The Glutton: A Novel

"The young British novelist A. K. Blakemore follows her cult hit debut The Manningtree Witches with another hard-edged historical novel, The Glutton. This new book is set during the French Revolution and is inspired by a man with an insatiable (perhaps even cannibalistic) appetite reported in an 18th-century paper. “Blood drips from every page as she creates a banquet of gorgeously crafted, unexpected images,” reports the Evening Standard. “You’ll find yourself turning them over in your mind for days.” At once horrible and hallucinatory, The Glutton should appeal to fans of Ottessa Moshfegh. Out now in the UK, and on 31 October in the States. And let me shoehorn in a last few name checks before I go. I’m currently enjoying The Dimensions of a Cave by Greg Jackson, who I recently spoke to about ‘metaphysical thrillers’ in an interview that will be published on Five Books shortly. It centres on a reporter whose investigation into a strange new interrogation method has been hushed up—one in which virtual reality calls us into question the very idea of reality. Joseph Conrad meets Bob Woodward. Plus there’s Samantha Harvey’s ( The Western Wind) small but perfectly formed Orbital —a novel set in a space station as a typhoon approaches landfall below, which brings all the lyricism and wonder of nature writing to a low Earth orbit. (“Hazy pale green shimmering sea, hazy tangerine land. This is Africa chiming with light. You can almost hear it, this light, from inside the craft.”) Ed Park’s Same Bed Different Dreams offers a counterfactual history of Korea in which the Korean Provisional Government (established 1919 and dissolved after the Second World War) still exists and is fighting for the unification of North and South. Lots of literary editors have flagged this as one to watch. And the Nigerian crime writer Femi Kayode returns with another superior ‘whydunnit’, Gaslight , a sequel to his highly acclaimed mystery The Light Seekers . Finally, you should know about new publications from evergreen favourites Richard Osman ( The Last Devil to Die , the fourth novel in his cosy Thursday Murder Club series), J. K. Rowling ( The Running Grave , written under her crime fiction pseudonym Robert Galbraith), and Stephen King ( Holly , the first solo outing for autistic private eye Holly Gibney). Happy reading. Part of our best books of 2023 series"