Choice (2024) Neel Mukherjee "Choice is Neel Mukherjee's best book yet: a brooding meditation on the complexities of agency and duty, freedom and guilt, in a savagely unequal world. It's a vital, haunting, devastating read."
Calypso (2024) Oliver K Langmead "Langmead's ambitious, original fiction is always something to savour, and Calypso contains some of his very best writing. Full of arresting imagery, emotional complexity and startling narrative turns, it's a thoughtful, elegant, exciting -- a really unique read. I loved it."
Nuclear Family (2024) Kate Davies "Davies writes with a glorious sureness of touch and impeccable comic timing. Nuclear Family is funny, poignant, smart and wonderfully, achingly real."
Foxash (2023) Kate Worsley "A wonderfully atmospheric and deeply unsettling novel, full of images so vivid they seem to leap off the page. Worsley's fiction is something to savour."
Non-Fiction (2022) Julie Myerson "Myerson writes with devastating clarity about the most complex and troubling of emotions. Nonfiction is painful, powerful, and utterly compelling."
The Exhibitionist (2022) Charlotte Mendelson "In The Exhibitionist Mendelson brings a forensic eye to family dynamics, laying bare the agonies of rage, frustration and longing that lie just beneath the surface of domestic life. The result is a devastating treat of a novel: funny, furious, dark and delicious."
Scary Monsters (2022) Michelle de Kretser "In Scary Monsters de Kretser addresses the weightiest of subjects with the lightest and deftest of touches, and the result is funny, playful, painful, angry, and, above all, ferociously smart. It's a dazzling novel, by a hugely talented author."
Matrix (2021) Lauren Groff "An audacious piece of storytelling, full of passion, wisdom and magic."
Last Night at the Telegraph Club (2021) (Last Night at the Telegraph Club) Malinda Lo "Lo's writing, restrained yet luscious, shimmers with the thrills of youthful desire. A lovely, memorable novel about listening to the whispers of a wayward heart and claiming a place in the world."
Before The Ruins (2021) Victoria Gosling "Engrossing, beguiling, and with an undertow of menace, Before the Ruins is a masterly debut from a richly talented author."
Plain Bad Heroines (2020) Emily M Danforth "Brimming from start to finish with sly humor and gothic mischief, Plain Bad Heroines is a brilliant piece of exuberant storytelling by a terrifically talented author."
All Men Want to Know (2020) Nina Bouraoui "Intense, gorgeous, troubling, seductive - a novel that has to be surrendered to rather than read."
To Calais, In Ordinary Time (2019) James Meek "A glorious imaginative feat, full of complex, compelling, believable characters. Rarely have I been so captivated by a novel, so keen to hurry back to it and reimmerse myself in its world."
A Station on the Path to Somewhere Better (2018) Benjamin Wood "Wood takes the passing, shabby details of mundane landscapes and makes them jitter and throb with yearning and menace. A Station on the Path to Somewhere Better is his best work yet - a novel written from the gut, and with a correspondingly visceral power. A superbly unsettling account of trauma and cautious recovery."
Get in Trouble (2014) Kelly Link "Link's stories are always a treat, and Get in Trouble contains some of her best writing yet. Richly imagined, intellectually teasing: These are not so much small fictions as windows onto entire worlds. This is a brilliant, giddying read."
This Burns My Heart (2011) Samuel Park "This Burns My Heart is a delicate yet powerful story of love, loss, and endurance. The emotional world of the heroine, Soo-Ja, is beautifully realized; I found myself caught up in her dramas from start to finish, and was reluctant to part with her at the novel's close. A lovely, romantic, haunting book."
Mr Fox (2011) Helen Oyeyemi "Mr Fox is a wonderfully original novel, full of images and turns of phrase so arresting, so vivid and inventive, its pages almost glow with them. Helen Oyeyemi has given us a work of playful charm and serious narrative pleasure."