The Slowworm’s Song by Andrew Miller review – Belfast, booze and a lifetime of bad nights

The award-winning historical novelist does justice to a sombre examination of a soldier’s shame and guilt in the decades since his army service in Northern Ireland

Companion Piece by Ali Smith review – scintillating tales across the centuries

Parallels are drawn between our age and the time of the Black Death in this beautiful, mysterious novel

Gurnaik Johal: ‘I am constantly wondering about the lives of others’

The prizewinning author on the Southall riots of the early 80s and his debut collection, inspired by London’s never-ending narratives

Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au review – a ghostly mother-and-daughter journey

A trip to Japan stirs up uncomfortable memories in this novel brimming with beautiful imagery

Primal screams: new novels lay bare motherhood’s true brutality

Mothers are all the rage in contemporary fiction. But forget baby yoga and school gate gossip - these women are red in tooth and claw

The Lamplighters by Emma Stonex audiobook review – a spooky psychological mystery

Indira Varma and Tom Burke’s narration amps up the claustraphobia of Emma Stonex’s compelling debut

The Flames by Sophie Haydock review – vivid portraits of Egon Schiele’s muses

Four women close to the Austrian painter are illuminated in this impressive debut, set against the tumult of Secession Vienna and its pandemic

A Door Behind a Door by Yelena Moskovich review – immigration and inner journeys

A Soviet immigrant in the American midwest is pursued by demons from the past in this subversive crime story

Top 10 mirrored lives in fiction

From Oscar Wilde to Daisy Johnson, parallel lives – and what they say about choices and circumstance – have long been a source of fascination and inspiration for novelists

The Whale Tattoo by Jon Ransom review – a powerful new voice of gay working-class life

A Norfolk fishing town is the setting for this heartfelt debut exploring trauma, forgiveness and revenge

Where to start with: Cormac McCarthy

Heard people raving about the American novelist and want to know what all the fuss is about? This handy guide might just help you get stuck in

Glory by NoViolet Bulawayo review – a Zimbabwean Animal Farm

Set in the aftermath of Mugabe’s fall, Bulawayo’s long-awaited second novel is a spellbinding allegory

Irish novelist Colm Tóibín wins Rathbones Folio prize for The Magician

Fictionalised biography of writer Thomas Mann beats Booker prize-winner Damon Galgut to £30,000 award

Thrillers of the month – review roundup

The author of The Last House on Needless Street is back with a new terrifying novel

The Rack by AE Ellis review – a masterly map of suffering

Playwright Derek Lindsay’s only novel under his nom de plume is a stark, hallucinogenic trip into a barbaric postwar TB hospital