Global fiction: Six recently-published novels to close the year with

Fire, John Boyne

On the face of it, Freya lives a gilded existence, dancing solely to her own tune. She has all the trappings of wealth and privilege, a responsible job as a surgeon specialising in skin grafts, a beautiful flat in a sought-after development, and a flash car. But it wasn’t always like this. Hers is a life founded on darkness.

Did what happened to Freya as a child one fateful summer influence the adult she would become – or was she always destined to be that person? Was she born with cruelty in her heart or did something force it into being?

The Christmas Stocking Murders, Denzil Meyrick

Yorkshire, 1953. It’s nearly Christmas, and Detective Frank Grasby and his boss, Juggers, are investigating a puzzling murder in the remote village of Uthley’s Bay. A fisherman has been found dead on the beach, with a stocking wound tight around his throat.

Hundreds of pairs of stockings, in neat cellophane bags, soon wash up on the shore. A blizzard cuts off Frank and Juggers from help, and the local innkeeper is murdered. Any remaining Christmas cheer goes up in smoke as the villagers refuse to talk, leaving the two detectives chasing false leads in the snow.

To make matters worse, Frank can’t stop thinking about stockings. Why does everyone seem to be enjoying strangely high standards of hosiery, even beneath their oilskins? Who is the sinister man snooping around their hotel? And how can they solve the murder when everyone in the village is a suspect?

Family Politics, John O’Farrell

All across Britain, a generation of grown-up children are graduating from university, moving back in to their old bedrooms and showing their gratitude by berating their parents for their out-of-date politics. But for proud and high-profile left-wingers Emma and Eddie Hughes, the return of their only child is a far greater challenge than they ever could have anticipated. Young Dylan had warned them there was something personal he needed to tell them, but nothing could have prepared his right-on parents for the shocking revelation he delivers. Their son is a Conservative.

Deadbeat, Adam Hamdy

Peyton Collard was a good man once, but his life changed after a horrific car accident. Divorced, drunk, and severely damaged, Peyton is offered a life-changing sum of money to kill an evil man. But as he goes on a vigilante journey that leaves a trail of bodies across California, Peyton wonders about the identity of his anonymous patron. Soon, his questions become an obsession, and he embarks on a tense and potentially deadly investigation to discover the truth about the murders he’s committed.

Bombshell, Alison Hammond

Family has always meant everything to Madison. Married to the nation’s heartthrob, TV handyman Rich, with two beautiful children, she’s always put their needs first. And she’s never regretted a second, even if her own career has taken a backseat.

Then, out of the blue, Rich drops a bombshell. He needs some space and he’s moving out.

Overwhelmed by this revelation, Madison turns to her tight-knit group of friends for help. But when their support isn’t enough, Madison resolves to find out what’s really going on. Even if it means turning detective on her own husband.

And with her own interior-design career about to take off (once her manager stops squashing her bold ideas for his terrible ones, and provided she doesn’t get distracted by the new guy in the office), Madison’s about to rediscover her own worth.

The Consultant, Seong-sun Im, translated from the Korean An Seon Jae

The Consultant is very good at his job. He creates simple, elegant, effective solutions for…restructuring. Nothing obvious or messy. Certainly nothing anyone would ever suspect as murder.

The “natural deaths” he plans have always gone well: a medicine replaced here, a mechanism jammed there. His performance reviews are excellent. And it’s not as though he knows these people.

Until his next “customer” turns out to be someone he not only knows but cares about, and for the first time, he begins to question the role he plays in the vast, anonymous Company. And as he slowly starts to understand the real scope of their work, he realises just how easy it would be for the Company to arrange one more perfect murder…

But how far will he go to escape The Company? And how far will they go to stop him?

All information sourced from publishers.