These Days

Lucy Caldwell                                                                                               Faber £12.99

Trauma and tenderness go hand in hand in Caldwell’s gravely beautiful fourth novel.

Her delicate delineation of the emotional states of three women is set against the brutal bombing of Belfast in the Second World War.

As married Florence Bell pines for a long-lost love, her eldest daughter Audrey questions her relationship with fiance Richard, while her youngest, Emma, falls for Sylvia, a fellow first-aid volunteer.

Caldwell writes luminously of love but her psychologically acute descriptions of the ruined city’s resilient people are peerless.

Eithne Farry

Mischief Acts

Zoe Gilbert                                                                        Bloomsbury Circus £17.99

The forest lies at the heart of much universal myth and legend and in her second novel, Gilbert takes us on a mesmerising journey down the byways of English folklore in a linked collection of stories featuring an antlered, shape-shifting sprite known as Herne the Hunter.

Set in South London’s Great North Wood, these tales span hundreds of years, even into the future.

Throughout, Herne appears in various guises as a disruptive and mischievous presence, offering an inventive, subversive take on English history.

Simon Humphreys

The School For Good Mothers

Jessamine Chan                                                 Hutchinson Heinemann £12.99

Freshly divorced Frida Liu is juggling new motherhood with a job in academia that she can’t afford to lose. When a run of sleepless nights leads to a ‘very bad day’, she dashes out to collect some papers, leaving 18-month-old Harriet home alone.

The authorities swiftly intervene, sending Harriet to live with her father, and dispatching Frida to a dystopian reform school for mothers deemed inadequate.

It’s a gripping debut – claustrophobic in its evocation of heartbreaking injustice, nightmarishly plausible in the tyrannical perfectionism that powers it.

Hephzibah Anderson

One Bad Thing

M. K. Hill                                                                                          Head of Zeus £18.99

Hannah Godley is an agony aunt about to jump from radio to television. But, on the last day of her radio phone-in, a caller named Diane seems to know far too much about Hannah’s past – and the bad thing she did as a student.

Soon Diane is invading every aspect of Hannah’s life, which starts to fall apart. Sharply observed and surprising, this is a high-quality slice of psychological suspense.

John Williams