Aerth by Deborah Tomkins (Weatherglass, £10.99)
Joint winner of the inaugural Weatherglass Novella prize, chosen by Ali Smith, this is the story of Magnus, who is born on Aerth, a planet rapidly approaching a new ice age. The small population, decimated by earlier pandemics, seeks to spread kindness and to do no harm to others or the world. Magnus hopes for adventure and as an adult joins a team trying to establish a colony on Mars. But that bare, lifeless place makes him long for the forests of home, and he takes the opportunity to join the first expedition to another world: Urth, a crowded, polluted, rapidly warming planet that’s a distorted, dark-mirror version of Aerth. These other worlds come vividly to life through a series of beautifully composed vignettes. Moving and thought-provoking, this is a memorable debut from a writer to watch.
Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix (Tor Nightfire, £22)
The latest from the popular American horror novelist (How to Sell a Haunted House) is set in a Florida home for pregnant teens in the summer of 1970. It is rare for a male author to write in such convincing, intimate detail about the emotional and physical experience of pregnancy, and with such empathy. He’s also very good at depicting the mood and attitudes of the American south in 1970. The focus is on 15-year-old Fern and her fellow inmates, from rebellious Rose, who imagines she will keep her baby, to mute, terrified little Holly. This could almost be a mainstream realist novel, with all the horror, blood and gore arising from normal human experiences, even after Fern is given a tatty paperback called How to Be a Groovy Witch. Bored, the girls decide to cast a spell, and are shocked when it works. Later they encounter a coven of witches living rough in the woods and begin to realise the high and bloody price that must be paid for witchcraft. An engrossing, compelling read.
Water Moon Samantha Sotto Yambao (Bantam, £18.99)
Most people who open the nondescript door on a Tokyo street find the small ramen restaurant as advertised. But for a few, behind the door is an unusual pawnshop where they can exchange their deepest regret in life for the ability to forget and move on. After the customer leaves, the regret becomes a bird in a magical otherworld where people have the course of their lives tattooed on their skin, invisible except in the rain, magic pervades everything, and terrifying masked enforcers known as the Shiikuin punish anyone who dares to defy their fate. An engaging, dreamy fantasy with an atmosphere reminiscent of a Studio Ghibli production.
The Garden by Nick Newman (Doubleday, £16.99)
Elderly sisters Evelyn and Lily have lived for years in one room of their childhood home, performing the chores, rules and rituals prescribed by their mother long ago. They tend the garden, never daring to look over the wall that surrounds it. There may be monsters out there; fragmented memories suggest there will be dangerous men. They haven’t seen another living soul since Mother died, until they discover a stranger hiding in the house. Is it a man, too dangerous to let live, or just a boy? There’s something childlike about the characters in the first adult novel by the children’s writer Nicholas Bowling, which is an odd, intriguing mix of psychological mystery and dystopian gothic.