The Barbecue at No 9 by Jennie Godfrey (Hutchinson Heinemann, £16.99)
Most of the action in Godfrey’s second novel takes place during the Live Aid concert on 13 July 1985, at a barbecue hosted by the Gordon family in a new-build cul-de-sac in an unspecified part of England. As neighbours arrive and music plays, we gradually learn the backstories of the main characters, from teenage Hanna, who is planning to run away from her pale, preoccupied father and house-proud, socially ambitious mother, to mysterious Rita, newly arrived from Australia to begin a new life, and shell-shocked ex-soldier Steve, whose paranoia is exacerbated by the shadowy figure watching the street. Like Godfrey’s debut, The List of Suspicious Things, this is not so much a whodunnit as a wonderful slow-burn story about friendship, community, and secrets within families, the choices we make and the lies we tell to protect ourselves and others, with the bonus of a terrific built-in soundtrack and a nostalgic vibe.
A Sociopath’s Guide to a Successful Marriage by MK Oliver (Hemlock, £16.99)
Former headteacher Oliver’s first novel centres on yummy mummy Lalla Rook, who lives with her banker husband Stephen and their young children Nelly and Nathan in the leafy north London suburb of Muswell Hill. It’s a privileged existence, but Lalla, who is not only admirably resourceful but also manipulative and utterly lacking in empathy, has her eye on a larger house in considerably pricier Hampstead as well as a place at an exclusive school for Nelly, who is already demonstrating that the antisocial apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Murder, body disposal, blackmail – Lalla will stop at nothing to achieve her ends, but things get complicated when it begins to looks as if the intruder she dispatched with a kitchen knife minutes before the start of four-year-old Nathan’s birthday party was trying to uncover her murky past. Told with gusto, plus wonderfully twisty plotting and lashings of lifestyle porn, this satirical thriller is the perfect antidote to the winter blues.
A Bad, Bad Place by Frances Crawford (Bantam, £16.99)
Set in the late 1970s in the Possilpark district of Glasgow, an area riven by poverty, crime and sectarianism, Crawford’s superb debut is told from two points of view: 12-year-old Janey, who is walking her dog when she stumbles upon the body of a young woman; and her grandmother Maggie, who has cared for Janey since she was rescued, as a baby, from the gas explosion that killed her immediate family. Janey is afraid to tell the police all she knows, but finds herself caught up in the machinations of the grownup world. Maggie, who has secrets of her own, is desperate to protect her granddaughter, but poverty and lack of choice make her vulnerable, and the dead woman has connections to a well-known criminal family. A well-observed, well-told account of trauma, grief and the concomitant magical thinking, this coming-of-age mystery has flashes of humour and pathos that provide fuel for real suspense.
Holy Boy by Lee Heejoo, translated by Joheun Lee (Picador, £14.99)
Given that “parasocial” was Cambridge Dictionary’s word of the year for 2025, the first novel from this young Korean writer to be translated into English is nothing if not topical. Four women, each with an obsessive imagined connection to a handsome K-pop idol, band together to kidnap him, holding him captive in a mansion in the mountains surrounding downtown Seoul. As their backstories unfold, we learn the reasons for their delusions of intimacy with this complete stranger whom they compete to nurture and protect, but things become increasingly complicated when the son of the ringleader’s old acquaintance shows up unexpectedly. It’s a terrific premise, and although the storytelling is somewhat convoluted, Lee Heejoo does a wonderful job creating an unhinged, febrile tension and ramping up the sense of foreboding. However, the translation, which is stilted, overliteral and occasionally downright confusing, does the story no favours.
A Stranger in Corfu by Alex Preston (Canongate, £18.99)
For his latest novel, Preston has repurposed the tiny Ionian island of Vidos, from which both Corfu and Albania are visible, as “spyland”. It’s a sunlit version of the purgatory of Mick Herron’s Slough House, where compromised or burnt-out members of MI6 are “neither detained or precisely free”. In 1995, six years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Nina Woolf is sent there, suffering from PTSD. When shots are fired at her and an older agent as they walk in the woods, she accepts the explanation of trigger-happy Corfiot poachers, but when another of the old guard is found drowned, it looks as if the past may, at last, be catching up. The story then rewinds 50 years to a group of idealistic Oxford students who resolve to dedicate their lives to advancing the cause of communism from within the British establishment. This story of betrayal, disillusionment and the terrible cost of adherence to ideology is both compelling and humane.
