Sinister secrets come home to haunt

HIMSELF

by Jess Kidd (Canongate £12.99) AS A BABY, Mahony was dumped on the steps of an orphanage. Twenty-six years later, a handsome charmer from Dublin who attracts both the living and the ghosts of the dead, he fetches up in the Irish village of Mulderrig — ‘a benign little speck of a place... pretending to be harmless’. He comes armed with a photograph of his mother, a letter and a determination to find out what really happened to her. But the locals are reluctant to give up their secrets.

Most of them claim that she left the village of her own free will. One or two believe she was murdered.

Part magical realism, part murder mystery involving many memorable characters, this is so imaginative and engaging, its spirited prose shot through with such dark humour, that I’m intrigued to see what Jess Kidd comes up with next.

THE MOTHERS

by Brit Bennett (Riverhead £11.99) THE lives of Nadia, Luke and Aubrey are determined by a single act in their teenage years.

Grieving after her mother’s suicide, 17-year-old Nadia hooks up with Luke, the local pastor’s son. Their relationship is passionate, but ends suddenly, leaving them both burdened by a shared secret. At the same time, she meets Aubrey, who has left her mother and lives with her sister. Their friendship will endure into their adult lives.

Narrated in part by the church mothers, a collection of older women who congregate in the Upper Room Chapel, observing the comings and goings in their town and indulging in gossip, the novel is grounded in a very particular community.

This touching study of a modern black woman is also a powerful and nuanced story of grief, loss and friendship in which secrets and lies lurk, waiting to hijack the characters just when they’re least expecting it.

BENEATH THE SKIN

by Sandra Ireland (Polygon £9.99) MEDICALLY discharged from the Army, Robert ‘Walt’ Walton has nowhere particular to go. His life has been torn apart by the death of his best friend and his own debilitating injury and post-traumatic stress disorder.

In Edinburgh, a job advertisement leads him to Alys, a taxidermist creating whimsical animal montages in the basement of her home. She appoints him as her assistant and gives him a roof over his head, to the consternation of Alys’s sister, Mouse, who shares the house.

The house is unwelcoming and claustrophobic. Its damp basement, with its grotesque contents, odd smells and the sense that something strange is afoot, keeps Walt on edge.

But he is not the only one suffering from past trauma. Alys and Mouse are bound by their own terrible secret that threatens to come out into the open.

Ireland writes about powerful and troubling subjects and shows how the past can have devastating consequences.