Evocative and intense, Madeleine Dunnigan’s debut novel Jean contends with alienation and queerness, with a simmering violence always just below the surface.

Feeling set apart from his peers due to his Jewish background, his socialist artist mother, his class and his fatherlessness, Jean struggles to keep a lid on the inner turmoil which pushes him further into the margins. Set in a British reform school over the hot summer of 1976, the book follows Jean as he is drawn into a closer intimacy with his classmate Tom, with all the complications that brings up.

We spoke to Madeleine Dunnigan about masculinity, otherness, and the enduring popularity of the campus novel.

So first of all, could you tell me about the process of writing the novel and the varying forms it took?

I had the novel idea many years ago. It’s inspired by a family member who disappeared before I was born, but I didn’t know what form that story would take. I didn’t grow up as a voracious writer. I only began really writing dedicatedly in my mid 20s, when I quit my job. So before I could even really embark on the novel, I had a couple of years of learning how to write and figuring out what that was.

I began the novel in earnest, and I must have written one terrible draft that I put in a drawer for a year and didn’t look at, and then started again. I had this image of someone who had disappeared from my family history, and the idea of someone who is interpreted as kind of angry and antisocial. That was one version of the story. The writing was really a process for empathy to get behind that and figure out who that person was and what life was like from their perspective.

Initially there were 3 perspectives. There was Jean’s, there was his mother’s, and there was someone 40 years later looking for Jean. Over the years they intertwined, but it was kind of like writing the same story over and over again. It was only quite late in the writing process that the Jean narrative really took shape, and that became the novel.

I really loved the reform school setting and all these kind of weird traditions that sort of exacerbate or dissolve the established dynamics between the boys.

The boarding school setting is really useful in so many ways. I think there’s no surprise that so many famous novels are campus novels. Limiting where your character can be, what they can do, who they can see, is the genesis of drama and the genesis of narrative and repetition. It makes it easier, you know? Remove decisions and create limitations.

But I didn’t want it to feel tropey, and it’s quite particular to the time period. 1976 is a very specific choice that I made because of its proximity to, and distance from, the Second World War. So you have the kind of overhang of Jean’s mother’s trauma. She’s a German Jewish refugee, an artist, a single mother, very socialist, very bohemian, you know, not religious in any way. A real socialist, communist figure. And 1976, you see this rejection of the liberalism of the ‘60s, and the socialism of the ‘50s, and this new emergence of nihilism, and you have nuclear threat, you have all of the social and cultural forces pushing against it. I wanted that to very much filter into the book without it being overly dramatic, and without it feeling like bad fancy dress.

So the boarding school needed to be slightly different. You had lots of alternative educational institutions emerging in the second half of the 20th century. That was very crucial to it, and I wanted it to be a place where Jean could kind of pull and push against.

One of the things that made the setting so rich for me is that you write clothing and objects and interior design so vividly. Particularly in [Jean’s mentor] Mickey’s house, the elements feel so real.

Well, I’m very glad you said that, because I would say early drafts really did feel like bad fancy dress parties. You know, like everyone was swinging in their bell bottoms.

Mickey is interesting because he’s in his forties. So he isn’t a child of the ‘70s. He was a child in the ‘30s, grew up in the jazz era of the ‘40s and ‘50s, and then was a hippie in the ‘60s. So I had a little more license with the objects that he owns, the way he decorates the house. First of all, he’s a famous pop star, so he has a lot of money. So there’s a little more license with the ostentatiousness.

One of the other things that’s so interesting about the relationship with Mickey is that Jean has this moment where he’s reflecting on it not all that long later, and he’s thinking that he could never point to anything and say, ‘there, that’s what happened’. But he has a sense even at the time that something is underneath.

And there’s another moment where Jean feels really let down by his absent father, which is sort of the catalyst that sets everything off. There are so many men sort of looming in and out of his life, and Jean as a character is trying to figure out where he fits within this masculine environment. What was interesting about masculinity for you?

It’s something I’ve spent a long time thinking about. I think one of the things I really wanted to ensure was that it didn’t fall back on easy cliches. It’s an age old story, you know, the young man feeling alienated because he doesn’t have the father figure in his life. That doesn’t make it any less true, but where it gains meaning is where you make it specific. I wanted to also trouble the different layers of masculinity that you have. That’s connected to queerness as well. It’s telling that Jean doesn’t associate himself with an openly queer community, which did exist at that time. There was Andrew Logan’s Alternative Miss World in 1976, and there was a world of high camp that he could have easily slipped into if he wanted to, but that’s where the collision of his ideas of masculinity and identity and sexuality come.

I think it’s also about mothers and sons, and what is lost and what is gained from the intensity of that relationship. It was interesting that you picked up on that bit of Jean saying he couldn’t put his finger on one thing and say this, because that is kind of what I want the whole book to feel like, that it isn’t one thing. It’s almost like a perfect storm. In so far as masculinity is concerned, I wanted to share it as a whole universe and not a flat kind of separate category.

Of course, Jean’s feelings on masculinity and maleness are complicated by his relationship with Tom. And as you said, there was an avenue for him to explore these feelings in the 70s, but at the same time he’s this particular person in this particular setting where it’s kind of constrained, right?

Yeah. On the one hand, there’s the sociopolitical restrictions on their relationship. There’s the time in which they are born, this sense that homosexuality is no longer illegal, but it’s by no means accepted. It’s not part of the establishment. Then the boarding school directly interacts with that because it’s a very homoerotic space. It’s where these queer acts have been performed for hundreds of years, but they are separated from sexuality. It’s this strange fantasy space where nothing really means anything. You can love a boy, but you’re not gay, because of course you are going to marry someone. It would never be otherwise because of where you’re from and what’s expected of you.

I wanted to play on that in the book, where Tom does love Jean in many ways, but… it’s like saying an apple is an orange. That’s Jean’s great heartbreak, because they’re sort of in two different stories. Jean wants to be in the story where they can go to China, or where they could cohabit, although he can’t consciously admit that. And [Tom]’s happy and easy and breezy because that story doesn’t exist for him.

You’re talking about all these elements that make Jean feel so othered – not just by the external factors of his Jewishness, his class, his fatherlessness, but he also feels othered by something very internal, the impulsive aspect of himself that he can’t really control. How do you go about layering all of these elements?

With great difficulty. What I wanted to show at the end is that it’s complicated, too. Jean sees himself as other and in many ways a victim, and then there’s a moment in the book where he’s like ‘hold on a second, we’re all kind of individual and don’t fit the perfect English mould.’ It’s like, well maybe he could have been friends with them. Maybe the problem was that he was unfriendly. They didn’t reject him.

Then the internal thing I think is a very understandable teenage experience. For most there’s that unbearable teenage angst but luckily, circumstantially and psychologically, these things pass. And I suppose what I was trying to reach is, okay, what if they don’t pass? What if you’re someone for whom the psychological makeup doesn’t allow you to [escape that feeling]?

And then the way that we leave Jean feels sort of perfect.

I wanted there to be kind of some ambiguity or hope at the end. Even if it’s sort of hopeless. It’s very much drawn from Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty, that final scene. Everything’s devastating and yet Nick, the character, looks up and he sees something beautiful. That’s sort of what I wanted to show, the beauty in devastation as well.

New last month

The Hour of the Wolf by Fatima Bhutto

An absolutely stunning memoir about abuse, heartbreak, shattering loss… and family-making with the non-human world.

Holy Boy by Lee Heejoo, translated by Joheun Lee

Four obsessed fans kidnap their favourite K-Pop idol in this bloody, exhilarating English-language debut from Lee Heejoo, which The Times described as ‘a K-Pop version of Stephen King’.

Jean by Madeleine Dunnigan

A sparkling debut set in a British boy’s reform school, following 17-year-old Jean as he develops a relationship with a fellow pupil and wrestles with the causes and consequences of whatever is going on under his skin.

Come back later this month for the interview!

Lost Lambs by Madeleine Cash

The hot book of 2026 so far, Lost Lambs is a dysfunctional family story with a conspiracy at its heart. For fans of: The Royal Tenenbaums.

Coming up this month

Celestial Lights by Cecile Pin

A love story on a cosmic scale, Cecile Pin’s second novel brings together themes of heartbreak, ambition, fate and sacrifice, all set against the backdrop of the billionaire space race.

My Lover, the Rabbi by Wayne Koestenbaum

Queer family-making, devotion and desire collide in this novel about a man maniacally obsessed with his lover – you know, the rabbi.

Almost Life by Kiran Millwood Hargrave

Another epic of fate and heartbreak, Almost Life follows two star-crossed lovers across continents and decades as the two women spin in and out of each other’s orbits, missing their moments again and again. But are they reaching towards the life they truly want?

Spoiled Milk by Avery Curran

A visceral, heartbreaking and horrifying novel about something rotten under the surface of a British girl’s boarding school, after its most beloved student plunges to her death.

Events

16 March - Something About Living: Lena Khalaf Tuffaha and So Mayer
(London, London Review Bookshop)

17 March - Book Launch: There is No Meant to Be by Jarred McGinnis
(London, Brick Lane Bookshop)

19 March – The Hour of the Wolf: Fatima Bhutto in conversation with Sonia Faleiro (London, Old School Rooms)

21 - 28 March - Deptford Literature Festival (London, various Deptford venues)

23 March - Isabel Waidner: As If (Edinburgh, The Portobello Bookshop)

24 March - Seeking Sexual Freedom: An evening with Sana Darkoa Sekyiamah (Edinburgh, Lighthouse Bookshop)

And also…

Newly-published Spoiled Milk author Avery Curran already has a second book. Mortal Passions, ‘a queer campus love story between a graduate student at a prestigious but failing university and the crisis manager hired by the college, who happens to be a centuries-old vampire set on draining the institution of its lifeblood’ will be out next year. Let’s the rest of us not take it too personally if we can’t also reach this level of productivity.

In further rights news, Confessions of the Fox author Jody Rosenberg’s second novel Night Night Fawn came out in the US last week but seems yet to publicly secure a UK publisher. Described as ‘part novel, part someone’s mother’s unauthorised memoir’, Night Night Fawn sees gossipy Barbara Rosenberg looking back on life from her deathbed, turning over her relationships with her estranged trans son and former best friend via Karl Marx and Jewish diaspora. Hopefully a UK release is in the works for this one somewhere, but in the meantime I feel like Jordy’s 2014 essay ‘Gender Trouble on Mother’s Day’ can give us a bit of the flavour.

Meanwhile, the International Booker Prize longlist has been announced, as have the shortlists for the British Book Awards (or, the ‘Nibbies' for those in the know). I’m not going to run through them all here, because the Booker longlist is long and the Nibbies have 15 categories, but it’s great to see indie publishers represented in both. I’d like to particularly draw your attention to the regional shortlists for BBA’s Small Press of the Year – small presses are home to incredible talent, underrepresented authors and experimental work the bigger publishers don’t take risks on, and we should celebrate them whenever possible.

Andrea Lawlor is delighted that their book is thought dirty by the French. Laure Jouanneau-Lopez’s Francophone translation of their novel Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl, published by La Croisée, has recently won the Prix Sade – an erotic literature award in homage to the noted libertine.

In Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl, Lawlor created a protagonist at the intersection of queer identities. Paul is a shapeshifter, consistently using his power to become ever more gay – to manifest a bigger dick for the leather bar, or to become a riot grrl en route to the Michigan Womyn’s Festival. The book is deeply connected to character, engaged with theory and music and literary culture – and, yes, dirty.

We spoke to Andrea Lawlor about the novel, winning the Prix Sade, and the possibilities of sex writing.

Congratulations on winning the Prix Sade! How does it feel?

It was a total surprise. I’m so thrilled that the French publisher has been so behind the book, and I’m delighted with the translator’s work. Also, I think I was just really delighted to have been thought dirty by the French. It’s like a life dream achieved.

I’ve also been really entertained by who was following it. I went to a beautiful reading last week by Garth Greenwell, and he was like ‘oh, congratulations on the Prix Sade’ and I thought, oh yeah. You really know.

It does seem like something Garth Greenwell would be very tuned into. So, you said a little something there about the work of the translator. Are you involved in the process of translation at all?

Not at all. Actually, this is the first translation into any language of my novel, and I was so thrilled that a press wanted to do it. I have had many translators over the years. Oftentimes students, or, you know, independent translators, say like, ‘Oh, I’d really love to translate your book.’ And I’m like, ‘Yay, great. Go do that. My blessing.’

But it’s quite complicated. I don’t know how much you know about the translation world. But for the most part, the presses engage a translator, as opposed to the translator saying, I want to translate this. And so it’s a very different process. This translator seems great. I’m excited that they’re taking on questions of gendered language in the book, because I made some choices, and it’s interesting to see how it will play out in a different cultural context, and in a different language.

When you were writing the book, was this concept of moral constraint or libertinism something you were factoring in?

Not in the slightest. I mean, I read Sade in college because it was the 90s and that’s what one did, you know? I’m sort of like Sade, you know, not my fave of all the dirty French. I’m more of an Édouard Louis man, myself. But I think that Sade is an interesting figure to mobilise.

This idea of libertinism can mean a lot of different things, and I don’t love it when it’s in more of a straight context. But I did notice that Paul Preciado’s book has been awarded by this Prize, so they’re already engaging with queer and trans writing. I think there is something in me that recoils at the idea of libertinism. I don’t think my book is in favour of libertinism. But the idea that this prize, and the people involved, take sex writing seriously, feels like, you know - fellow travellers there.

I think sex is really interesting. I think it’s an interesting, subjective human experience. I think curiosity and flexibility and openness is sometimes called libertinism, or transgression of social norms that have historically been really oppressive can be called libertinism. It’s sort of like, if there’s this circle of what’s acceptable, the people who’ve been pushed to the margins oftentimes have common cause. Although, of course, not always. So, you know, it’s very cool to me that there’s a prize for work that thinks about sex, because that’s the baseline to me. I think that’s a good thing.

I recently taught a class on writing sex in fiction, and one of the students asked me my favourite question, which is: what’s the difference between porn and sex writing, sort of as ‘serious’ art? And I always sort of think, can it not be both beautiful and dirty?

Absolutely. I mean, sometimes I think that porn is, you know, functional, and a literary investigation of sex might produce an effect but it doesn’t necessarily have one aim. So maybe that’s the difference. Without saying anything bad about porn, it’s maybe just a little bit more like, what are the aims of the writing? A simplistic distinction might also be: in literary sex writing oftentimes the sex isn’t good, but it’s still interesting. And in a way, porn is kind of like the YA of sex writing. In YA, no matter what happens, it’s gonna be okay at the end, you know?

I do think a really interesting literary challenge is to write about sex that feels good and is satisfying in a way that’s hot. Garth Greenwell does it, and Melissa Broder – there’s a great scene in Milkfed where one woman is touching the other one’s hand in a movie theatre. It’s like the filthiest thing I’ve ever read. It’s fantastic.

Maybe less so now, but in the last five years or so there’s been a lot of these articles [on sex scenes] that were like ‘is this necessary? Do we have to see this?’

Like half the Goodreads – you’re not supposed to look at Goodreads but, you know, one does – and half of them for mine, all the one-stars, are like ‘too much sex.’

Just put the book down.

You can also just skim the sex scenes if you don’t like it. I mean, I don’t actually think that. I actually cut a lot of the sex scenes out of my book. I was like, is it moving the story along? Is Paul learning something? Is something affecting Paul in this scene that affects what else he does in the story? I think that’s a good metric. If you’re writing fiction that’s not meant to do just one thing, what is the sex scene doing for the story?

Sometimes it’s fine if it’s just sort of ambient, or character development, or wallpaper in some way. But if you’re really interested in sex, it’s sort of like – how does sex change?

I want to kind of circle back for a minute and go back to a little bit about the relationship between queer and trans writing and the right wing view of morality that’s really dominant at the moment. I noticed you said a bit about that in your statement on the Prix Sade.

We’re in this moment of such black and white thinking. In the United States, and I think it’s also happening in the UK, there’s this wave of ‘debate me’-style politics, ‘change my mind’, whatever. And it’s not onward leading. It’s not a way to truth or justice or happiness for anybody. It’s very combative, and I think it’s hard to have nuance in a context of such binary thinking.

You know, I don’t think oh, magical trans people can save the world and like, destroy fascism. I do think there’s something about queer people and trans people, where our existence allows for the reality of nuance in the conversation. We’re in such a weird, obvious time where the forces mobilised against us just don’t want us to exist. But we do exist. You can’t fight it, but they’re trying. It’s weird.

Let’s return to Paul. I’m aware that it was quite a while ago now, because the book’s been out here in the UK for six years, and it was out in the US for a little while before that. But can you tell me a little bit about the actual process of writing the book?

I worked on it for a long time. I was rewriting Greek myth as a way to figure out how to tell a story, because I was like, I can’t make up a plot, what’s that? So I would have these Greek myths and sort of hang this thinly veiled autobiographical fiction on that skeletal structure. I was doing that, and I came up with this piece that ended up being the beginning of Paul. I put it away. I didn’t really do anything with it.

And then I was in a graduate programme, and I had to bring something to workshop and I was studying with Samuel Delaney at the time. And as people do in a workshop, I didn’t have anything that week, and I was scrabbling around for something old that I could bring in. I brought that in, and it was the first time that Samuel Delaney really paid attention to what I was doing. He was like, ‘I think you’re not done with Paul.’ And I was like, okay, whatever he says to do I will do. Then I spent the next 10 years finishing the novel.

I would work on it, and then stop working on it entirely for a year or something, and then come back to it. When I began writing it, I was sort of trying to explore through fiction things in my own experience that I hadn’t quite understood. Why do I keep thinking about that night? Why did I hook up with that person? Which is not to say that I am Paul, or that it’s completely autobiographical. As I started writing, I was really close to that experience. And as I kept writing, I got further and further away, to the point where my thesis advisor, Jed Berry at UMass, was like ‘I love all the historical fiction details’. I was like Jed, it’s not historical fiction. And now, the 90s do sort of feel like historical fiction.

One thing about the longer process of writing a book – writing it, putting it down, picking it back up – over 10, 12 years is that it kind of goes against that feeling that’s made worse here in the UK by so many prizes and schemes only being open to writers under 35, which is the pressure to rush something out, or to present a fully-formed work quickly and early on.

I think there’s a lot of weird age fetishising, and that has to do with author photographs. Capitalism is shot through all of it. The sort of paratext of the book is part of what sells the book, and younger people, you know, can be mobilised and objectified as something other than the makers of the work.

People should have space to take as long as they need. And I also think a lot of older writers have life experiences and don’t start writing until they’re older. A lot of people from marginalised communities, too.

It may be the season of the witch, but don’t let that limit you. From supernatural crime-fighters to haunted houses, frightening pasts to the unsettling present, read on for more inspiration on Halloween reading in 2025.

Shy Trans Banshee by Tony Santorella
Atlantic, Hardback

The new novel from the author of the hugely popular Bored Gay Werewolf, Shy Trans Banshee follows three supernatural crime-fighting friends on a trip to London to hunt down a misplaced colleague. But while they’re there, the group stumble across a clairvoyancy smuggling ring. Matters are further complicated by the arrival of Maeve, a timid trans woman who says she’s looking for her birth mother – and who has an uncanny ability to predict what’s going to happen next.

Read more about Shy Trans Banshee on Bookshop.org

Carrion Crow by Heather Parry
Transworld, Paperback

Engaged to a much-older, broke solicitor, Marguerite Périgord’s has been confined to the attic of her family home by her mother. She is left alone, save for a carrion crow nesting in the rafters, with only a sewing machine and Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management to entertain her. Cécile will not allow her to bring the family into disrepute – not when she herself has worked so hard at betterment. But both women have secrets, and soon Marguerite’s mind and body begin to unravel themselves.

Read more about Carrion Crow on Bookshop.org

Hot Wax by M.L Rio
Wildfire, Hardback

The only witness to a desperate act of violence as a child, Suzanne spends her adult life running from what she saw when she was ten years old. She thinks she’s got away when she leaves behind music and mayhem and moves to the suburbs with a mild-mannered husband. But the past has other ideas, and soon Suzanne finds herself running across the country – away from her increasingly desperate husband, and back towards the chaos of her youth.

Read more about Hot Wax on Bookshop.org

Tell Me I’m Worthless by Alison Rumfitt
Cipher Press, Paperback

Three years ago, Alice spent one night in an abandoned house with her friends. Since then, she has been living a fraught existence. She goes to parties she doesn’t like, drinks to fall asleep, and finds herself haunted by the poster of the sensitive rockstar-turned-racist hanging in her bedroom. She hasn’t spoken to Ila since they went into the House. She hasn’t seen Hannah either. But when Ila asks her to return to the House, past the KEEP OUT sign and over the sick earth, she knows she must go.

Read more about Tell Me I’m Worthless on Bookshop.org

Jackal by Erin E. Adams
Dead Ink Books, Paperback

Liz, a Black woman, doesn’t exactly have fond memories of her predominantly white town. But her best friend is getting married, and so she goes back, ready for whatever the town has to throw at her. Except: on the day of the wedding, the happy couple’s daughter Caroline disappears. With the police searching the woods, Liz seems to be the only person who sees a pattern. Keisha Woodson, the only other Black girl at Liz’s high school, disappeared in the same manner years before. As she digs deeper into the town’s past, Liz finds out that Keisha and Caroline aren’t the only two Black girls to be swallowed by the forest – and realises it will be up to her to end it.

Read more about Jackal on Bookshop.org

The Hole by Hye-Yung Pyun, translated by Sora Kim-Russell

Oghi wakes up after a car crash to find his wife dead, and himself trapped in his own body, watched over by his vengeful and grieving mother-in-law. Unable to move and forgotten by his nurse, Oghi is left to turn over the memories of his wife and her garden. Meanwhile, however, his mother-in-law is obsessively uprooting the now abandoned garden, and digging a series of ever-larger holes.

Read more about The Hole on Bookshop.org

Tender by Lauren DuPlessis
Influx Press, Paperback

Archaeobotanist Nell has curated the perfect pastel facade. But underneath is a wildness, stemming from an unsettled childhood which has left her with a difficult relationship with her sister. When Nell is called to help excavate a pair of ‘bog bodies’ buried in elaborate floral graves, she finds herself uncovering more of her own memories instead, unearthing a sense of chaos which begin to bloom across her body.

Read more about Tender on Bookshop.org

Tice Cin’s second novel Safe Spaces will be published by Granta in 2026. The novel, about electronic music, love and grief, will be out in September.

Commenting on Safe Spaces to The Bookseller, Tice said, ‘Inhabiting the world of this narrator trying to relate to the spaces around them, through ends and stop-starts, felt a transformative and eye-opening experience for me as a writer. Finding a home with Granta feels like an exciting chapter in my writing life, an independent press where my creative practice can continue to grow.’

Tice Cin’s debut novel Keeping the House dipped into the covert world of the North London heroin trade through three generations of women keeping their family, and the family business, afloat. Shortlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize, the Jhalak Prize and for Book of the Year at the Nibbies, Keeping the House announced Tice as a major new voice in British fiction.

Read more about Tice Cin’s Safe Spaces in The Bookseller

The letter also makes a case for what is at risk if the independent publishing sector continues to be squeezed, noting that collectively, their authors and translators ‘enhance UK publishing’s bibliodiversity by supporting writers of colour, queer and trans, working class and intersectional authors, alongside translations from languages less represented in Anglo-phone markets’. Works published by the signatories have won or been shortlisted for many of the major book awards, including the Booker Prize, the International Booker Prize, the Women’s Prize, the Goldsmiths Prize, Republic of Consciousness and many more.

Following the publication of the letter, the founding publishers are putting together a roundtable of key players to discuss how the industry can build a sustainable future for independently published authors and translators, alongside the publishers themselves.

The full list of signatories is:

404 Ink
Bad Betty Press
Bluemoose
Book Works
Broken Sleep Books
Cipher Press
The Emma Press
Galley Beggar Press
Hajar Press
Influx Press
Lolli Editions
Makina Books
Monitor Books
Outspoken
Peninsula Press
Prototype Publishing
Rough Trade Books
Silver Press
Strange Region
Tenement Press
the87press
Tilted Axis Press
Weatherglass

Read the full letter on the Peninsula Press Instagram

Read on to see what’s still in store in 2025.

The Four Spent the Day Together by Chris Kraus

Scribe UK, Hardback, 9th October

A story in three linked parts, The Four Spent the Day Together follows three generations of Americans connected to one unexplained crime. In northern Minnesota, three teenagers shoot and kill an older acquaintance with no apparent motive. At the time of the murder, Catt Greene is living with her husband in their summer house nearby. With her life in turmoil, Catt finds herself drawn to the murder case. She combs obsessively through the teenagers lives, and in doing so is borne back into the idiosyncratic lives of her own parents.

From the author of I Love Dick, The Four Spent the Day Together is a witty, probing journey into fractured America.

View The Four Spent the Day Together on Bookshop.org

Ghost Season by Fatin Abbas

Jacaranda Books, Hardback, Out now

When a burnt corpse appears near an NGO compound in a remote border town between northern and southern Sudan, five strangers are in for trouble.

William, a South Sudanese translator, draws a connection between the corpse and the sudden disappearance of the woman he loves – Layla, a nomadic cook. Meanwhile, white aid worker Alex finds his best laid plans falling apart, and Sudanese American filmmaker Dena struggles to connect with a homeland she doesn’t really know. And in between there is twelve-year-old Mustafa, destined to become the catalyst for catastrophe.

Ghost Season is the debut novel from Fatin Abbas, a Miles Morland Foundation Writing Scholar, Bernard Cohen Short Story Prize and Miriam Weinberg Richter Award-winner, and a writing teacher at MIT.

View Ghost Season on Bookshop.org

Big Kiss, Bye-Bye by Claire-Louise Bennett

Fitzcarraldo Editions, Paperback, 9th October

With her life in the city overturned and uprooted, a woman finds herself in limbo in the countryside. She drifts between memories of those she’s loved and wanted, lost and rejected – especially memories of Xavier, her most recent love, who cannot accept that the woman no longer desires him. Throughout, the woman takes stock of what her loves have left behind, and tries to divine the essence of intimacy.

From acclaimed author Claire-Louise Bennett, Big Kiss, Bye-Bye explores the mystery of how people step into and out of our lives.

View Big Kiss, Bye-Bye on Bookshop.org

The Silver Book by Olivia Laing

Hamish Hamilton, Hardback

In September 1974, a young British artist runs away to Venice and is swept into the world of Italian film designer Danilo Donati. Delighted to have a young and beautiful apprentice fall into his lap, Donati sweeps Nicholas away to the sets of Casanova and Salò. But Nicholas has a secret, and soon he will unintentionally set into motion a tragedy he does not intend.

Bestselling author Olivia Laing’s second novel, The Silver Book is at once a queer love story and a noirish thriller.

View The Silver Book on Bookshop.org

Borderline Fiction by Derek Owusu

Canongate, Hardback, 6th November

At nineteen, Marcus is ready to re-evaluate his life of casual encounters and drug use – for the right woman. At twenty-five, history is repeating itself.

Told across two timelines, Borderline Fiction is a close-up examination of what it means to be a young Black man today from award-winning Derek Owusu. Intense, vulnerable, funny and poetic, Borderline Fiction offers a glimpse into the inner world of a young man searching for an authentic way to love and be loved.

View Borderline Fiction on Bookshop.org

The Leather Boys by Gillian Freeman

Dead Ink, Paperback, 20th November

Working class teenagers Dick and Reggie come together through their involvement in a gang and their love of leather and motorcycles. When Reggie decides to leave his loveless marriage and move in with Dick, they soon discover that their connection goes beyond the bounds of ordinary friendship. They begin to make plans for the future, but could find themselves heading for tragedy instead of happily ever after.

The first novel to portray a love story between working class young men, Gillian Freeman’s The Leather Boys is being re-released as part of Dead Ink’s Outsider Classics series, restoring lost groundbreaking works to the cult status they deserve.

View The Leather Boys on Bookshop.org

Dog Days by Emila LaBarge

Peninsula Press, Paperback, 16th October

A blend of memoir, essay and cultural criticism, Dog Days springs from an account of how Emily LaBarge and her family were held hostage during the Christmas holidays of 2009. From there the book turns outwards, asking why and how we tell the stories we do, and how it might be possible to tell the ‘good story’ and its aftermath on its own terms.

The first book from critic and essayist Emily LaBarge, Dog Days unsettles time and narrative, art and imagination, to communicate trauma and ideas of the self.

View Dog Days on Bookshop.org

Orion Books and Candice Carty-Williams have announced that a sequel to Carty-Williams’ 2019 smash hit Queenie is in the works.

Queenie Is Working On It will be published by Trapeze, an imprint of Orion, in July 2026. The novel finds Queenie older but not wiser, broken-hearted, under-appreciated at work and torn between whether or not she wants to have children in the face of a ticking biological clock. Priced out of her hometown and stuck in an unfulfilling situationship, Queenie is trying to hold it together when all she wants is the love of her life back.

The original Queenie followed the titular character through her difficult 25th year, as she struggled with love, work, mental health, family and friendships, and contended with everyday racism. It was a major book of 2019, becoming a Sunday Times bestseller and named Book of the Year at the Nibbies. It was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award, longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, and turned into a Channel 4 series in 2024.

See Candice Carty-Williams' announcement for Queenie Is Working On It here.

Emily St. John Mandel, best known for the pandemic novel Station Eleven, is set to release a new book in 2026. Exit Party is described by Publishers Lunch as ‘a novel of doubles, shadow worlds and fractured timelines’, continuing many of the themes Mandel explored in 2022’s Sea of Tranquility.

Exit Party follows a man who disappears from a glittering Los Angeles party, as well as the woman searching for answers – a gunrunner, art collector, and state operative. Commenting on Instagram, Mandel confirmed that the woman is Aria, a crucial character in her 2009 novel The Singer’s Gun. Characters often reappear in different lives throughout Mandel’s work – Miranda, a graphic novelist turned shipping executive plays key roles in both Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel, while Vincent, a bartender, ship’s cook and artist, appears in The Glass Hotel and also plays a part in Sea of Tranquility.

The book will be published by Picador, who have put out all of Emily St. John Mandel’s works since 2014. On their website, Picador describe the book as a ‘mind-bending epic: a story of crimes committed and loves lost across space and time.’

Read the full announcement on Emily St. John Mandel’s Instagram

Jilly Cooper, the author of numerous books of fiction and nonfiction, including the inspiration for the Disney+ series Rivals, has passed away aged 88 according to a statement put out by her agency.

Jilly Cooper’s published works include eighteen novels and books of short fiction, in addition to more than twenty nonfiction titles. The Rutshire Chronicles, her best-known series, follows a cast of largely upper-class families in the Cotswolds as they compete in everything from show-jumping to sexual conquest. Frequently referred to as ‘bonkbusters’, the books are known for their sex scenes as much as their humour, plot and characters. Rivals, the second book in the series, was published in 1998 and turned into a Disney+ series starring David Tennant, Alex Hassell and Katherine Parkinson in 2024. Cooper received a Damehood the same year.

The joint statement, by Cooper’s children Felix and Emily, her agent Felicity Blunt, and publisher Bill Scott-Kerr, praises the author’s ‘acuity and insight’ and intricate plots. It also celebrates Cooper as a mother, colleague and friend, with her children writing that ‘Mum, was the shining light in all of our lives.’

Blunt’s quote concludes, ‘Emotionally intelligent, fantastically generous, sharply observant and utter fun Jilly Cooper will be deeply missed by all at Curtis Brown and on the set of Rivals. I have lost a friend, an ally, a confidante and a mentor. But I know she will live forever in the words she put on the page and on the screen.’

Read the full statement on Curtis Brown’s website