July global fiction: Six new novels that chronicle the eternal transitions of human life

All information sourced from publishers.

Cool Machine, Colson Whitehead

1981. New York City is beginning to emerge from financial ruin and decline, energised by rampant real estate development and a Wall Street unchained by Reagan-era predatory capitalism. Up in Harlem, successful business owner/master fence Ray Carney has just been named Sterling Furniture’s Dealer of the Month. When the banks won’t give his beloved wife Elizabeth a loan for her new travel agency, however, Carney gambles on one last heist and finds himself entangled with a legendary criminal mastermind.

1983. To some, Carney’s friend and partner in crime Pepper is a stone-cold sociopath. To others, a top thief with questionable people skills. Either way, he’s feeling his age in his troubled gut and his aching bones. When he takes on a bodyguard gig as a favour to Elizabeth, he’s plunged into the alien territory of the East Village art and club scene. Luckily for him, whether you’re uptown or down, everyone speaks the same language of violence – Pepper is a native speaker.

1986. Carney has always been haunted by his inability to save his cousin Freddie. Now, twenty years after Freddie’s death, he has a chance to rescue Freddie’s son from the violent forces of the city. But coming out of retirement and teaming up with Pepper again will mean risking the safety and security he’s spent decades building for his family, with only one shot to get it right.

Whitehead paints a portrait of a city in transition, where shimmering skyscrapers rise to the heavens as displaced people huddle in abandoned tunnels below. In a dazzling display of protean imagination, Cool Machine roves all over the city, from Windows on the World to the Meadowlands, to show that in New York and in the lives of Whitehead’s vivid characters, it’s what’s below the surface that reveals the truth.

The Great Wherever, Shannon Sanders

At 32, Aubrey Lamb is stumbling into adulthood. A semi-employed gig worker in Washington, DC, she’s grieving the recent loss of her father and the end of a relationship that she’d thought would lead to marriage. When Aubrey learns that she has inherited a shared stake in a sizable Tennessee farm from her father, she simply sees an opportunity to get out of the city – and the potential to erase a mounting pile of debts.

Upon her arrival in Lanyer County, though, Aubrey meets the relatives with whom she shares ownership of the farm and discovers the backstory of the land, beginning with her great-grandfather Thomas – one of the first Black landowners in his community, who gave his four children a homestead on which they could flourish.

But the land proves to be a burdensome inheritance. Over the years, it divides the family, turning Thomas’ descendants against each other and drawing the attention of external forces only too eager to wrest the land from Black hands. These struggles come to a head when a catastrophic tragedy befalls the Lambs, splintering the family and echoing down through the decades, with repercussions for Audrey herself.

As Aubrey learns this history from her living relatives, the ghosts of her ancestors interject with their own exasperated, gossipy commentary on the flaws and foibles of relatives living and dead, and stake their own claims on the farm.

Close Relationship with Strangers, Krista Diamond

Reviled by celebrities and the public, Ben is one of the last remaining paparazzi scouring the streets of Los Angeles. Amateurs with camera phones, social media, and a lack of bona fide stars have slowly killed a once essential role in the Hollywood apparatus. Jack Whitlock is one of the last remaining A-listers, and Ben has followed his career since the years he spent bussing tables at a diner in Las Vegas where his most popular movie once filmed a scene.

When Jack Whitlock is suddenly embroiled in a sex scandal, Ben begins his pursuit, eager for both a big paycheck and a chance to be close to the elusive star. Along the way, he is haunted by mistakes from his past: the photos he took of a pop star that have led to death threats, the ghost of his failed relationship with a burlesque dancer named Ellory, and his abandoned dream of being a wildlife photographer.

Misery’s Wife, Joan Tierney

Elixane lives in a village ravaged by waves, storms, and the encroaching forest. When she was too young to remember, her elder sisters each picked a flower and were whisked away: Borboleta to marry the King of the Air, Adelina to marry the King of the Sea, and her favorite sister Dores to marry the King of Misery, who promised: No one will ever love you as I will.

So when Elixane receives a mysterious message from a toad, she sets out to rescue Dores from the Kingdom of Misery. She is aided by the jester-like Marquês of Luck and his sister Jinx, the contrary and beautiful Marquesa of Misfortune. On the way, she’ll have to reunite with her sisters and their magical husbands, break several unbreakable curses – and, perhaps, find a magical love of her own.

Country People, Daniel Mason

Miles Krzelewski is a devoted husband, a doting father beloved for his outlandish bedtime stories, and the proud owner of a truffle-hunting dog in a land with no truffles. He is also a bit lost, 12 years late with his PhD on Russian folktales, and increasingly haunted by a sense that he’s become a disappointment to his family. So when his wife Kate accepts a visiting professorship at a prestigious college in the far away forests of Vermont, he decides that this will be his year to finally move forward with his life.

But Miles is a man of many enthusiasms, one who possesses, in Kate’s words, “a great capacity to fall in with anyone, anywhere.” And no sooner does he arrive than he finds himself entangled with a cast of characters as colorful as any of his folktales, from a ghostly tree surgeon to a scythe-mad biochemist, a Shakespearean temptress and a photographer of snowflakes obsessed with chronicling, on thousands of index cards, the world’s delusions in a “Inventory of Wrong Ideas.”

The new friends, the enchanted woods, the sure, no PhD, but all good fun. Until Miles stumbles upon a bizarre – perhaps ridiculous – local legend, which, he soon suspects, might not be just a legend after all.

Hard Place, Gab Torr

For years, Billy’s decisions have been made for her by her long-term girlfriend Rose, leaving her free not to think for – or about – herself. But when they break up and Billy is left without anywhere to live, she’s forced to take up an unappealing but affordable SpareRoom ad. Her new flatmates, Sid and Rhoda, are the kinds of people who talk very seriously about taking accountability, adhering to the flat’s community guidelines and holding space for one another. Meals are communal by force, polyamory is assumed, and whatever the problem, capitalism’s usually to blame. Yes, Rhoda’s parents own the flat, but that doesn’t matter: they’re unapologetically political and loudly queer, and slowly Billy becomes enmeshed in their radical, vulnerable world. But as Billy’s past starts to catch up with her and all of their boundaries begin to crumble, each of them must reckon with what they truly stand for – and what they’ll sacrifice to hold onto it.