Sublimation by Isabel J Kim (Picador, £18.99)
This debut novel from an award-winning Korean-American short fiction writer is a fantastical reimagining of the immigrant experience. Here, anyone who crosses a border not intending to return creates an “instance”: a duplicate self who continues life at home. Reintegration into one body is possible, but after years of separate experiences, Soyoung wonders if it might be the psychological equivalent of murder. This idea shocks her friend Yujin, who speaks with his instance in New York every day, waiting for him to be granted the dual citizenship that will allow them to share a privileged life between two countries. The story of these two pairs is told in the second person, a destabilising choice that gradually immerses the reader in a world of doppelgangers. As in our reality, travel is hedged around with bureaucratic systems designed to codify identity and control immigration. A brilliantly realised, imaginative and compelling work of literary speculative fiction.

Last Day of a Prior Life byAndrés Barba, translated by Lisa Dillman (Scribe, £10.99)
The latest novel by the Spanish author of Such Small Hands is a gentler, more unusual approach to the ghost story. An estate agent encounters a child in the empty house she’s trying to sell, and realises she’s met a ghost. The experience causes her to think about her closest relationships and to act in ways she never has before. Knowing it could be dangerous, she goes back to the house, determined to try to help the child from another time who is trapped there. A short, subtle, eerie tale that hides depths beneath a surface simplicity.

Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep by Paul Tremblay (Bloomsbury, £18.99)
The latest from the horror writer dips into the darker side of science fiction, imagining the development of a brain implant that allows the dead to walk. Julia has been hired to use something like a games control console to operate a man in a vegetative state, making his otherwise unresponsive body stand, walk, turn around and sit down. Her job is to conduct him from California to the east coast, supposedly so his final wishes will be honoured, and he’ll be able to legally die by his own choice. There’s nothing dignified about their jerky progress through airports and on planes, trying to avoid attracting attention to the man she calls Bernie and pretends is her stroke-disabled father walking under his own power. The creepy, dark humour in Julia’s side of the story is undercut by horror in chapters from the point of view of a man trapped in a body he cannot control, unable to remember his own name, but increasingly determined to escape and find answers. Things grow progressively more dangerous, the dread building to a mind-bending shocker of an ending.

The Carrier by Ruth Newton (Bantam, £18.99)
In this debut novel, a Carrier – always female – is someone paid to process another’s pain, relieving the customer from negative emotions such as jealousy, grief or anxiety. The mechanics don’t stand up to inspection, but as an allegory for our commercialised lives, and particularly the expectations of women’s emotional labour, it’s right on the nose. This cleverly plotted thriller shines a light on the way fortunes are made by inventing new addictions, and how easily unfair treatment may be hidden, or simply accepted. A thought-provoking read.

Time to Burn by Ellery Lloyd (Macmillan, £16.99)
In present-day London, tech entrepreneur Inigo Frank launches his latest venture: commercial time travel. Only the super-rich can afford it, and the huge amount of energy required to keep a gateway to the past open for even a few minutes is hardly eco-friendly. Also, the past is not fixed. If visitors do something that could change the course of history, in even the smallest way, no one knows how it might affect the present. Visits to the 1940s are restricted to a few hours spent within walking distance of the London site. When the third tour returns minus one tourist and with another one badly injured, characters have the unsettling feeling that certain details in their own lives don’t match up with their memories. A clever, exciting time-travel thriller, filled with unexpected twists.