Bad Relations

Cressida Connolly                                                                                   Viking £14.99

History casts a long shadow in this stylish family saga. A soldier wins a Victoria Cross in the Crimean War, only for his marriage to collapse on his return to England.

His tangled family tree stretches from Cornwall to Australia and, as we catch up with his dysfunctional dynasty in the 1970s and again post-Brexit, a lot of loose ends need to be tied up.

In lesser hands it would all feel rather corny, but Connolly brings real emotional depth to the characters.

Max Davidson

Thrown

Sara Cox                                                                                                    Coronet £14.99

Clearly inspired by hosting The Great Pottery Throw Down, Cox’s warm, funny debut heads into a community centre where a pottery class changes the lives of four women.

Louise craves an artistic life, single mum Becky is a reluctant romantic, Jameela has fertility issues and Sheila longs to live in Spain.

Add a handsome pottery instructor, a partner with a secret and a criminal ex, and you have a lovable novel that explores female friendship, heartfelt passions and the ties that bind.

Eithne Farry

Here Goes Nothing

Steve Toltz                                                                                                 Sceptre £18.99

Angus Mooney announces his own murder in the novel’s opening line. What follows is a wildly comic riff on love, mortality and metaphysics; an extended vision of the afterlife that resembles Dante on magic mushrooms.

Meanwhile, in the land of the living, a more devastating virus than Covid is laying waste to humanity.

Thought-provoking, inventive and full of literary pyrotechnics, this remarkable novel is unlike anything you will read this year.

Simon Humphreys 

The Murder Rule

Dervla McTiernan                                                                    HarperCollins £14.99

Lawyer-turned-writer McTiernan sets her latest thriller in the US, rather than in her native Ireland.

Law student Hannah Rokeby is ruthlessly fixated on becoming part of an Innocence Project crusade to free convicted rapist and murderer Michael Dandridge.

It soon becomes clear that her true motivation is to sabotage the campaign rather than to help it. But why? This is a thoroughly engrossing mystery, let down a little by a credibility-straining courtroom finale.

John Williams