THE BEST NEW FICTION

The Betrayals Bridget Collins

Borough Press £14.99 The Betrayals confirms Collins as a storyteller of rare imagination and craft. Set in an alternate 1930s, it unfolds at an elite European university dedicated to an esoteric multi-disciplinary art form. When culture minister Léo objects to an oppressive new law, he’s forced into exile at his alma mater, where he confronts his blighted undergraduate years. This intricate symphony of a novel is both a disturbing portrait of fascism and a soaring meditation on artistic expression.

Madeleine Feeny

The Last

Good Man Thomas McMullan

Bloomsbury £16.99

The main character of this thought-provoking debut escapes civil unrest in his home city by seeking sanctuary in a remote moorland hideaway that proves anything but idyllic. At the heart of village life, it turns out, is a large wall on which anyone can scrawl anonymous allegations against a neighbour, often prompting violent, ceremonial public punishment without trial. A shivery sense of menace exerts steady fascination in McMullan’s dark allegory of the social-media age.

Anthony Cummins

Cobble Hill Cecily von Ziegesar Orion £13.99

The author best known for the teen hit Gossip Girl returns with a warm, inviting slice of grown-up life, replete with doubt, dissatisfaction and some deeply questionable decision-making. It’s set in Brooklyn’s trendy but tight-knit Cobble Hill, where the lives of four quirky couples are about to become entangled. Look out for the struggling British novelist, the former punk rocker and Peaches, the school nurse all the dads are crushing on.

Hephzibah Anderson

One By One Ruth Ware

Harvill Secker £12.99

Ware’s latest is a classic crime story in the Christie tradition, though with a neat contemporary spin. Ten quarrelsome members of a hot new tech company are at a remote alpine ski lodge in the middle of a snowstorm. Inevitably, the ten are soon being picked off, one by one, as the tension builds and the snow keeps falling. A thoroughly enjoyable and consistently inventive wintertime mystery. John Williams