THE BEST NEW FICTION The Year Of The Gun

When The Lights Go Out Carys Bray Hutchinson £14.99

Suburban couple

Emma and Chris have weathered the storms of redundancy, bereavement and broken dreams, but as the rain pours down, Chris’s panicked obsession with climate disaster looks set to scupper all they hold dear. He’s frantic to save their family from future apocalyptic floods, while Emma bravely tries to keep things on an even keel. Bray has a knack of dealing with weighty themes with the lightest of touches.

Eithne Farry

Olga

Bernhard Schlink W&N £16.99

Schlink, best known for The Reader, returns to German history in this cleverly constructed tale of cross-class romance in late 19th Century Prussia. When the friendship between Olga, a poor orphan, and Herbert, a rich aristocrat, leads to an illicit affair, she’s the one who must bear the consequences, while he sets sail for imperial adventures. Olga’s story draws us into a present-day reckoning with Germany’s past.

Anthony Cummins

To Be A Man Nicole Krauss

Bloomsbury £16.99

The acclaimed novelist’s first short story collection is a marvel. Its backdrops flit from Japan to Switzerland to

Tel Aviv, and its protagonists and their predicaments are just as varied: a dancer is convinced she must save an actor’s life, an aged academic confronts his own ignorance, a woman finds a stranger in her dead father’s flat. Throughout, human relationships drive narratives that are meditative and moving, tinged with tragedy and farce.

Hephzibah Anderson

H.B. Lyle

Hodder & Stoughton £19.99

Lyle’s series of thrillers featuring Wiggins, once one of Sherlock Holmes’s Baker Street Irregulars, are coming on splendidly. Last seen as an undercover spy in Edwardian London, his latest adventure finds him in the employ of a Dublin gangster and Irish Republican, then following his boss over to a gangsterridden New York. Skilfully mixing real history with action sequences worthy of Lee Child, this is historical crime-writing at its best. John Williams