THE BEST NEW FICTION

Long Island

Colm Tóibín

Picador €28

The long-awaited sequel to Brooklyn is set in small-town Ireland in the 1970s. Publican Jim has promised to marry Nancy, who runs the local chip shop, but his head is turned by old flame Eilis, visiting Ireland after being cheated on by her American husband. This is more upmarket soap opera than serious literary fiction, but Tóibín is a class act and his eye for the absurdities of Irish life keeps the pages turning.

Max Davidson

Butcher

Joyce Carol Oates

Fourth Estate €20

Multi-award-winning Oates remains prolific into her 80s. Her powerful new novel is a historical horror plumbing the grisly origins of modern psychiatry and gynaecology. We follow a 19th-Century medic who, after recklessly bungling unnecessary surgery on a baby girl, rebuilds his career with a series of hideous experiments on women in a New Jersey asylum. It’s a bruising anatomy of misogyny, terrifyingly drawing on real-life cases. For strong stomachs only.

Anthony Cummins

Hey, Zoey

Sarah Crossan

Bloomsbury €21

One weekday morning, London teacher Dolores is loading the tumble dryer when her eye lands on something out of place in the garage: a large nylon bag. She unzips it and immediately wishes she hadn’t. What lies within will detonate her marriage but it will also force her to confront other problematic relationships. Dark humour and offbeat tenderness enhance the intense readability of a book that has plenty to say about contemporary intimacy.

Hephzibah Anderson

The Wild Swimmers

William Shaw

Riverrun €22

Five books into his fine series featuring DS Alexandra Cupidi, William Shaw is steadily making England’s southeast coastline his own.

The Wild Swimmers starts with a body washed up on the shore. She’s Mimi Greene, one of a group of wild swimmers, and her boyfriend Malcolm seems to have vanished without trace. Meanwhile Alex’s colleague Jill has discovered the father she never knew is actually a convicted murderer. A skilfully constructed and thoroughly engrossing thriller.

John Williams