The spring reading list—the page-turners that will have you hooked

A collection of 30 short stories – some just a single page long – from the winner of the Merky Books New Writers Prize. Radojevic is a poet and women’s rights activist and her ear for both the rhythm of language and the causes and frustrations that shape our times are present and correct in what is a funny, playful, irreverent – but always sharply on point –examination of contemporary women’s lives. Subjects range from bodily autonomy to the price many women pay to navigate a so-called smoother path through life (‘She was born fierce, with a pair of wings, but somewhere along the way she sold them,’ Radojevic writes of her unnamed universal ‘girl’ in Blood Ridden). But there’s plenty of joy being celebrated in here too: in friendship, self-discovery and the pleasures of falling deeply, genuinely, in love.

Lanagan’s razor-sharp debut introduces twentysomething couple Aine and Tom as they prepare to move in together – a decision made as much from economic practicality as one of relationship intent. They find a suspiciously cheap (though still barely affordable) flat in a pocket of the city with a 24-hour organic supermarket on the corner, but no decent transport links. Once they move in, however, things begin to change. A mysterious mould blooms from the basement, threatening Aine’s physical health, while an even more mysterious neighbour – the old man who lives in the flat upstairs – does the same to her increasingly fragile mental state. Are we witnessing a ghost story or just another tale of the very real nightmare that is London’s rental culture? Lanagan’s genius rests in her ability to keep both narrative balls very much in the air throughout – with plenty of dark laughs along the way.

Brown’s debut, Assembly, heralded her as one of the brightest in Britain’s then emerging crop of young writers. This, her follow-up, sees the author pushing the spare, tight narrative style of her debut in different directions. It opens with what’s quickly revealed to be a long form online article about a gold bar that was stolen from a Yorkshire farm that was squatted and shut down after hosting an illegal rave during lockdown. Penned by Hannah, a previously struggling freelance book reviewer, it became a viral sensation, securing a Netflix deal that allowed Hannah to hook a big toe onto the lowest rungs of London’s property market. But as the novel progresses and different characters move to the forefront – shock journalist Lenny and banker Richard among them – it becomes clear that things as reported by Hannah are considerably murkier than they first appear. If Brown’s satirical brush is a little broad at times, Universality remains a smart, thought-provoking and pacy read about class, capital (cultural and financial) and the general state of divided Britain today.

One Day meets High Fidelity in Brickley’s sparky debut – two rather fittingly vintage references for a Noughties-set novel about music-obsessed wannabe writer Percy and budding musician Joe. We follow the will-they-won’t-they push and pull of their relationship from their musical meet cute at college (the pair bond over, of all things, a Hall & Oates song, which might be a litmus test too far...) and across the first two decades of the new millennium. While their relationship – professional and personal – flounders as Joe becomes a bone fide rock star, the question of the pair’s attraction for one another, it’s no spoiler to say, is never really in doubt. Rather, it’s in the narrative ‘deep cut’ – which follows Percy’s long and winding route to finding herself and discovering her talents – that the story really sings.

Herman Mellville's Moby Dick tends to poll highly in those polls of the classic novels people haven't actually read. Guo’s infinitively enjoyable (and thoroughly readable) retelling is unlikely to suffer a similar fate. We’re in Victorian England when we first meet the Ishmaelle of the title who, orphaned and grieving the loss of her infant sister, binds her breasts and cuts off her hair to pass as a boy before heading off for a life on the high seas – eventually joining the whaling boat, Nimrod.

Guo’s retelling, however, is not simply a gender-swap, but a cultural one, too. In her version, Nimrod’s captain, Seneca, is a Black man of mixed heritage, and his obsessive hunt for the great white whale that drives him to the brink of madness is riven with racial trauma. It’s a propulsive, powerhouse of a read that doesn’t just stand on its own literary feet, it does so with such skill and verve that it might – just might – have you turning to its source material in a new light.

Nine months pregnant, Annie is ‘milling in the crib section’ at IKEA in Portland, fretting about the state of her finances, her career and her marriage when, seemingly out of nowhere, a monumental earthquake (the ‘Big One’) hits. She makes it out of the store alive with only one mission – to find her way to husband Dom. Over the course of the day that follows, Annie narrates their story to their unborn baby, Bean, charting the path of their life together. We witness their shift from hopeful young artists (Annie was an aspiring playwright, Dom still aspires to become an actor) to disillusioned thirtysomethings struggling to make the even basic building blocks of modern American life work and, in the process, Annie re-evaluates the ways to live a life. Pattee, a climate journalist by day knows of what she speaks – Portland lies smack bang in the heart of the very real Cascadia fault line, which has been estimated as having a one-in-three chance of triggering the Big One in the next 40 years – and she doesn’t shy from the horror of such a devastating event. In Annie, however, she’s able to render it funny, tender and hopeful, as well as frightening.

Nobel laureate Gurnah’s first novel since he was awarded that very prestigious gong in 2021, is a multigenerational coming-of-age saga set in postcolonial Zanzibar and Tanzania that follows three characters from three very different backgrounds across several pivotal decades in both their own lives, and that of their country. Left to live with his grandparents after his mother flees her forced marriage to a much older man, young Karim is determined he will do better. Early on, his fate is twinned with that of Badar, who moves into the household as a young servant boy. But as Karim’s star rises – he attends university, meets and marries his wife, Fauzia, the third major cog in this narrative wheel – Badar’s is thrown into disarray by an accusation that sets off a chain of events that, in time, changes all their lives irrevocably .

Harman’s voice-driven debut is a fun, pacey, comedy-thriller in which ex-girlband singer and single-mom Flo will do anything – anything – to protect her beloved son 10-year-old Dylan. When one of his classmates – the heir to a fast-food empire and ‘little shit’ who has been terrorising Dylan at the posh west London school he attends – suddenly and mysteriously disappears, that anything extends to doing whatever she can to prove her son is not responsible, despite growing evidence to the contrary. All while trying to kickstart her dead-in-the-water singing career and fend off the threat of local serial killer, the Shepherd’s Bush Strangler. Enlisting the help of fellow expat Jenny, a lawyer whose no-nonsense approach serves as a great foil to Flo’s flakiness, she sets out to crack the case. As an American-in-(West) London herself, Harman has a great outsider’s eye for the various hierarchies and snobberies of the capital’s postcodes and class system. Very, very funny.

Museum archivist Sara Hussein is returning home to LA from London when she’s taken aside for questioning by security. We’re in a near-future US in which data from a sleep device designed to relieve insomnia, monitors your dreams and flags any propensity to commit future crimes to the state and Sara’s dreams suggest she wants to do physical harm to her husband. She’s transferred to the Dream Hotel of the title for further monitoring and – like the Hotel California – once you’re in, it’s pretty much impossible to leave. Newly longlisted for this year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction, Lalami’s propulsive fifth novel is proof that the trend for dystopian fiction isn’t going anywhere.

Are monsters born or made? That’s one of the central questions underpinning Theodoridou’s dark, bloody retelling of Bluebeard – the story of the French nobleman and who killed his wives for disobeying a so-called simple trust exercise and kept their bloodied bodies in the basement of his castle for the next wife to discover and, in due course, meet a similar fate. As that suggests, this is not a light read. It is beautifully, poetically written. Rich, dense – and just a little relentless – this is one for fans of the new generation of dark, feminist body horror.