Rendered in an electric stream-of-consciousness as addictive as Patricia Lockwood’s, this blackly comic inner monologue plunges us into the psyche of Agnes Maurer, a fading New York model-socialite on the hunt for someone to kill her before her next SoulCycle class. Over 24 hours in 2014, she scrolls through candidates – an icy magazine editor, a gun dealer and Agnes’ cruel novelist boyfriend. An unnervingly entertaining, relentlessly compelling study of existential despair born of a hollow consumerist culture that prizes image above all else, written by a screenwriter and recipient of NYU’s Goldwater Fellowship for creative writing.

Introduced by Megan Nolan, this is the new translation of a forgotten German gem – Rehmann lost out to Günter Grass’ The Tin Drum for the 1958 Gruppe 47 prize and has since been overlooked, until this, her debut novel, was reissued in 2022 in Germany to great acclaim. Rehmann (1922-2016) also wrote four further novels and later ran as a Green Party candidate for a seat in the Bundestag. In startlingly intense, intimate prose, the novel takes us into the private lives of four employees of the gleaming Wellis Corporation over one weekend – revealing, together, the illusions we live by.

Another sign of the horror boom is the number of established writers moving into the genre, among them Arnott, award-winning author of noir titles including The Long Firm, which sold more than 150,000 copies and became a Bafta-winning BBC drama, and historical noir The Devil’s Paintbrush. Netherwood is a disquieting, modern-British folk-horror capturing the Gothic atmosphere of Hastings. When a couple bails out of London, washing up at a seaside cottage in Hastings, they find themselves living in the former home of a notorious local occultist over whom the shadow of former town resident Aleister Crowley looms large.

I love Kidd’s crackling prose, which whisks us into the mysterious, Gothic life of Victorian orphan Bodkin Bell – who does not know her origins but does know she is different. As the child star “Little Spark”, she displayed her electrifying gifts – until they landed her in a London gaol. Looking for a way out, she starts assisting a reclusive family of inventors creating automata at an isolated Kent house – and there uncovers chilling truths. Kidd is the author of five previous novels, including Murder at Gulls Nest, The Night Ship and Things in Jars, and the winner of the 2016 Costa Short Story Award.

Dent has been the resident word expert on Channel 4’s Countdown for 30 years, co-hosts Unspeakable, a podcast with Phil Wang, and is filming a new Channel 4 series with Alan Carr called Secret Genius. She is also the author of several non-fiction books on language. Following the success of Guilty by Definition, this is the second in the charming linguistic mystery series following lexicographer sleuth Martha Thornhill. When mysterious symbols appear as graffiti around Oxford – and near the body of a murdered university lecturer – Martha recognises them from a runic alphabet created by a deceased fantasy writer.

I could not stop reading this raw, intense coming-of-age story about two friends growing up in 1980s southern France on radically different paths. Rose, the only child of her bourgeois parents, has a stable boyfriend, a poet-turned-salesman, while Solange, the only daughter of a single mother, gets pregnant at 15, then studies acting and ends up in Hollywood. Telling their intersecting stories through each perspective, this is a brutally honest exploration of the different ways we navigate the journey of becoming a woman. Darrieussecq is the author of more than 20 books, including Men, which won the Prix Médicis and the Prix des Prix.

This gorgeous, vibrant anthology brings West African and Caribbean storytelling traditions to life for a new generation. Wilson’s lyrical retellings honour the richness and resilience of these tales, while Bass’ striking illustrations burst with colour and cultural detail. Blending folklore, history and imagination, this is both an entertaining collection and a valuable celebration of heritage and ancestral storytelling that should be treasured by all.

This vivid story of a family divided by the Korean War and the lengths to which they must go to survive is heart-stopping and moving. Believing the war to be over, Oksoon’s father and older brother have left for Seoul in search of opportunity. When the Chinese army attacks Pyongyang in 1950, Oksoon, her mother and brother flee south in immense danger, while her cousin Junho takes refuge in an orphanage on the coast. Born in Seoul, Lee Reed lives in California and is a 2023 Reese Witherspoon LitUp Fellow. One for fans of Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko and Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi.

Powers’ debut, The Yellow Birds, drew on his experiences serving in Iraq and won the Guardian First Book Award and the PEN/Hemingway Award. He is also the author of A Shout in the Ruins and A Line in the Sand. Now, he revisits his native Virginia with a beautiful, gut-wrenching epic spanning its mountains and the battlefields of Second World War France. It centres on Roy Young and his childhood friend Samantha Hatton, who spurns Roy in favour of a wild boy from the mountains, Ennis Duke. Enlisting to fight, Roy and Ennis forge a bond, while Samantha waits painfully in Virginia.

Won in a nine-way auction, with rights sold in 17 territories, this enemies-to-lovers romantasy is a major launch title. Written by a former journalist and Barnes & Noble events manager, it follows Reya Connery, aka the Crimson Dagger, the most notorious thief in Rhiterra. When a job collapses, scuppering her chance to buy her freedom from a crime lord, she is left scrambling. Caelan Halcyon is an immortal warrior with a curse creeping his way, his only way out an unreachable cure. He needs a thief. She needs the money. Their uneasy deal takes them to the edges of the known world.