13 New Books To Read Now
Only Here, Only Now By Tom Newlands
Fans of Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie Bain should try the debut novel from Tom Newlands. Like Stuart, this new voice in Scottish literature draws on his own experiences to talk about poverty, identity and family in a forgotten-about corner of Scotland. Only Here, Only Now takes readers to Fife, during the blazing hot summer of 1994. Cora Mowat's mates don't understand her, but then Cora doesn't understand herself. She's stuck on a seaside council estate full of dafties, old folk and seagulls, with a thousand dreams and a restless brain that won't behave. She's dying to escape but unsure of what the future holds – if it holds anything at all. When her Mam's new boyfriend moves in, tensions rise in their tiny house. Gunner means well, but he's dodgy – a shaven-headed shoplifter with more than a few secrets stashed under the bed. As their attempts to forge a makeshift family unravel, Cora rails against her small-town existence in search of love, acceptance and – hopefully – a path to something good.
Available here
Kala By Colin Walsh
This book came out last year but it’s caught a second wave of success after being published in paperback last month. It’s set in the Irish seaside town of Kinlough, a quiet place surrounded by imposing mountains and the Atlantic. Three old friends – Helen, Joe and Mush – are thrown together for the first time in years. They were part of an original group of six inseparable teenagers in the summer of 2003, with motherless, reckless Kala Lanann as their group's white-hot centre. Soon after that summer's peak, Kala disappeared without a trace. Now, it's 15 years later. Human remains have been discovered in the woods. Two more girls have gone missing. As past and present begin to collide, the estranged friends are forced to confront their own complicity in the events that led to Kala's disappearance.
Available here
Caledonian Road by Andrew O’Hagan
From the author of Mayflies comes this unputdownable, state-of-the-nation novel about one man’s epic fall from grace. It’s May 2021, London. Campbell Flynn – an art historian and celebrity intellectual – is entering middle age. Fuelled by an appetite for admiration, controversy and novelty, he doesn’t take people half as seriously as they take themselves. Milo Mangasha is his provocative student. Milo inhabits a more precarious world, and has experiences and ideas that excite his teacher. Over the course of an incendiary year, a web of crimes, secrets and scandals is revealed, and Flynn may not be able to protect himself from the shattering exposure of all his privilege really involves.
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The Future Was Color by Patrick Nathan
Set against the decadence of Hollywood and postwar Los Angeles, Patrick Nathan’s latest release explores what it means to feel lonely in a world of decadence and debauchery. As a Hungarian immigrant writing monster movies in 1950s Hollywood, George Curtis must navigate the McCarthy-era studio system, filled with possible communists and spies, and the life of a closeted man on Sunset Boulevard. When Madeline, a famous actress, offers George a writing residency at her estate in Malibu to work on the political writing he cares most deeply about, his world is blown open. Soon Madeline is carrying George like an ornament into a class of LA society ordinarily hidden from men like him. Behind the on-screen monsters lurk personal demons: the trauma of war and the shadow of an atomic future. Here, George realises he can never escape his past as György, the queer Jew who fled Budapest alone a decade earlier.
Available here
Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner
Taffy Brodesser-Akner is the author of Fleishman Is in Trouble, but this might be her best novel yet. It’s 1980 in Long Island. Wealthy businessman Carl Fletcher is kidnapped from his driveway in the nicest part of town. He is beaten, held for ransom and then returned to his family. Miraculously, Carl, his wife and his three kids are left to move on with their lives, and resume their places in the ongoing saga of the American dream. But nearly 40 years later, when Carl's mother dies, the trauma that has been bubbling beneath the Fletchers' lives surfaces at last. It becomes apparent that Carl has been quietly pursuing closure to the kidnapping for all these years, with darker consequences than the family could have ever imagined.
Available here
Gabriel's Moon by William Boyd
One of Scotland’s greatest writers returns with a fresh espionage novel that takes readers from 1960s London to the sunny shores of Cadiz and the bleak streets of Warsaw. Gabriel Dax is a young man haunted by the memories of a tragedy: every night, when sleep finally comes, he dreams about his childhood home in flames. His days are spent on the move as an acclaimed travel writer, capturing the changing landscapes in the grip of the Cold War. When he’s offered the chance to interview a political figure, his ambition leads him unwittingly into a web of duplicities and betrayals. As Gabriel’s reluctant initiation takes hold, he is drawn deeper into the shadows. Falling under the spell of Faith Green, an enigmatic and ruthless MI6 handler, he becomes ‘her spy’, unable to resist her demands. But amid the peril, paranoia and passion consuming Gabriel’s new covert life, it will be the revelations closer to home that change the rest of his story.
Released on 5th September
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The Kellerby Code by Jonny Sweet
In the aftermath of Saltburn and Netflix’s Ripley, this novel follows a similar trajectory, entangling three friends in a dangerous game of infatuation and hate. Edward is living in a world he can't afford and to which he doesn't belong. To camouflage himself, he has catered to his friends' needs: fetching drycleaning, sorting flowers for premieres. It's a noble effort, but he’d do anything to keep his pretentious 'best pals' Robert and Stanza happy. In return, his proximity to their abundance might sponge the shame of his birth and violent past cleanly away. But Edward has secretly been in love with Stanza since their Cambridge days. The shattering discovery that Stanza and Robert are an item pushes him too far. His little acts of kindness take a sinister turn, giving way to the unspeakable brutality Edward fears is at his core.
Available here
The Sons of El Rey by Alex Espinoza
Alex Espinoza’s writing will make you want to book a flight to Mexico City and discover the bizarre and fascinating world of lucha libre – professional wrestling the city made famous. His novel tells the story of Ernesto Vega, a man who’s lived many lives: pig farmer, construction worker and famed luchador El Rey Coyote. But in all those roles, he has always worn a mask. He was discovered by a local trainer at a time when luchadores – Mexican wrestlers donning flamboyant masks and capes – were treated as daredevils or rock stars. Ernesto finds fame, rapidly gaining name recognition across Mexico, but at great personal expense. Years later, when his son is struggling to save his father’s gym in Los Angeles, he uncovers a secret that will have dire consequences for the whole family.
Available here
Godwin by Joseph O’Neill
Joseph O’Neill is a double Booker prize nominee. His work draws on his international upbringing: born in Ireland, he grew up in Mozambique, Turkey and Iran, and educated in the Netherlands. Godwin is centred on Mark Wolfe, a brilliant writer who lives in Pittsburgh with his wife and their young daughter. His half-brother Geoff, born and raised in the UK, is a desperate young football agent. He pulls Mark across the ocean into a scheme to track down an elusive prospect known only as “Godwin” – an African teenager Geoff believes could be the next Messi. Narrated by Mark and his colleague Lakesha Williams, the novel is a tale of family, migration and the dark history of transatlantic money-making.
Available here
Someone Like Us by Dinaw Mengestu
Dinaw Mengestu returns with a gripping tale that takes readers from the streets of Paris to the gritty neighbourhoods of Washington DC. After abandoning his once promising career in search of a new life in France, Mamush meets Helen, a photographer whose way of seeing the world shows him the possibility of finding not only love, but family. Now, five years later, with his marriage to Helen on the verge of collapse, he returns to the close-knit immigrant Ethiopian community of DC that defined his childhood. At its centre is Mamush's stoic, implacable mother, and Samuel, the larger-than-life father figure whose ceaseless charm and humour have always served as cover for a harder, more troubling truth. But on the same day that Mamush arrives home in Washington, Samuel is found dead in his garage. With Helen and their two-year old son back in Paris, Mamush sets out on an unexpected journey across America in search of answers to questions he'd been told never to ask.
Released on 1st August.
Preorder here
Devil Is Fine by John Vercher
American author John Vercher writes about race, identity and social justice – making his latest release a timely one ahead of the upcoming presidential elections. Its mixed-race narrator receives a letter from an attorney, informing him he has inherited a plot of land from his estranged white grandfather. He travels to a beach town several hours south of his home with the intention of selling the land immediately and moving on. But upon inspection, what lies beneath the dirt is far more complicated than he ever imagined. In a shocking irony, he is now the Black owner of a former plantation passed down by the men on his white mother’s side of the family. Peppered with humour and wit, it’s a story of discovering and reclaiming an unimaginable past, and how we come to terms with painful legacies left behind.
Available here
Hum by Helen Phillips
American author Helen Philips has set her latest novel in a dystopian world of dizzying technological advancement. In a city addled by climate change and populated by intelligent robots called ‘hums’, May loses her job to artificial intelligence. In a desperate bid to resolve her family’s debt and secure their future for another few months, she becomes a guinea pig in an experiment that alters her face so it cannot be recognised by surveillance cams. Seeking some reprieve from her recent hardships and from her family’s addiction to their devices, she splurges on passes that allow them three nights’ respite inside the Botanical Garden: a rare green refuge where forests, streams and animals flourish. But her insistence that her son, daughter and husband leave their devices at home proves far more fraught than she anticipated, and the lush beauty of the Botanical Garden is not the balm she hoped it would be. When her children come under threat, May is forced to put her trust in a hum of uncertain motives.
Released on 6th August
Available here
Into a Star by Puk Qvortrup
Puk Qvortrup’s debut is a devasting read about love, loss and rebuilding your life after an unimaginable tragedy. Puk is 26 years old, preparing for the birth of her second child, when her husband has a heart attack while out running. She leaves their toddler with a friend and dashes to the hospital, where Lasse lies unresponsive in a coma. He dies a few hours later. Into a Star follows Puk and her young family in the first year after this tragedy, which has shattered the ordinary life she imagined for them. As the days turn to weeks and months, Puk's second son is born, her sister moves in, her relationship with her in-laws fractures and evolves. She reckons daily with her memories of Lasse: how they met and fell in love, their adventures, their dreams for the future. And she navigates the miraculous, brutal, overwhelming days of early parenthood alone.
Available here
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