THE BEST NEW FICTION

Marley Jon Clinch

Simon & Schuster £9.99 Why did nobody have this idea before? Clinch’s delightful prequel to A Christmas Carol invites us to imagine what Jacob Marley was like before he became a ghost. It traces the friendship between Marley and Scrooge back to their schooldays and exposes their cynical complicity in the slave trade, but also shows them touched by love and other finer feelings. It is a masterly piece of storytelling and a perfect festive read for Dickens fans.

Max Davidson

Twelve Nights Urs Faes

Harvill Secker £10.99 Faes is a Swiss writer and this contemplative novella about a long-running sibling feud is the first of his books to appear in English. Manfred, walking alone in the Black Forest over Christmas, looks back with regret at the tragic consequences of his spiteful reaction when his brother inherited the family farm decades previously. A fireside yarn narrated with hushed stillness, it clears a path for the reader’s own selfreckoning at the year’s end. Anthony Cummins

The Snow Song Sally Gardner

HQ £12.99 In this richly spun folk tale of female fellowship and insurgence, silence is weaponised to subvert the patriarchy. High in the Transylvanian mountains, a tyrannical butcher is determined to marry a young woman, Edith, who has pledged her hand to another. In this insular community, women are shackled to tradition and violence, but Edith’s courage will spark change. Clichés abound, yet this is an enchanting and timeless feminist fable. Madeleine Feeny