International fiction
Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld
After a failed ‘starter marriage’ and a few other heartbreaks, Sally Milz has given up on love. Instead, she has thrown herself into her career as a sketch writer for the popular late-night live comedy show, The Night Owls (think…
Dust Child by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai
If you have not read Nguyen Phan Que Mai’s earlier novel, The Mountains Sing, please do. Somehow, this author manages to bring a lyrical and empathetic telling of the terror of war. Dust Child is her second extraordinary novel…
Games and Rituals by Katherine Heiny
Katherine Heiny’s first story collection, Single, Carefree, Mellow was published in 2015, and praised in the New York Times and by Lena Dunham of Girls fame. Since then, she has written two novels, Standard Deviation and Early Morning Riser…
What I’d Rather Not Think About by Jente Posthuma (trans. Sarah Timmer Harvey)
Jente Posthuma is a Dutch writer whose work has been widely acclaimed in the Netherlands, and has been listed for a number of prestigious awards. What I’d Rather Not Think About is her second novel, but the first to be…
Old God’s Time by Sebastian Barry
Tom Kettle is an Irish detective who has recently retired to a home overlooking the Irish sea. It’s unclear at first how long he has been leading this solitary existence, but his life is thrown into turmoil when two younger…
I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai
In 1995, a girl was murdered on the grounds of her elite private boarding school in New Hampshire, and Bodie Kane suspects the wrong man went to prison. Bodie is the host of a successful podcast about the lives of…
Cursed Bread by Sophie Mackintosh
In 1951, le pain maudit – or ‘the cursed bread’ – was at the centre of a mass poisoning event that tore through the small village of Pont-Saint-Esprit, leaving seven villagers dead and 50 interned in asylums. The cause of…
Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton
It has almost been a decade since Eleanor Catton published her Booker Prize-winning, epic, historical, astrological magnum opus The Luminaries, and I have been waiting with bated breath ever since. Unsatisfied with resting on her laurels, Birnam Wood is…
Old Babes in the Wood by Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwood is back with yet another stunning collection of short stories, her first since 2014’s Stone Mattress. Atwood has a knack for zeroing in on society and the various idiosyncrasies that make us human. This is evident in…
Bad Cree by Jessica Johns
Mackenzie wakes from her nightmare holding the severed head of a crow. Previously she’d only brought back tree branches, and they’d immediately vanished. Mackenzie’s dreams become more frequent and eventually the horror spills over into her waking life. Crows follow…
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