The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle (Penguin, £9.99)This short novel won almost every genre award following its 2016 US publication. As a Black writer, LaValle had a conflicted relationship with... Read more »
Have It by John Cooper Clarke; The Dodo Stories by Mary Mulholland; Red River Valley by Ian McMillan; Some Sacred Harbour by Roger Robinson; Otherwhere by Carolyn Forché Have It by John... Read more »
Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel by Lucy Foley (HarperCollins, £22)This, the first Miss Marple continuation novel, must have been a more difficult undertaking than a new Hercule Poirot; furnished by Christie... Read more »
Once Upon a Tiger by Sarah Massini, S&S, £14.99Tiger is irate to find three cheeky human cubs climbing on his back – but when they refuse to be scared off, he becomes... Read more »
Massif by Garth Nix (Gollancz, £25)The bestselling fantasy author’s first science fiction novel for adults is set three centuries from now, when humanity has spread out to the stars. The colonisation of... Read more »
Fetch by Colin Bramwell (And Other Stories, £14.99)Bramwell’s translation of Fernando Pessoa’s work into Scots won him considerable recognition: it took the Oxford Weidenfeld Translation prize and the Highland Book Prize. Between... Read more »
Small Monster, Big Monster by Allan Sanders, Phaidon, £7.95Refrigerator is EMPTY. Monster is FULL (of pizza!). An eye-wateringly bright board book, featuring splendidly zany, toddler-pleasing pairs of opposites. The Flying Machine of... Read more »
The Red Book of Farewells by Pirkko Saisio, translated by Mia Spangenberg, Penguin Classics (£14.99)Following Lowest Common Denominator and Backlight, this book completes Finnish author Saisio’s autofictional trilogy. It covers her young... Read more »
The Amateur by Chris Bohjalian (Hutchinson Heinemann, £18.99)American bestseller Bohjalian deserves to be far better known in the UK, although, as the first line of his 26th novel points out, “It is... Read more »