Our Wives Under the Sea

"I’ve had my eye on quite a few literary debuts this season, not least Julia Armfield’s beautifully unnerving Our Wives Under the Sea . Armfield previously published a remarkable short story collection, salt slow , which saw her shortlisted for the title of Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year here in the UK, and this book underlines her reputation for finely crafted tales of the horrifying, the strange and the contemporary gothic. Also of interest: Oklahoma poet Honorée Fanonne Jeffers’s first novel The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois will be published in the UK on 20 Jan after garnering rave reviews in the States; Jessamine Chan’s The School for Good Mothers , a feminist dystopia in which ‘failing’ mothers are sent to a government-run re-education unit, is very freshly released and will appeal to those who enjoy Leni Zumas’s Red Clocks or Sophie Mackintosh’s Blue Ticket ; and Sequoia Nagamatsu’s How High We Go in the Dark , which follows a large cast of characters through generations in the centuries that follow a calamitous plague. As ever, we love to hear about the books that you are personally looking forward to—or have just discovered. Don’t hesitate to get in touch via Twitter , Facebook or Instagram . We always love to hear from you. Part of our best books of 2022 series."