Between London Book Fair, celebrating our 40th anniversary, International Women’s Day and St Patrick’s Day, is March already the busiest month of the year? Prepare to get even busier with these fantastic fiction titles coming out this month!
For Now, It Is Night: Stories by Hari Krishna Kaul
Translated by Kalpana Raina, Tanveer Ajsi, Gowhar Fazili & Gowhar Yaquoob
Archipelago Books, 9781953861788, 208pp, £15.99, 5/3/2024
Brought into English by a team of translators, these 18 short stories are a masterful collaborative effort, often achieved through repeated listenings to recordings of the Kashmir. Together, they recover the small and large dramas of a syncretic society since unraveled in these musical, rhythmic stories. Rescued from an old Kashmiri home and brought together from the pages of out-of-print magazines and fading library copies, this collection resurrects the work of a doyen of Kashmiri Pandit literature. Kaul’s candid stories spill over with detail as they convey everyday life in a Kashmir rendered extraordinary by simmering political conflict and the 1990s exodus of the Pandit community. In prose that captures the dramatic intensity of the radio and television plays Kaul wrote for a Kashmiri-speaking audience, his characters navigate their ever-changing environs with biting humour as they make uncomfortable compromises to survive. Perfect for readers of The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida and Tomb of Sand.
Some Kind of Perfect by Krista Ritchie & Becca Ritchie
Berkley – US, 9780593639665, 784pp, £16.99, 5/3/2024
The TikTok sensation Addicted series concludes with Some Kind of Perfect, now in a print edition with special bonus material! Read the conclusion of Lily and Lo’s, Daisy and Ryke’s, and Rose and Connor’s stories in this edgy new adult romance set in a world of lust, fame, swoon-worthy men, and friendships that run deeper than blood. Falling in love was just the beginning. Lily and Lo are childhood best friends and soul mates. Ryke and Daisy are wild risk-takers and flirty adventurers. Connor and Rose are genius rivals and intellectual teammates. After ten years of laughter. Of heartache. And love. They’re all back one final time. Perfect for Colleen Hoover and Euphoria fans and readers searching for something between young adult and adult romance, Some Kind of Perfect deals with darker topics like addiction, class, and power.
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Hello, Kitty and Other Stories by Anne Stevenson-Yang
Bui Jones, 9781739424305, 192pp, £9.99, 5/3/2024
Ten wonderfully surreal stories revealing the dark side of China’s economic miracle as never before. Kitty and her teenage friends, squatting in an empty apartment, are looking for gas to cook instant noodles. Bai Song and his wife, who live in the unit across the hallway, have a well-equipped kitchen with all the mod cons. Plus they’re old and retired, meaning they’re ripe for a bit of rough fun, Clockwork Orange-style. China at the turn of the century. Everything is upside down. Respect for your elders? You’ve got be joking. Communism? Yeah right. Cut-throat capitalism is the only way to get ahead. ‘To get rich is glorious’. In ten wonderfully surreal stories, Anne Stevenson-Yang conjures up the atmosphere of a society in freefall. China as you’ve never imagined it: a wife who fakes her divorce so she can buy an apartment; neglected teens who tie up an elderly couple so they can use their kitchen; a country girl who poisons a disabled man for a residence permit. Haruki Murakami meets A Clockwork Orange.
The War Widow by Tara Moss
Verve Books, 9780857308672, 320pp, £9.99, 7/3/2024
WWII may be over, but journalist Billie Walker’s search for a missing young man will plunge her right back into the danger and drama she thought she’d left behind in Europe in this thrilling tale of courage and secrecy set in glamorous 1940s Sydney. Though war correspondent Billie Walker is happy to finally be home, for her the heady postwar days are tarnished by the loss of her father and the disappearance of her husband, Jack. To make matters worse, the newspapers are now sidelining her reporting talents to prioritise jobs for returning soldiers. Determined to take control of her own future, she reopens her late father’s private investigation agency, and, slowly, the women of Sydney come knocking. At first, Billie’s bread and butter is tailing cheating husbands. Then, a young man, the son of European immigrants, goes missing, and Billie finds herself on a dangerous new trail that will lead her to the highest levels of Sydney society, and down into its underworld. As the danger mounts and Billie realises that much more than one man’s life is at stake, it becomes clear that, though the war was won, it is far from over. The first in a thrilling historical mystery series following straight-talking, fast-driving private investigator. Perfect for fans of Kate Morton’s Homecoming, Lisa Scottoline’s Eternal, and the Frankie Drake Mysteries TV series.
Simpatía by Rodrigo Blanco Calderón
Translated by Noel Hernández González & Daniel Hahn
Seven Stories Press UK, 9781911710073, 256pp, £12.99, 7/3/2024
Simpatía is a suspenseful novel (now longlisted for the International Booker Prize!) with unexpected twists and turns about the agony of Venezuela and the collapse of Chavismo, set in the Venezuela of Nicolas Maduro amid a mass exodus of the intellectual class who have been leaving their pets behind. Ulises Kan, the protagonist and a movie buff, receives a text message from his wife, Paulina, saying she is leaving the country (and him). Ulises is not heartbroken but liberated by Paulina’s departure. Two other events end up disrupting his life even further: the return of Nadine, an unrequited love from the past, and the death of his father-in-law, General Martn Ayala. Thanks to Ayala’s will, Ulises discovers that he has been entrusted with a mission — to transform Los Argonautas, the great family home, into a shelter for abandoned dogs. If he manages to do it in time, he will inherit the luxurious apartment that he had shared with Paulina. This novel centers on themes of family and orphanhood in order to address the abuse of power by a patrilineage of political figures in Latin America, from Simon Bolivar to Hugo Chavez. The untranslatable title, Simpatía, which means both sympathy and charm, ironically references the qualities these political figures share. In a morally bankrupt society, where all human ties seem to have dissolved, Ulises is like a stray dog picking up scraps of sympathy. Can you really know who you love? What is, in essence, a family? Are abandoned dogs proof of the existence or non-existence of God? Ulises unknowingly embodies these questions, as a pilgrim of affection in a post-love era.
These Fragile Graces, This Fugitive Heart by Izzy Wasserstein
Tachyon Publications, 9781616964122, 176pp, £14.99, 12/3/2024
In a queer, noir technothriller of fractured identity and corporate intrigue, a trans woman faces her fear of losing her community as her past chases after her. In mid-21st-century Kansas City, Dora hasn’t been back to her old commune in years. But when Dora’s ex-girlfriend Kay is killed, and everyone at the commune is a potential suspect, Dora knows she’s the only person who can solve the murder. As Dora is dragged back into her old community and begins her investigations, she discovers that Kay’s death is only one of several terrible incidents. A strange new drug is circulating. People are disappearing. And Dora is being attacked by assailants from her pre-transition past. Meanwhile, it seems like a war between two nefarious corporations is looming, and Dora’s old neighbourhood is their battleground. Now she must uncover a twisted conspiracy, all while navigating a deeply meaningful new relationship. Blends queer sci-fi with biotech dystopia to create a gripping story, These Fragile Graces, This Fugitive Heart is an exciting and unpredictable look at the fluid nature of our former and present selves.
A Bullet For Rhino by Clifford Witting
Galileo Publishing, 9781915530271, 276pp, £10.99, 14/3/2024
Detective Inspector Harry Charlton finds himself invited to a reunion at Mereworth School at which a particularly unpleasant, but very famous and accomplished old boy, Colonel Bernard Garstang — VC, DSO and MC… aka ‘Rhino’ will be present. The Colonel is attending this event in order to persuade his daughter Diana and his ex-wife Muriel that Diana should accompany him to live in Port Douglas, Nigeria. He is both inebriated and armed… But also there is Gordon Hollander, who is much enamoured of Diana, and is far from keen on allowing her to be taken off anywhere. Gordon’s father, Sir James, also doesn’t want Rhino in the family given what he knows about him from school days… and Mark Longdon seems to have an excess of secrets that Rhino is willing to divulge. So, as the title suggests, it doesn’t look good for the Colonel. Witting has woven these relationships into a hilarious fabric that wraps around the reunion, the centrepiece of which is the cricket match between Mereworth 1st XI and the Old Merrovians XI. While it is quite apparent that many people wanted Rhino dead, it is not at all apparent whom it was that finished him off. The author is at his best in creating a cast of extremely colourful characters while adhering to a gripping tale of detection. Clifford Witting’s writing is drawing in more fans as each reissue comes out and this book will certainly not disappoint.
Swanna in Love by Jennifer Belle
Dead Ink, 9781915368584, 288pp, £10.99, 14/3/2024
Best-selling author Jennifer Belle (High Maintenance, Going Down) unleashes her first new novel in over ten years. It’s the summer of 1982 and fourteen-year-old Swanna Swain is the only one left at camp. The place is a ghost town by the time her mother Val finally shows up six hours late — stoned and radiant — in a Ford pickup driven by Borislav, her new young Russian lover. Assuming she is headed home to her air-conditioned Upper West Side apartment, Swanna and her lovable younger brother Madding are instead dragged to Vermont-to an artist colony where kids are not welcome and they are forced to sleep in the back of the truck, while Val is cosy inside the house with the Russian. Then Swanna meets Dennis, a handsome married father of two, at a bowling alley, and, knowing a thing or two about seduction from Judy Blume, her best friend at camp, and her own parents’ many affairs, she sets out to convince Dennis to help her. But love seldom obeys rules, and even a tough, smart, city girl like Swanna might not be able to handle falling in love. Best-selling novelist Jennifer Belle returns with a kind of inverse Lolita that explores adolescent desire from the girl’s point of view. In turns hilarious and wildly shocking, Swanna in Love will keep your feathers ruffled and the pages gliding by. Desirous, hilarious, and shocking — a book that’s impossible to put down.
Paper Names by Susie Luo
Verve Books, 9780857308559, 224pp, £9.99, 21/3/2024
Taut, panoramic and powerful; debut novelist Susie Luo’s Paper Names is an unforgettable story about the long shadows of our parents, the ripple effects of our decisions and the ways in which our love transcends difference. Outside a New York apartment building, a violent attack alters the course of three lives forever. Tony, a Chinese-born engineer turned Manhattan doorman, who immigrated to the United States to give his family a better life. His daughter, Tammy, who we meet at age nine and follow through to adulthood and who grapples with expectations surrounding a first-generation American and her own personal desires. And Oliver, a charming, white lawyer with a dark family secret, who is continuously propelled towards Tammy and Tony, whether by fate or his choices. We follow Tony, Tammy and Oliver across three decades, watching them struggle with the American dream, and whether they must sacrifice and their sense of selves to attain it. This heart-breaking story will make you question — was it really worth it? Perfect for fans of Jean Kwok’s Girl in Translation.
The Translator by Harriet Crawley
Bitter Lemon Press, 9781913394837, 416pp, £9.99, 21/3/2024
A genre-bending story that sustains the difficult balancing act of melding a love story with a tale of espionage — in the process shedding light on what is happening in Russia today. A passionate love story, centred on a devastating Russian plot to sabotage the undersea communication cables linking the US to the UK. Clive Franklin, a Russian language expert in the Foreign Office, is summoned unexpectedly to Moscow to act as translator for the British Prime Minister. His life is upended when he discovers that his former lover, Marina Volina, is the interpreter to the Russian President. Together they will try to stop the attack that could paralyse communications and collapse the Western economy.
This House by Sian Northey & Susan Walton
3TimesRebel Press, 9781739128791, 166pp, £12.99, 21/3/2024
A delicate but powerful novel about how decisions taken almost by chance have unforeseen consequences. Anna has lived alone for decades. She is cocooned by, and marooned in, an isolated cottage called Nant yr Aur in the Welsh mountains. The arrival of Siôn, a young man who seems strangely at home in the house, leads to an unpicking of Anna’s past. As Anna’s relationship with Siôn develops — to the point where he feels comfortable showering at Nant yr Aur — her perspective on the solidity of her past shifts. Uncertainty, distortion, illusion and subtle betrayal are gradually exposed. Ultimately, a quietly devastating revelation changes the lives of both Siôn and Anna. Sian Northey writes with economy and precision, setting out what the life of a middle-aged woman with an emotionally complicated past feels like from the inside.
The Last Animal: A Novel by Ramona Ausubel
Riverhead, 9780593420539, 304pp, £12.99, 26/3/2024
A playful, witty, and resonant novel in which a single mother and her two teen daughters engage in a wild scientific experiment and discover themselves in the process. Teenage sisters Eve and Vera never imagined their summer vacation would be spent in the Arctic, tagging along on their mother’s scientific expedition. But there’s a lot about their lives lately that hasn’t been going as planned, and truth be told, their single mother might not be so happy either. Now in Siberia with a bunch of serious biologists, Eve and Vera are just bored enough to cause trouble. Fooling around in the permafrost, they accidentally discover a perfectly preserved, four-thousand-year-old baby mammoth, and things finally start to get interesting. The discovery sets off a surprising chain of events, leading mother and daughters to go rogue, pinging from the slopes of Siberia to the shores of Iceland to an exotic animal farm in Italy, and resulting in the birth of a creature that could change the world — or at least this family. The Last Animal takes readers on a wild, entertaining, and refreshingly different kind of journey, one that explores the possibilities and perils of the human imagination on a changing planet, what it’s like to be a woman in a field dominated by men, and how a wondrous discovery can best be enjoyed with family. Even teenagers.
