Standouts include ... Conner Habib's Hawk Mountain, a paranoid and unsettling tale of masculinity in crisis.

Conner Habib's Hawk Mountain was one of the most impressive debuts of the year. Set in New England, it explores the long-term consequences of bullying as Todd, now in his 30s, and the father of a young boy, encounters his high school nemesis, although the inevitable reckoning is as innovative as it is poignant.

Habib ramps the paranoia up to Highsmithian levels

Dripping with menace from the first page, this story of childhood enemies meeting up fifteen years later is utterly enthralling. Brilliantly written with homoerotic undertones, this savage tale is uncompromising in its reflection of teen friendships and isolation, and unflinching in its examination of the delicacy of the human body. There is gold among the gore. I found it compelling, shocking, and beautiful.

Conner Habib writes with an hallucinatory precision, and a kind of merciless humanity, about the poisonous work of repression. His forebears-Poe, Highsmith, even classical tragedy-are clear, but his originality is clearer still. Hawk Mountain is a work of strange, glittering darkness.

The opening lines of Hawk Mountain plumet you into an atmosphere of creeping dread and precarious restraint that won't let up until the final, shocking moments.

Hawk Mountain is a suspenseful, shocking and ultimately poignant study of anguished conflict, both domestic and internal. Incisively written and intensely imagined, it's the novelistic debut of a real original.

Conner Habib's debut novel is a bleak, dark adrenaline rush.

Brilliant...highly recommended

'Stakes a serious claim for best crime fiction debut of the year ... Quietly powerful, devoid of gimmickry and grandiose gestures, Hawk Mountain announces the arrival of an impressive new talent on the crime fiction scene'.

Pulses with the endlessness of adolescence

In American writer and podcaster Conner Habib's chilling, poignant and deeply atmospheric debut novel, we find the perfect mix of psychological thriller and literary fiction ... It's a fabulous read.

Exceptionally well-written and totally gripping... a book loaded with compassion... a rich, emotional tale

Best Paperback Releases of Summer 2023

No one delivers thrilling yet timeless games of power, sex, fame and Rome like Robert Harris.

Robert Harris brings the cut-throat republic to life... He understands politics and how to dramatise them

Harris has replaced John le Carre ... stupendous plots, good characters and lightly applied erudition

Lustrum is a serious piece of storytelling, enormously enjoyable to read, with an insider's political tone which makes the dedication much more than a matter of convention or duty

Harris has taken the DNA of Cicero's great speeches and animated them with utterly believable dialogue...Harris's greatest triumph is perhaps in the evocation of Roman politics, the constant bending of ancient principles before the realities of power, and in his depiction of what it was like to live in the city: the mud, the guttering lamps, the smell of the blood from the temples ... I would take my hat off to Harris, if I hadn't already dashed it to the ground in jealous awe. *****

Gripping ... A compelling narrative, full of plots, murder, lust, fear, greed and corruption ... No writes is better at creating excitement over political theatre

The thrilling pace of the narrative does not let up from start to finish. Lustrum is an utterly engrossing, suspense-filled read

Dripping in detail it brings ancient Rome to vivid life, yet the political intrigue has echoes in today's ruling classes. And while the pace gallops along, the action is reined in just enough to crank the tension up. *****

Conspiracy, betrayal and political upheaval are the keys that turn this brilliantly researched page-turner

For a page turner...I would go for Lustrum (Hutchinson, £18.99) the second volume of Robert Harris's semi-fictional trilogy on the life of the Roman politician Cicero. The oldest stories really are often the best!

Harris is one of the consummate storytellers of the age, a master of narrative who - whatever genre he tackles - delivers books that are definitions of the word compulsive. In Lustrum, we have the mechanics of the thriller applied to ancient Rome, with immensely powerful results

A fine achievement: a hefty, politically serious thriller that effortlessly reanimates the dusty quarrels of Roman government while casting ironic and instructive sidelight on those of our own

Supreme story-telling

Deeply satisfying, impeccably researched and spectacularly topical ... a thriller to die for ... Harris brilliantly evokes Rome on the edge of political chaos through the eyes of Cicero's slave Tiro, who acts as his mater's secretary ... The pace never falters, and the politics are sharply relevant for today

Harris communicates such a strong sense of Imperial Rome - the book is awesomely well-informed about the minutiae of everyday life

Lustrum... was a fascinating world, a world of subtle political machinations and fine oratory and nuanced debate, and complex legislation, and intrigue, and an extremely absorbing one

It is a tribute to Harris's deftness of touch that this book feels so fresh ... he has a lovely dry, debunking style ... Harris writes about the life of politics with an insight rare among historical novelists ... It is as a pure thriller ... wry, clever, thoughtful, with a terrific sense of timing and eye for character

Lustrum offers a great insight into the psychology of political calculation. The story of Cicero's fall from power to the point where even sworn allies close their doors on him offers little consolation over the next few months for our own leader

What a storm it is. The five year period covered by the novel, the 'lustrum' of its title, has some claim to be the most thrilling in the entire span of classical history ... Remorseless it may be; but it is also, as one would expect of Harris, thrillingly paced and narrated. The excitements of a classic thriller, however, are almost the least of the novel's virtues: virtues which derive in large part, from Cicero himself. What grips most about Lustrum is the seriousness with which the political issues at stake are taken, and the vividness of the characterisation: both of which, in large part, reflect the closeness of Harris's reading of his hero's speeches and correspondence

Robert Harris brings the cut-throat republic to life... He understands politics and how to dramatise them.

Offers great insight into the psychology of political calculation

[Lustrum] stands on its own merits as a thoroughly engaging historical novel. Republican Rome, with all its grandeur and corruption, has rarely been made as vivid as it appears in Harris's book. The allure of power and the perils that attend it have seldom been so brilliantly anatomised in a thriller.

Harris never makes his comparisons between Rome and modern Britain explicit, but they are certainly there. And that's the principal charm of his ancient thrillers - their up-to-dateness.

Intrigue and excitement all the way, brilliantly read by Oliver Ford Davies.

McEwan maintains his status as a master of fiction.

A new collection of stories that explores the complex - and often darkly funny - connections between gender, sex, and power across genres.

Ian McEwan’s sublimely playful new novel transports you back to the Eighties but with some major changes, including eerily life-like robots… Dark and slyly funny, it’ll also give your brain a workout.

Not only does he pull it off, he does so triumphantly, in the cleverest book I’ve read this year. It’s smart, dark and at times very funny.

A saucy, claustrophobic and darkly funny story which is all rather peculiar. Compulsive reading.

I devoured Ian McEwan’s latest very funny spin on Hamlet.

An ingenious rewrite of Hamlet as a murder story in which a foetus is detective and possible victim.

This is McEwan at his most playfully provocative.

A clever conceit, elegantly wrought, economically constructed.

A bewitching ode to humanity’s beauty, longing and selfishness.

A gripping piece of fiction.

I was hooked from the first page.

[A] smart, eloquent novel.

A enthralling read from one of the world’s master storytellers.

McEwan delights with lyrical prose that is fittingly poetic.

[A] work which both fascinates and disturbs through its unique perspective on a malicious death… Every sentence is a joy to behold, a gift to the reader of delicately considered prose, and thoughtful observations… Alongside its edgy and entertaining narration, and perhaps in part because of it, the novel manages to challenge all preconceptions of the crime genre, upending the whodunit into an extraordinary will-they-do-it… By nature, Nutshell is a novel which perplexes, entertains, and moves the reader in equal turn, all with McEwan’s startling attention to detail, and luxuriant prose style. Read it for its peculiar narrator, read it for the rapidly-changing and intense emotions, or read it just for the thrill of chase as the killing comes to fruition; whatever intrigues you about this novel, just make sure that you do read it – and feel the thrill for yourself.

Brilliantly realised… Any book so bound up in a conceit and in its own verbal fireworks at times runs the risk of being a bit clever-clever. But on the whole we accept in a suspension of disbelief the foetus’s pompous mastery of language and imagery and abandon ourselves to the sheer eloquent pleasure of this hilarious romp.

Short, odd but pleasurable… Great fun, and very well written.

Rich in Shakespearean allusion, this is McEwan on dazzling form.

Told from a perspective unlike any other, Nutshell is a classic tale of murder and deceit from one of the world’s master storytellers.

Ian McEwan’s brilliance as a stylist and surprise plotter finds a fitting subject in Nutshell…, which is Hamlet as told from inside the womb. Up there with his best.

A gripping tale is told with breathtaking skill, turbocharged with rage against the madness and despair of our modern world.

Nutshell is one of those books you sit down to read and don’t get up until you’ve finished. It is brilliantly executed and full of surprises; original, clever and witty. Simply a must-read

A book I couldn’t put down… brilliantly clever