A Town Called Solace: ‘Will break your heart’ Graham Norton

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In every way it was coming to seem more real than Toronto, with its endless malls and traffic jams and high-powered jobs.

They must have lots of things in them because they were heavy, you could tell by the way the man walked when he carried them in, stooped over, knees bent. The beautiful, horrible world of Mariana Enriquez, as glimpsed in The Dangers of Smoking in Bed (Granta), with its disturbed adolescents, ghosts, decaying ghouls, the sad and angry homeless of modern Argentina, is the most exciting discovery I’ve made in fiction for some time. Yes the carpenter and his son, the sheriff, the cafe owner, even the ex-friend, beautifully portrayed. I also really appreciated The Anarch y (Bloomsbury) by William Dalrymple, out in paperback this year, which does a great job explaining the East India Company, responsible, more than anything else, for Britain’s involvement in the subcontinent.They re-inject humanity into our distant forebears, suggesting that our prevailing story about human history – that not much innovation occurred in human societies until the invention of agriculture – is utterly wrong. And, also like a magician, she possesses an instinctive feel for when to withhold information, and when to release it. Robert Fulford of the National Post wrote an article about Lawson describing her process towards becoming a novelist. I must confess that I had never heard of Mary Lawson (above) until I stumbled upon this, her fourth novel. All of them are delicately created and very realistic characters, and you can empathize with them somehow.

This may prove to frustrate some, so tuned in are we to the more dramatic story pushing in to take centre stage. Also, Fortune(Peepal Tree Press) , by Amanda Smyth, another historic novel, a clandestine love story set amid Trinidad’s early oil drilling years in the 1920s. Successive chapters are told from the contrasting viewpoints of three characters – the disconsolate Liam, who is wondering what to do with the rest of his life; the seven-year-old Clara, unstoppably nosy, whose elder sister has just gone missing; and Elizabeth Orchard, the old lady who, facing death, has given her house to Liam. Orchard's house, next door to Clara's, that first evening and put them on the floor in the living room and just left them there. Sal Flint has written and published over 300 chapter books for children and has recently branched out into writing picture books about topics close to her heart, such as dementia and generating kindness.Would you allow your child to spend time with a neighbour if you knew they’d had mental health issues? I think it can be read as a simple story, but there’s way more going on beneath the surface and in terms of literary devices that can be easily overlooked. Now and then, a family member will disappear, and no one will know where they have gone, or if they will ever come back. There’s not enough humour in contemporary fiction but Power brought the laughs and the pathos to this account of a young Dubliner, reared with privilege, who gets involved in a dodgy land deal in the Balkans. These formations are ancient; the Precambrian era is the earliest of the planet's geological eras, encompassing all of the time before the evolutionary development of complex life.

We’ve lost so much, but Rebanks gives us solutions and myth-busts; a poignant and sad book we need in a time of climate emergency. She decided she disliked her first novel and then spent five more years writing until Crow Lake was complete.Lawson's writing is clear and emotive; and while the balance between the missing Rose and Elizabeth's past falls somewhat off kilter as the novel progresses, Clara remains its most compelling character. The drama is understated yet palpable and the mundane slowly gets filled with intrigue and curiosity was the layers are revealed. Debut novel The Sweetness of Water by Nathan Harris has been a smash in the US: a revisionist take on civil war history, with a sweeping treatment of forbidden gay love and the aftermath of slavery. Only on his third novel, but already with a second Booker nomination, Sahota is a significant voice.

Its subject matter makes it appropriate for all audiences, and it would make a great selection for book groups in particular. I like a novel to grab me and The Book of Form and Emptiness (Canongate) by Ruth Ozeki gave me very peculiar dreams for a long time, as though it did not want to release me to other things.

Even so, Clara still takes care of Moses, feeding him and spending time with him, when Liam is away from the house.