A Violent Masterpiece by Jordan Harper (Faber, £9.99)
Set in LA, award-winning American novelist Harper’s latest novel is a dark and topical tale. Jake, who livestreams crime scenes to an audience hungry for sensation, is currently tapping into the market for serial killer nostalgia with episodes on the LA Ripper, “up to three victims and counting”. Kara works for Sub Rosa, a concierge service that provides the very rich with whatever they desire, legal or otherwise. And Gibson is a public defence lawyer who reluctantly agrees to act for a wealthy predator who threatens to bring down “the pillars of this whole goddamn town”, including Sub Rosa’s clients, before apparently killing himself in his cell. When Kara’s colleague goes missing and she suspects it’s the work of the Ripper, the three protagonists’ worlds converge. Told in apocalyptic language, there are shades of both James Ellroy and Tom Wolfe in this story of greed in all its forms, played out in an intense, chaotic and thoroughly amoral world.

Tillinghast by Clare Cavenagh (Borough, £16.99)
Stutley Tillinghast has lived alone for a long time. Formerly a minister in a rural Rhode Island parish, he is now caretaker of an empty church. He avoids contact with others – except when his peculiar need drives him to find someone he can kill without attracting attention, take what he requires, and then bury the body in the cellar with all the others. His life is upended by the arrival of a visitor from England, a young woman called Sarah who has come looking for her mother. There’s no possibility that Sarah could be his daughter, yet he recognises the symptoms of her illness: it is the same as his. She has become too weak to do what she must to save her own life, and he will not let her die. This debut novel, inspired by the 19th-century New England vampire panic, is a haunting, original modern gothic, a welcome departure from the usual tropes.

The White Desert by Luis López Carrasco, translated by Rosalind Harvey (Granta, £14.99)
This unpredictable book, comprising five linked stories about a Spanish couple, opens with the end of the world and gets weirder from there. A balloon debate about a post-apocalyptic scenario turns nasty when one participant pulls a knife, or thinks he does. A plane crash-lands on an island. “Can [we] go and get our luggage … Lots of people have, you know, soiled themselves.” What links the scenes is a sense of disconnection in our connected world, but the book subverts expectations: when a group of people celebrating New Year’s Eve go missing, it turns out to be a game of hide and seek. Footnotes peppered throughout suggest we’re viewing all this from the future (“Emirates was a well-known passenger airline …”), and discovering what the white desert is turns everything on its head. For readers who like to do their own joining up, and who want a playful, original take on our precarious lives, this is a thought-provoking treat.

The Home of the Drowned by Elin Anna Labba, translated by Elizabeth Clark Wessel (Harvill, £16.99)
“You could have waited, you bastards.” In 1942 Lapland, a village occupied by the semi-nomadic Sámi people is flooded by a new hydroelectric plant’s dam. One family watch as their goahti (peat-covered hut) disappears under the water. “It wasn’t the nicest goahti,” says Ánne. “No, but it was mine,” says her sister Rávdná. When Rávdná wants to build a house to replace it, the authorities refuse permission: the Sámi way of life has been rejected but alternatives are not permitted. A local newspaper half-heartedly offers to publicise their case, but “we receive a lot of angry letters if we use any foreign words”. When the government tells local people the new dam “will lift us out of poverty and injustice”, the words reek with irony. This intimate story of infuriating discrimination is, Labba says, based on real events in Sweden.

Witch Light by Zohra Nabi, S&S, £7.99
Dispatched to a bleak boarding school by her uncle, Cassia Thorne soon detects sinister undercurrents at Ravening Hall. Why are the prefects so unnaturally perfect – and is there any truth to local stories about a witch who eats children’s hearts? Teaming up with misfit Martha Torrent, Cassia must investigate another supernatural conspiracy in this superb 9+ sequel to Deep Dark, rooted in the history of the Pendle witch trials.

Tadpole Summer by Catherine Bruton, Nosy Crow, £7.99
Frog has been Frog since her baby brother Tad was born, smaller and weaker than his sister, but indomitable. As summer begins and Tad’s illness progresses, though, Frog must contemplate an unthinkable future. With Tad in hospital, Frog begins camping in the garden – but how long can she stay there? A beautiful, poignant, magical book for 9+, filled with love, grief and the natural world’s power to nurture hope.

Quite Ugly One Evening by Chris Brookmyre (Abacus, £22)
Thirty years after Brookmyre’s debut, his latest novel to feature journalist Jack Parlabane makes a tonal return to his earlier, more irreverent style. Now 60, Jack feels increasingly like a “Boomer Ambassador” to the younger colleagues who are snapping at his heels. With his job on the line, he agrees to investigate a cold case: the death, 40 years earlier, of an MI5 operative. It’s thought to be connected to the Maskyn family, creators of much-loved but now contentious Thunderbirds-style TV series The Imaginators, and Parlabane finds himself on the transatlantic cruise liner hosting the 60th anniversary convention as “several hundred emotionally stunted fanboy incels alongside an over-remunerated family of nepo babies, trust fund pukes and outright fascists” duke it out over The Imaginators’ legacy. Masterfully plotted and scalpel-sharp, this is a riotously good read that uses a Golden Age set-up to take aim at the culture wars, while also providing a thoroughly satisfying mystery.

The Rainshadow Orphans by Naomi Ishiguro (Solstice, £20)
The first volume of a trilogy inspired by Japanese pop culture is set in bustling, crowded Rainshadow City, where hi-tech wealth and a corrupt emperor exist alongside magic, poverty and criminality. Toshiko, Jun and Mei are the Kawakamis, haphazardly seeking revenge on the Lucky Crow gang for the murder of their adoptive Aunt. When Toshiko almost accidentally steals a precious dragon pearl from a powerful gangster, they’re plunged into a fast-moving adventure involving a conspiracy to deport all the city’s illegal immigrants to certain death, and replace low-paid workers with attractive female robots. Various plot strands see characters discovering magical powers, a mother dragon desperate to save her baby’s life, and a strangely helpful cat. Trope-heavy, entertaining fun, with a cartoonish vibe.