The Dry Heart / The Road to the City

Natalia Ginzburg (trans by Frances Frenaye)
Daunt Books, £8.99 each, pp120/112

These reissued 1940s novellas by Italian writer Natalia Ginzburg delve into the complexity of female desire. At the start of The Dry Heart, the narrator says of her husband, “I shot him between the eyes” – and what follows is a portrait of their devastatingly unhappy marriage. In The Road to the City, a teenager dreams of escaping poverty through marriage to a wealthy man. In sparse, economical prose, Ginzburg portrays the emotional and social limits placed on women, and the ultimately unsuccessful attempts to escape them.

The Lost Café Schindler

Meriel Schindler
Hodder & Stoughton, £20, pp432

When Meriel Schindler’s father died, bequeathing her a quartet of mugs from the Austrian cafe the family once owned, she decided to investigate her ancestors’ lives. The resulting book journeys through 20th-century European history, examining the experiences of Jews in the Austro-Hungarian empire. Although Schindler has a tendency to focus on historical minutiae at the expense of narrative drive, it’s a well-researched and comprehensive account.

The Golden Rule

Amanda Craig
Abacus, £8.99, pp400 (paperback)

Craig’s 10th novel takes as its starting point the central conceit of Patricia Highsmith’s Strangers on a Train: in this version, two women in broken marriages agree to murder each other’s husbands, thereby freeing them from emotional and financial abuse. Craig infuses her plot with a strong social conscience, tackling issues from the gig economy, domestic abuse and single parenthood to Britain’s regional divides. Blending observation with incisive wit, the result is a deliciously noirish tale.

• To order The Dry Heart, The Road to the City, The Lost Café Schindler or The Golden Rule go to guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply