A road trip like no other – crossing America by Greyhound bus
Joanna Pocock made the journey in 2006, then again 17 years later – and was shocked by the environmental changes she witnessed
Consorting with the enemy: The Propagandist, by Cécile Desprairies, reviewed
The debut novel by a historian of the Vichy regime is a personal J’Accuse, indicting the collaborators in her family for their part in France’s collapse in the second world war
Adrift in strange lands: The Accidentals, by Guadalupe Nettel, reviewed
A sense of unease runs through Nettel’s latest short stories as the protagonists start to lose their bearings in increasingly unfamiliar scenarios
Hope springs eternal: The Café with No Name, by Robert Seethaler, reviewed
It’s Vienna, 1966, and a young labourer casts a speculative eye on a ramshackle café in the corner of the Karmelitermarkt, daring to restore it and improve his lot
Rumpelstiltskin retold: Alive in the Merciful Country, by A.L. Kennedy, reviewed
A group of idealistic activists is betrayed by a charismatic newcomer who dazzles with skill and charm – and gets away with murder. Repeatedly
Panning for music gold: The Catchers, by Xan Brooks, reviewed
They were known as song catchers: New York-based chancers with recording equipment packed in the back of the van, heading…
Mysteries and misogyny: The Empusium, by Olga Tokarczuk, reviewed
Tokarczuk revisits Thomas Mann’s masterpiece The Magic Mountain in this ‘health resort horror story’ set in a Silesian guesthouse on the eve of the first world war
Runaway lovers: The Heart in Winter, by Kevin Barry, reviewed
In 19th-century Butte, Montana, a reluctant new bride falls in love with the young man sent to photograph her – leading to violent retribution for the doomed couple
The skull beneath the skin: Ghost Pains, by Jessi Jezewska Stevens, reviewed
Pain lurks below the surface of these sardonic short stories. Happiness is fleeting, and ‘we carry death within us like a stone within a fruit’, one narrator observes
Dangerous secrets: Verdigris, by Michele Mari, reviewed
A lonely teenager on holiday in Italy befriends his grandparents’ elderly gardener and slowly coaxes out his painful memories of betrayals and reprisals during the war
Heart of Darkness revisited: The Dimensions of a Cave, by Greg Jackson, reviewed
Conrad’s classic is updated in this sinister tale of the US government’s involvement in a morally suspect virtual reality programme
Anonymous caller: This Plague of Souls, by Mike McCormack, reviewed
A man returns to his remote rural home after an absence – to be greeted not by his family but a sinister stranger on the telephone
Private obsessions
A world of private fetishes, obsessions, childhood memories and literary passions is dazzlingly revealed in 13 short stories
Too close to home
Life in a comfortable modern flat with her husband and two young sons leaves Natsumi so depressed she thinks she’s losing her mind
Inside the Factory
When two teenage typists employed by Andy Warhol start tagging along to his amphetamine-fuelled parties, their lives spiral out of control
Day of vengeance
A festive gathering in the depths of rural France is fatally disrupted by a trio of sinister strangers
Bittersweet memories
This is a deceptively slim novel. Its 96 pages contain multitudes: two lives, past and present, seamlessly interwoven. The narrator,…
A very tangled web
Vanessa Salomon is an internationally successful translator. Clever, beautiful, privileged – ‘born in a trilingual household: French, English and money’…
Life in the Afterworld
Angus Mooney is dead. Freshly murdered, he’s appalled to find himself in an Afterworld, having always rejected the possibility of…
The making of a murderer
Were it not for an event on the night of 14 April 1865, John Wilkes Booth would be remembered, if…
Banished queen
Shakespeare wastes no time on Lear’s backstory; we meet the brutal old autocrat as he divides his kingdom between two…
A world full of noises
The world Ruth Ozeki creates in The Book of Form & Emptiness resembles one of the snow globes that pop…
The next big thing
Welcome to Utopia — not an idyllic arcadia but a secretive tech incubator in a Manhattan office block. Here a…
From beyond the grave
Give dead bones a voice and they speak volumes: George Saunders’s Lincoln in the Bardo was clamorous with the departed…
Truckload of trouble
A father and his estranged 20-year-old daughter set off across France, sharing the driver’s cabin of a long-haul truck. This…
