THE BEST NEW FICTION

Shooting Martha

David Thewlis W&N £14.99 Director Jack Drake is struggling with his latest film. Desperate for the support of his late wife, Martha, he hatches an outlandish plan to employ Betty Dean, volatile actress and Martha-lookalike, to stay in his French villa and pretend to be her. But Betty refuses to stick to his carefully manufactured script as she uncovers the secrets of his not-so-happy marriage and the events surrounding Martha’s demise. Actor Thewlis’s second novel is darkly funny.

Eithne Farry

The Island Of Missing Trees

Elif Shafak

Viking £14.99 Cyprus, 1974, and Kostas (Greek, Christian) is in love with Defne (Turkish, Muslim). In a bitterly divided Nicosia, there’s just one place safe to meet: The Happy Fig, a tavern with the best food, music and wine, and a fig tree growing in the middle of it. Decades later, a London teenager – their daughter – must untangle her parents’ secrets. Compassionate and enchanting, it’s a transporting tale of roots, renewal and talking trees.

Hephzibah Anderson

The Echo Chamber

John Boyne Doubleday £16.99

This is the story of the Cleverley family and the unforgiving world of social media and cancel culture. There’s father George, a telly legend; mother Beverley, a successful romantic novelist; and their three privileged, complicated children. More farce than satire, and not in the same league as Boyne’s The Heart’s Invisible Furies, it’s nonetheless a thoroughly entertaining journey through the minefields of trolling and identity politics. Simon Humphreys