Umbrella by Will Self is published in hardback by Bloomsbury, priced £18.99. Available now.

Though he's perhaps best known and appreciated as a wry, angular TV personality and journalist, this is Will Self's ninth novel and his first to be longlisted for the Man Booker Prize.

In 1918, Audrey Death, a feminist, socialist and munitions worker, falls ill and enters a catatonic state. More than 50 years later, Dr Zack Busner gives her a drug which wakes her from her condition.

In 2010, the same, now retired, doctor journeys across London to the institution where it all took place, in search of answers.

A work of modernist fiction, Umbrella can be hard work for the reader as the narrative voice shifts from character to character and from era to era with no warning and at times mid-sentence.

With no chapters to stem the flow, the text reads like a vivid account of a brilliantly poetic lucid dream. All the more rewarding for being so structurally challenging, it's an exhilarating experience.

9/10 (Review by Dean Haigh)

 

Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan is published in hardback by Jonathan Cape, priced £18.99 Available now.

A new Ian McEwan novel is always the cause of much fevered anticipation - and here he has turned his attention to the dual arts of reading and writing themselves.

Choosing the setting of MI5 in the early Seventies allows him scope for layers of subterfuge and mistrust, placing the reader in a precarious position of doubting the words set in front of them, with a concluding twist that changes everything that went before.

Serena Frome, a beautiful Cambridge graduate with a fierce love of books, is recruited into the service by her older lover, an English tutor at the university with secrets lurking in his past.

She is frustrated by the fact she and her female colleagues appear little more than secretaries until she is granted an assignment that takes her to up-and-coming author Tony Hale - and into his bed.

However, there is more to Hale than initially meets the eye. Like a young McEwan, he works at Sussex University. And his short stories are remarkably similar to the author's early works, us seeing them through Serena's eyes as she carefully studies the text.

The blurring of the character and creator is one that has an unsettling effect - but McEwan has a way of making this largely successful.

While somewhere lurking in here is a traditional love story, of the type Serena herself furtively enjoys, the main thrust of Sweet Tooth is about trust, language and words. An eye-opening read.

8/10 (Review by Lauren Turner)

 

Cold Grave by Kathryn Fox is published in paperback by Hodder & Stoughton, priced £6.99. Available August 30.

Kathryn Fox's sixth novel is set to blow other crime thrillers out of the water.

Forensic physician Anya Crichton is looking forward to a luxury cruise with her son Ben, even the fact her estranged husband is joining them doesn't put her off.

In fact, everything is perfect... that's until the body of a teenage girl turns up in a storage cupboard.

Anya is compelled to investigate further and uncovers layers of crime and corruption which extends further than the ship's boundaries.

With little help from the crew, she delves into a world that could cost her everything she holds dear. Unable to trust anyone and with obstacles placed at every turn, she must uncover the truth that will ultimately expose the darker, seedier side of life on a cruise ship and put her own family at risk.

It's a fast-paced thriller that makes you hold your breath at times.

9/10 (Review by Philip Robinson)