...AND ALL THE FINEST FICTION
OH WILLIAM! Elizabeth Strout Viking £14.99
Here is a narrator whose tellit-like-it-is voice will win you over from the very first sentence. Her name is Lucy Barton, and she’s come a long way from her impoverished rural roots. Now in her 60s, a feted novelist living in Manhattan, Lucy is mourning the loss of her second husband when she becomes embroiled once again in the life of her first, a scientist named William who’s left reeling by two unpleasant shocks. It’s a subtle, vibrant masterpiece, bringing wisdom and wit to bear on the mysteries of love and fate.
GREAT CIRCLE Maggie Shipstead Doubleday £16.99
Long winter nights are made for novels like this ambitious, immersive 600-pager. Artfully constructed and exuberantly entertaining, it braids the destinies of two compelling heroines: Marian Graves, an aviatrix born in New York City in 1914, who vanishes while trying to circumnavigate the globe, and Hadley Baxter, the Hollywood starlet who gets to play her in a biopic more than a century later. Along the way, Shipstead grapples with celebrity scandal, wartime derring-do and the irresistible call of freedom.
EARLY MORNING RISER Katherine Heiny Fourth Estate £14.99
On the day she moves to Boyne City, Michigan, schoolteacher Jane falls for Duncan, a handsome, easygoing furniture restorer whose first marriage has left him skittish about commitment. Jane isn’t the only one to have succumbed to Duncan’s charms, however – it seems he’s had dalliances with almost every woman she meets in this archetypal small town. So far, so romcom, but as she tracks their ups and downs over two decades, Heiny weaves a comforting tale that also happens to be full of sharp truths.
APRIL IN SPAIN John Banville Faber £14.99
Crime novels don’t come classier than this. Banville used a pen name for his first books featuring pathologist Quirke, but this latest bears his own, and it’s a triumph – evocative, colourful and cannily constructed. Its boozy, irascible hero has gone on holiday to San Sebastian with his wife. There, an unfortunate incident with an oyster lands him in hospital, where a very familiar-seeming Irish doctor examines him. As Quirke becomes convinced that she’s a woman believed to have been murdered, a hitman lurking in the background adds pace.
HARLEM SHUFFLE Colson Whitehead Fleet £16.99
Mid-20th Century Harlem is the spellbinding backdrop to this bustling tale of a small-time crook who winds up way out of his depth. As well as being the proprietor of a successful furniture store, Ray Carney has a side hustle fencing stolen jewellery. Determined to achieve social respectability, he tells himself he’s ‘only slightly bent’ – until he gets caught up in a hotel heist. The result is top-notch storytelling and an unforgettable cast, perfectly capturing not just the era’s promise but also its gloomier underbelly.