The Naked Light by Bridget Collins (Borough, £18.99)
The latest from the bestselling author of The Binding is set in England and focuses on three “surplus women” after the first world war: bored, lonely Florence, her fey niece Phoebe, and Kit, a bohemian artist haunted by memories of wartime France, where she painted masks for wounded soldiers to wear over horrifically damaged faces. Their village is on the Sussex Downs, overlooked by an ancient face carved into the chalk, reputed to protect inhabitants from a hungry spirit. But since the death of the last member of the family traditionally bound to look after it, the face is fast disappearing beneath the grass, and something frightening is stirring in the land. Atmospheric, psychologically astute and beautifully realised, this is a brilliantly original literary take on folk horror.
Exiles by Mason Coile (Baskerville, £16.99)
In 2030, three astronauts arrive on Mars, on a one-way mission to prepare for full-scale colonisation. They find their robot-built base, the Citadel, severely damaged, and one of the robots missing. The remaining two offer different explanations: the missing robot malfunctioned and caused the damage before fleeing, or the Citadel was attacked by an unseen, hostile alien force, and the third robot went in pursuit and has not returned. A taut, terrifying thriller, sadly the last work from Mason Coile, a pseudonym of award-winning author Andrew Pyper, who died in January.
Alchemised by SenLinYu (Michael Joseph, £25)
This big fantasy debut had its first incarnation as Manacled, an online fan-fiction serial with shades of The Handmaid’s Tale and starring Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy as tormented lovers, a sub-genre of Harry Potter fanfic known as “Dramione”. Now the author has created her own fantastic world, driven by various occult sciences. The story is set around a long brutal war between religious believers who insist god-given gifts should be used for good, and necromancers obsessed with gaining power and immortality at any price. As the book begins, Undying necromancers are in control of the city. Helena, a healer who had helped her friends in the Resistance, wakes from a nightmarish stasis with no memory of the final years of the war. She’s shackled, so cannot use her powers, and is made a prisoner of the High Reeve, one of the most feared of the Undying, set on finding out what secrets are hidden beneath her amnesia. This is a violent tale and the author advises reader discretion. The Undying are fond of ripping out the organs of living victims and there are other horrors, including the love match between a caring healer and a violent mass-murderer. This very readable grim-dark fantasy left me feeling queasy.
Saltcrop by Yume Kitasei (HarperVoyager, £18.99)
Set in a near-future world ravaged by climate change, pollution and the effects of mass starvation caused by a crop-destroying blight, the author’s third novel focuses on three sisters. Skipper and Carmen leave their small seaside village to search for their older sister, Nora. She had withdrawn from them after moving to the city to research ways of making crops more resilient, but they hear from her landlord that she hasn’t paid her rent, and learn she has also left her job, and they are concerned. When they get a coded message asking for help, they embark on a long and perilous ocean voyage in the small boat they had built together. An absorbing, compelling tale of love, loyalty and danger, and a frightening look at what we’re doing to our planet.
Big Time by Jordan Prosser (Dead Ink, £10.99)
The Federal Republic of East Australia is a new authoritarian state determined to impose old-fashioned values by rejecting the rest of the world and keeping its citizens under tight control. It is also the only country where a new drug, F, exists. Dispensed as eye drops, it allows glimpses of the near future. Illegal, of course, but musician Julian and his bandmates can’t resist this new high. In the rest of the world, certain “extreme coincidences” and near-death experiences revealing the afterlife as a giant shopping mall may be connected to the temporal meddling down under. This debut is a wonderfully wild, funny, fast and furious trip.