continues in the political vein of his previous work.

Set mostly in Guatemala, it tells the story of the coup and the years of dictatorship that followed. The Scotsman says: "This is a splendidly rich and absorbing novel. It tells remarkable stories and it is, unlike much that may be classed as historical fiction, politically serious. Harsh Times, it says, "swarms with life and a determination to tunnel down into the underlying truth of humanity". This unconventional biography of George Orwell is the latest from the essayist, author and activist Solnit, whose works include Men Explain Things to Me, Wanderlust and Recollections of My Non-Existence. Using some roses that Orwell planted in the garden of a house in Wallington, Hertfordshire in as a jumping off point, Solnit presents a complex portrait of Orwell the man, taking the reader down multiple paths that explore history, politics and environmentalism.

Harpers called it "a captivating account of Orwell as gardener, lover, parent, and endlessly curious thinker," while The New York Times writes that Solnit creates a frame "large enough to contain life's contradictions in a way that only the essay, that humble literary mouthpiece, can. In her memoir, musician and author Michelle Zauner recounts the loss of her mother and how she forged a new identity. The book started life as an essay in The New Yorker and was widely praised for its depiction of grief and growing up Korean-American. Touching on themes including endurance, family, mother-daughter relationships and the comfort of food, Crying in H Mart is described by The Observer as "a vibrant, soulful memoir that binds her own belated coming-of-age with her mother's untimely death".

The Chicago Review of Books describes the memoir as "exquisitely detailed and wonderfully layered, both episodic in its individual essays and continuous in its exploration of grief". Set in suburban Chicago in December , Franzen's Crossroads is the first of a planned trilogy, and explores the lives of the Hildebrandt family members — Russ, the associate pastor of a liberal church, his depressed wife Marion, and their three teenaged children. Franzen's novels are admired for their vivid characters and their clear-eyed take on the complexities of US life, and this novel is no exception. Credit: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Harris's debut novel — about two young black women working in the all-white office of an upmarket US publishing house — became an instant New York Times bestseller when it was published in June.

The Other Black Girl is a fast-paced, gripping read that mixes horror and satire with sci-fi and biting social commentary, and has been described as "Get Out meets The Devil Wears Prada" by Cosmopolitan, "imaginative and audacious" by the Guardian and "an engrossing contemplation of the gap between success and authenticity" by the FT. Hulu is adapting the book , with Harris on board as co-writer. In her fiction, award-winning British-Nigerian author Helen Oyeyemi playfully reinvents genres and tropes — the realms of magic and the real world frequently merge. Her latest novel Peaces is set on a whimsically ramshackle train, the Lucky Day, and centres around five enigmatic individuals and two pet mongooses.

As the complex trajectory of the characters' interaction gradually moves towards a denouement, secrets are revealed, and a puzzle falls into place. The New York Times said: "Oyeyemi is a master of leaps of thought and inference, of shifty velocity. Novelist and playwright Damon Galgut's latest won the Booker Prize, and centres on the decline of The Swarts — a white South-African family living on a farm outside Pretoria in the s. After the death of the family's matriarch Rachel, it follows the fortunes of its three children; the "promise" of the title relates to a forsaken vow made to their black servant, Salome and the grim legacy of apartheid. Writing in The Observer , Anthony Cummins predicted Booker Prize-glory for the twice-nominated Galgut, who he described as "heart-swellingly attentive to emotional intensity", while John Self wrote in The Times : "This is so obviously one of the best novels of the year a book that answers the question 'what is a novel for?

Credit: Europa Editions. Irish author Lisa McInerney won the Women's Prize for her novel The Glorious Heresies, the first in a trilogy about the criminal underworld of modern-day Cork. Her latest, The Rules of Revelation is the last instalment, and focuses on the habits and philosophical ruminations of drug dealer Ryan Cusack, the son of an alcoholic gangster. The result, says The Spectator is a novel that is "sardonic, sexy, witty, lanky with a winsome smirk, which breaks into a long-stride run for the pure pleasure of it — and it is a pleasure to observe". The Times also praises the author: "[Lisa McInerney has] high-voltage verve and an acute understanding of Ireland. Credit: John Murray. Longlisted for the Booker Prize, this New York Times bestseller weaves together the stories of two women living decades and continents apart: Marian Graves, an intrepid pilot whose plane goes missing while she attempts to circle the globe, and Hadley Baxter, a scandal-racked Hollywood actress recently sacked from a Twilight-alike movie franchise, who is drawn to Graves's story.

Great Circle, according to The New York Times , "grasps for and ultimately makes something extraordinary", while The Guardian found it "moving and surprising at every turn". In Second Place, the narrator invites a famous artist to use her guest house in the grounds of her family home in the coastal countryside. But as the summer unfolds, his presence begins to interrupt the tranquillity of her household. The novel is a comedic study of gender and privilege, and an exploration of art, relationships and morality. The Guardian describes the novel as "exquisitely cruel", and Cusk as "our arch chronicler of the nullifying choice between suffocation and explosion". The New Statesman also praises the novel, comparing it favourably with her previous works: "Second Place feels more exposing than anything Cusk has written in recent years".

The third and final instalment of her genre-bending "living autobiography" trilogy, Levy follows Things I Don't Want to Know and The Cost of Living with another impressive and immersive blend of memoir, cultural analysis and feminist critique. In Real Estate, we find the writer approaching 60, travelling the world, reflecting on her past, the writers who have influenced her, and women's status in a patriarchal society. The Evening Standard called it "a beautifully-crafted and thought-provoking snapshot of a life," while the FT described it as "a manifesto for living and writing". Credit: Bloomsbury.

Akwaeke Emezi is the author of three novels, and their latest work, a memoir, is structured as a collection of letters addressed to friends and family — both biological and chosen — and fellow writers. The gradual unfolding of identity is at its centre, as the writer describes the experience of a non-binary life lived in parallel realities. The New York Times describes it as "an audacious sojourn through the terror and beauty of refusing to explain yourself". The memoir is "not for the faint-hearted" and has "gruesome" moments, says The Washington Post. There is a "pretentiousness" and "arrogance" about the book, but ultimately, says the Post, "Emezi delivers a sharp, raw, propulsive and always honest account of the trials they endure as a person 'categorised as other'.

In this new work of non-fiction, subtitled A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America, the poet, scholar and Atlantic staff writer Smith visits nine key sites linked with the legacy of slavery in the US, from Thomas Jefferson's Monticello in Charlottesville, Virginia to Angola, a Louisiana penitentiary and former plantation where inmates work the land for next-to-no payment. Blending academic research with a vast array of in-person interviews, Smith's sweeping survey is "a reckoning with reckonings" and "an extraordinary contribution to the way we understand ourselves," wrote the New York Times.

Credit: Little, Brown and Company.

In this arresting collection of stories, we meet people who are fighting not only the snowy tundra, but addiction, heartbreak, complicated families and the demons so many of us carry with us, regardless of when or where we live. This novel about the power of female friendship will give you a gorgeous peek into both women's perspectives on a shared story that has as many facets as they do. Nominated for the Women's Prize, Destransition, Baby tells the story of Reese, a year-old trans woman who longs to be a mother, her ex-partner Amy — who has detransitioned and become Ames — and Ames's boss and girlfriend Katrina, who he has impregnated. When her early novels were published, Gayl Jones was widely hailed by the likes of John Updike and James Baldwin. Riverhead Books.

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