THE BEST NEW FICTION

The Blood Miracles Lisa McInerney John Murray €20.99 The winner of last year’s Baileys Prize returns to Cork in her second novel, which revisits some familiar faces. This is less of an ensemble piece and focuses instead on drug-dealer Ryan Cusack as he approaches his 21st birthday. Driven increasingly insane by the demands of his job, Ryan is mired in blood, thwarted dreams and divided loyalties – ‘a mess in word and deed’. Some convoluted double-dealing causes book and hero to lose momentum, but McInerney writes with enviable verve, swagger and humour, and it seems certain that Ryan’s story is far from over.

Amber Pearson The Impossible Fortress Jason Rekulak Faber €15.99 It’s spring 1987 and three 14-year-old American boys hatch an elaborate plan to steal the new issue of Playboy featuring nude photos of the era’s oddest icon, game show hostess Vanna White. Rekulak’s assured debut conjures a small, implausibly nice New Jersey town where only one store sells the magazine, and the key to the heist is a nascent computer whiz wooing the store owner’s even nerdier daughter. Complications arise from real hoodlums, a dog named Arnold Schwarzenegger, a dose of puppy love and an almost impregnable mountain-top convent school. It makes for a rather Disneyesque dose of nostalgia.

Jeffrey Burke The Death Of A She-Devil Fay Weldon Head Of Zeus €15.99 This belated sequel to Weldon’s 1984 feminist comedy The Life And Loves Of A She Devil finds heroine Ruth Patchett on the verge of turning 85, and heading the Institute for Gender Parity. Her cheating ex, Bobbo, is on his last legs, and husband-stealer Mary is a ghost. Two new characters drive a loquacious plot: Valerie Valeria, Ruth’s pushy young PA, and Tyler, her beautiful but directionless grandson. You might very well quibble with the novel’s central premise – that women now rule the world – but Weldon’s amused defiance is irresistible. Hephzibah Anderson