Flights of sci-fi fancy

COSMOGRAMMA Courttia Newland Canongate, £12.99

Following his British Afrofuturist novel A River Called Time, and two episodes of Steve McQueen’s BBC series Small Axe, comes Courttia Newland’s collection of 15 short stories of speculative fiction. Moving freely between sci-fi subgenres, he intersperses original flights of imagination with riffs on familiar themes, such as intelligent robots turning on their creators and a story that echoes Invasion of the Body Snatchers, to explore the choices humans make when presented with unprecedented situations – and we don’t always come out of them looking good. His stories address contemporary concerns, and in one standout, The Sankofa Principle, a spaceship falls back in time to 1794, leaving its crew with the dilemma of whether to interfere with the slave trade. Short stories have long been the bedrock of science fiction, and these are full of fresh, intriguing premises around which entire novels could have been based.

A GHOST IN THE THROAT

Doireann Ní Ghríofa Tramp Press, £8.99

In Cork in 1773, Irish noblewoman Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill found her murdered husband’s body and, in a frenzy of blood-drinking grief, composed a keening lament later considered a great poem. Poet Doireann Ní Ghríofa had known of it since childhood, but rediscovered it while adjusting to motherhood and decided to embark on her own translation. Her book records beautifully and movingly how her research of Eibhlín Dubh Ní

Chonaill became an obsession as she found more and more to identify with and felt their two voices blending into one. Beginning and ending with the words “This is a female text”, it’s a deeply personal memoir: a journey of self-discovery and an extraordinary paean to motherhood as well as a lament for all the female voices suppressed down the centuries.

THE REDEMPTION OF BOBBY LOVE

Bobby & Cheryl Love

Bantam, £12.99

Born in North Carolina in 1950, Walter Miller was known to the police by age 14. Graduated from petty crime to bank robbery, he got a 25-year sentence but escaped after six years, fleeing to New York with $100 in his pocket. Renaming himself Bobby Love, he lived a law-abiding, hardworking, happily-married life for nearly 40 years until the FBI and NYPD turned up on his doorstep and took the 64-year-old away in handcuffs. Love’s story is an enthralling read. Alternate chapters are written by his wife, Cheryl, who’d known nothing of his past but stuck by him and fought hard to have him paroled. Her contributions enhance an already engaging memoir of crime, redemption, faith and love.