From a new release from Kevin Barry and Andrea Mara to debut fiction titles from Fearne Cotton, Madeline Docherty, and Jane Flett, here’s what to look out for this June…
The Heart in Winter by Kevin Barry (6 June, Canongate)
Award-winning writer Kevin Barry’s first novel set in America, The Heart in Winter is a savagely funny and achingly romantic tale of young lovers on the lam in 1890s Montana. Described as a love story for the ages—lyrical, profane and propulsive—Kevin Barry demonstrates himself to be a master stylist, an unrivalled humourist, and a true poet of the human heart.
Someone in the Attic by Andrea Mara (6 June, Penguin)
Bestselling Irish author Andrea Mara has sold more than 500,000 copies worldwide, four of which were shortlisted for Irish Creme Novel of the Year. Her upcoming title, Someone in the Attic is described as an atmospheric, chilling thriller that you won’t be able to put down. The book opens with Anya enjoying a relaxing bath when she sees the attic hatch swing open, and a masked figure drops to the floor. Thirty seconds later, Anya is dead. Across town, Anya’s old school friend sees an online video of a masked figure climbing out of an attic. She suddenly realises why the footage is eerily familiar. It was filmed inside her house. Boom, instant intrigue.
Gender Theory by Madeline Docherty (6 June, John Murray Press)
An incredible debut from a blazing new voice in Scottish fiction, Gender Theory deals with illness, identity and how we care for those around us. You lose your virginity to a boy from your gender theory seminar, and the first person you tell is Ella. Ella’s with you at the party when you first kiss a girl, and Ella takes you to the hospital the first time you’re diagnosed. Over the next few years you have a string of relationships and jobs, but you can always count on Ella to be there for you – until the drinking and the parties, the hospital visits and late-night calls, blur the lines of your friendship into something unbalanced and fragile, at risk of breaking altogether. The worst part is you can see it coming. The worst part is you don’t know how to stop.
Our Next Reality by Alvin Wang Graylin and Louis Rosenberg (6 June, John Murray Press)
Over the last 100 years, technology has changed our world. Over the next decade it will transform our reality. In Our Next Reality, two industry veterans provide a data-driven debate on whether the new world we’re creating will be a technological utopia or an AI-powered dystopia and give guidance on how to aim for the best future we can. This book answers over a dozen of the most pressing questions we face as artificial intelligence and spatial computing accelerates the digitization of our world. Find out why our actions in the next decade could determine the trajectory of our species for countless millennia.
Scripted by Fearne Cotton (6 June, Michael Joseph)
Turning her hand to fiction, Fearne Cotton’s Scripted is a life-affirming and deeply compassionate novel that follows Jade, as she loses control of her life. Pushed around and taken for granted, she knows that somewhere along the path to being an adult she’s lost her way. The last place she expects to discover answers is on the floor outside her flat, but there it is: a script containing an argument between her and her boyfriend that hasn’t actually happened yet. The next day, the row becomes reality, and the questions hang in the air: Who is writing them? And how are they able to predict her future so accurately? Aan Jade do to rewrite the script?
Others Like Me: The Lives of Women without Children by Nicole Louie (13 June, Dialogue Books)
This deeply personal exploration of childless and childfree women in their own words is the story of fourteen women around the world, from different walks of life, who don’t have children. It’s also the story of why Nicole Louie had to find them and what they taught her. Part memoir, part exploration of childlessness through candid conversations, this book showcases the many ways in which people find fulfilment outside of parenthood. And because the social expectation to procreate weighs the most on women, Louie focuses solely on them, their experiences and how they flourish outside of motherhood. In doing so, she upends the stereotypes that diminish women who are not mothers and offers reassurance and companionship on a path less known.
Parade by Rachel Cusk (18 June, Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
From Rachel Cusk, author of the Outline trilogy, comes this startling, exhilarating novel that once again expands the notion of what fiction can be and do. Parade demolishes the conventions of storytelling, surging past the limits of identity, character, and plot to tell the story of G, an artist whose life contains many lives. Rachel Cusk is described as a writer and visionary like no other, who turns language upside down to show us our world as it really is.
Little Rot by Akwaeke Emezi (18 June, Riverhead Books)
A thrilling new novel from the bestselling, award-winning, visionary Akwaeke Emezi, Little Rot follows Aima and Kalu, a longtime couple who have just split. When Kalu, reeling from the breakup, visits an exclusive sex party hosted by his best friend, Ahmed, he makes a decision that will plunge them all into chaos, brutally and suddenly upending their lives. Ola and Souraya, two Nigerian sex workers visiting from Kuala Lumpur, collide into the scene just as everything goes to hell. Sucked into the city’s corrupt and glittering underworld, they’re all looking for a way out, fueled by a desperate need to escape the dangerous threat that looms over them.
How to Age Disgracefully by Clare Pooley (20 June, Bantam)
Daphne knows that age is just a number, but finding herself alone on her 70th birthday, with only her plants to talk to and neighbours to stalk online, she decides she needs some friends. Joining a Senior Citizen’s Social Club she’s horrified at the expectation she’ll spend her time enduring gentle crafting activities. Thankfully, the other members – including a failed actor addicted to shoplifting and a prolific yarn-bomber – agree. After a tragic accident, the local council threaten to close the club – but they have underestimated the wrong group of pensioners…and with the help of a teenage dad and a geriatric, orphaned dog, the incongruous gang set out to prove it. As long as their pasts don’t catch up with them first…
Freakslaw by Jane Flett (20 June, Doubleday)
From Scottish writer living in Berlin Jane Flett comes a whip smart debut that’s being praised as a queer punk masterpiece. A travelling funfair of seductive troublemakers arrive in a repressed Scottish town. What could possibly go wrong? It’s the summer of ’97 and the Scottish town of Pitlaw is itching for change. Enter the Freakslaw – a travelling funfair populated by deviant queers, a contortionist witch, the most powerful fortune teller, and other architects of mayhem. It doesn’t take long for the Freakslaw folk to infiltrate Pitlaw’s grey world, where the town’s teenagers – none more so than Ruth and Derek – are seduced by neon charms and the possibility of escape. But beneath it all, these newcomers are harbouring a darker desire: revenge.
The Suspect by Rob Rinder (20 June, Century)
Barrister turned broadcaster and bestselling author Rob Rinder draws on his own experiences of the legal system in his works of fiction. The Suspect begins when the UK’s favourite breakfast TV presenter dies live on air in front of millions of viewers, the nation is left devastated. More devastated still when it becomes clear that her death was not an accident. The evidence points to one culprit: celebrity chef Sebastian Brooks. But junior barrister Adam Green is about to discover that the case is not as open-and-shut as it first seemed. And although her angelic persona would suggest otherwise, she was not short of enemies in the glittery TV world… Can Adam uncover the truth?
One Perfect Stranger by RB Egan (27 June, Hodder & Stoughton)
How far would you go for €1 million? From the outside Nicole and Mark Reid have the perfect life, but behind the facade everything is broken; huge debt, bills unpaid, the couple barely talking to each other. Only their two daughters keep them together. Then Nicole receives an offer that could change everything. It’s the middle of the night and Nicole is alone, desperately trying to finish work on her second job, when a message pops up on her laptop screen: ‘READ ME’. Certain it is spam she ignores it, but then a new message says: “There is a million euros in your bank account. All you need to do is drive a car. Yes, or no?”
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