I've always been a Jasper Fford superfan, because he is one of the most original voices within scifi-speculative fiction since Margaret Atwood. His books straddle the line between sci-fi, fantasy, and comedy with supreme skill, but manage to balance exploration of a dizzying array of fascinating ideas with stories that are rooted in three-dimensional characters you care about.
Red Side Story is the long-awaited sequel to the mind-blowing Shades of Grey (no, not that Shades of Grey), a post-apocalyptic novel exploring life thousands of years after a terrible disaster, when life has returned to normal and civilisation is basically peaceful but at a huge cost. For my money. Shades of Grey is the most purely original concept-driven sci-fi novel since Flatland, but where Flatland fell down on not having strong characters, Shades of Grey revolves around two achingly human and relatable, likeable, and just plain readable main characters.
Red Side Story picks up where Shades of Grey left off, answering many of the unanswered questions but offering new ones, and expanding the remarkable worldbuilding in a way that will leave you speechless.
R.F. Kuang's Yellowface is the old standby, a book about books, a writer writing about writing. I'm mainly a playwright, and there are more plays than I can count about playwriting. It's interesting to see this placed in the context of the cutthroat and (like theatre) increasingly identity-politics driven world of publishing. The main character June, who is white (and a struggling writer) struggles with her friendship with her incredibly successful writer friend Athena (who is Chinese), but in a sudden moment of crisis doesn't act to prevent Athena's death. Then she notices Athena's new unpublished novel on the desk...
The book covers June's insecurities and struggles of trying to be a writer in a world that books writers into boxes (as a minority writer, I felt this deeply!) and the Telltale-Heart esque breakdown she experiences as she tries to keep up the deception, while struggling with the fame her stolen book has given her. I found myself rooting for June because I related so much to her insecurity and her fears that talent isn't enough in an industry obsessed with exploiting "authenticity" (but an industry that is still massively dominated by white, privately educated male writers), despite the horrific things she's done.
This book is a savage satire on racial politics and identity politics in contemporary America, and will be terrifyingly relatable for anyone who has ever worked in publishing.
The No. 1 Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller from literary sensation R.F. Kuang
*A Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick*
'Propulsive' SUNDAY TIMES
'Razor-sharp' TIME
'A wild ride' STYLIST
'Darkly comic' GQ
'A riot' PANDORA SYKES
'Hard to put down, harder to forget' STEPHEN KING
Athena Liu is a literary darling and June Hayward is literally nobody.
White lies When Athena dies in a freak accident, June steals her unpublished manuscript and publishes it as her own under the ambiguous name Juniper Song.
Dark humour But as evidence threatens June's stolen success, she will discover exactly how far she…
I found Alice Bell's Grave Expectations books (the sequel, Displeasure Island, was published this September) quite by accident in a Little Free Library, and they're probably the most purely enjoyable writing that I've read this year.
A fascinating unique concept: a teenage girl's best friend vanishes, then her ghost re-appears, giving her the ability to see all ghosts, a skill she uses to earn a living as a medium, and solve murders on the side.
These books are very very funny. The humour is very millennial so people who enjoy their murder mysteries on the more traditional side might not love them as much as I do, but really these are the woke, trans-inclusive, millennial murder mystery novels the world has been waiting for, so what's not to love?
A pacy and hilarious debut crime novel, in which a burnt-out Millennial medium must utilize her ability to see ghosts to figure out which member(s) of a posh English family are guilty of murder.
Almost-authentic medium Claire and her best friend, Sophie, agree to take on a seemingly simple job at a crumbling old manor in the English countryside: performing a seance for the family matriarch's 80th birthday. The pair have been friends since before Sophie went missing when they were seventeen. Everyone else is convinced Sophie simply ran away, but Claire knows the truth. Claire knows Sophie was murdered…
Welcome to the Dead Family Club. Join us, we have good snacks, and tons of famous members! Playwright Naomi Westerman was an anthropology graduate student studying death rituals around the world when her whole family died, turning the end of lives from an academic pursuit into something deeply personal. She became fascinated by the concept of loss and grief, the multiple ways we experience it across cultures, history, and art. Part memoir, part meditation on the many faces of death – from sprinkling ashes across the globe, to the power of horror movies, the complexities of engaging in true crime entertainment, and the vital communities of peer support groups – Happy Death Club is a frank, curious and darkly humorous look at one person’s journey through grief, and what lies beyond.
