We all need to be able to look beyond the world we can see from our windows during lockdown so this is a page of genre reading suggestions. I have deliberately stuck with genre books as they are what I reach for in times of stress. And this is my list, yours will be different and equally valid.
Police Procedural
- The Great Darkness by Jim Kelly, first of three detective novels set in Cambridge at the start of the Second World War.
- The Bone Readers by Jacob Ross, winner of the prestigious Jhalak Prize, set on the Caribbean island of Camaho.
Spies
- Moskva by Jack Grimwood, first of two novels so far which explore how the past never is.
- Declare by Tim Powers, an utterly astonishing book. “O fish, are you constant to the old covenant?” “Return, and we return. Keep faith, and so will we.”
Fantasy
- The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison, what happens when power is suddenly thrust upon you?
- The City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett, first of a trilogy which explores how you deal with the legacy of occupation and colonialism when the occupier’s gods were real?
Science Fiction
- Nine Fox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee, first of a trilogy which shifts and whirls like the tails of the eponymous fox.
- Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir, lesbian necromancers in a haunted house in space.
Mark O'Neill 