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CHARLES DICKENS''S LAST GREAT GHOST STORY is also his most personal, inspired by a terrible accident on a train he himself was riding on. He revisited this haunting memory on the figure of a railway signalman, who hears bells ringing in his signal box when no one else does, sees a figure no one else can see... and who, following those ominous signs, always witnesses horrible incidents. ''I am troubled, sir,'' he cries. ''I am troubled!'' But what exactly is it that is troubling the signalman? ... And what does it want?

Hester, a teenage girl, is left in charge of a young child in a cold, gloomy manor house under the looming shadows of the Cumberland fells. She hears strange organ music playing, but everyone tells her it isn''t happening. She is forbidden from visiting the mysterious East Wing. She is desperate to keep her young charge safe from some unknown disaster, one she feels sure is coming, and - as the terrible events that have happened in her new home become clear to her - she is increasingly unable to do so...

So speaks the narrator of Muriel Spark''s haunting tale, ''The Leaf-sweeper'', before going on to recount the disturbing and mercilessly witty story of a certain ''madman'' - Johnnie Geddes, hell-bent on outlawing Christmas - who meets the most terrifying of all apparitions: himself.

Henry Nash has hauled his way from a working class childhood in Bradford, through an undergraduate degree at Oxford, and into adulthood and an academic elite. But still, he can''t escape his anger. As the world - and men in particular - continue to disappoint him, so does his rage grow in momentum until it becomes almost rapturous. And lethal. A savagely funny novel that disdains literary and moral conventions, All My Precious Madness is also a work of deep empathy even when that also means understanding the darkest parts of humanity. It is, as critic Stephen Mitchelmore says, the book for everyone who longs for ''an English Bernhard'' - and to read one of the most electric debuts of the last decade.

Mary Toft was just another eighteenth century woman living in poverty, misery and frequent pain. Mary Toft was the kind of person overlooked by those with power, forgotten by historians. Mary Toft was nothing. Until, that is, Mary Toft started giving birth to rabbits... In Mary and the Rabbit Dream, the sensational debut novelist Noemi Kiss-Deaki reimagines Mary''s strange and fascinating story - and how she found fame when a large swathe of England became convinced that she was the mother of rabbits. Mary and the Rabbit Dream is a story of bodily autonomy, of absurdity, of the horrors inflicted on women, of the cruel realities of poverty and the grotesque divides between rich and poor. It''s a book that matters deeply - and it''s also a compelling page-turner. A story told with exquisite wit, skill and a beautiful streak of subversive mischief.

Manor Farm has reinvented itself as the South of England''s premium petting zoo. Now, instead of a working farm, humans and beasts alike are invited (for a small fee) to come and stroke, fondle, and take rides on the farm''s inhabitants. But life is not a bed of roses for the animals, in spite of what their leaders may want them to believe. Elections are rigged, the community is beset by factions, and sacred mottos are being constantly updated. The Farm is descending into chaos. What''s more, a mysterious ''illness'' has started ripping through the animals, killing them one by one... In Beasts of England, Adam Biles honours, updates and subverts George Orwell''s classic, all the while channelling the chaotic, fragmentary nature of populist politics in the Internet age into a savage farmyard satire.

It's 1895. Amid laundry and bruises, Rina Pierangeli Faccio gives birth to the child of the man who raped her - and who she has also been forced to marry. Unbroken, she determines to change her name; and her life, alongside it. 1902. Romaine Brooks sails for Capri. She has barely enough money for the ferry, nothing for lunch; her paintbrushes are bald and clotted... But she is sure she can sell a painting - and is fervent in her belief that the island is detached from all fates she has previously suffered.... In 1923, Virginia Woolf writes: I want to make life fuller - and fuller.Sarah Bernhardt - Colette - Eleanora Duse - Lina Poletti - Josephine Baker - Virginia Woolf... these are just a few of the women sharing the pages of a book as fierce as it is luminous. Lush and poetic; furious and funny; in After Sappho, Selby Wynn Schwartz has created a novel that celebrates the women and trailblazers of the past - their constant efforts to push against the boundaries of what it means, and can mean, to be a woman - that also offers hope for our present, and our futures.

A Writer''s Diary is a novel that blends fact and fiction, invention and memoir with joyful creativity and remarkable literary ambition. In it, Toby Litt takes on some of the biggest questions of life and death, not to mention literary as well as human mortality and the steady march of time. At first, A Writer''s Diary appears to be exactly what it claims to be. It is a daily summary of the events in a person called Toby Litt''s life: his thoughts on creating literature, his concerns for his family and the people he teaches, his musings on the various things that catch his attention around his desk and his immediate surroundings... But as it progresses, questions start to arise. Is this fact? Or is it fiction? (And if it''s both, which is which?) Is this a book about quotidian daily routines - one person''s days as they unspool - or is something more going on? Is there something even larger taking shape? ... And so, seemingly by magic, an increasingly urgent narrative starts to build - a

The Book of Desire is the award-winning (and Women''s Prize-shortlisted) writer Meena Kandasamy''s luminous translation of the Kamattu-p-pal, a 2000-year-old song of love and pleasure and the third part of the Thirukkural - one of the most important texts in Tamil literature. Written by the poet Thiruvalluvar, the Kamattu-p-pal section of the Thirukkural focuses on love and female sensuality. It is the most intimate section of this great work - and also, historically, the part that has been most heavily censored. Although hundreds of male translations of the text have been published, it has also only ever been translated by a woman once before. The Book of Desire is Meena''s own feminist reclamation of the Kamattu-p-pal. With her trademark wit, lyricism and passionate insight, she weaves a magic spell: taking the reader on a journey through 250 kurals (short verses), organised under separate headings - ''The Pleasure of Sex'', ''Renouncing Shame'', ''The Delights of Sulking - the result is

NATHAN TREEVES IS DEAD, murdered by the Master of Mordew, his remains used to create the powerful occult weapon known as the Tinderbox.His companions are scattered, making for Malarkoi, the city of the Mistress, the Master's enemy. They are hoping to find welcome there, or at least safety. They find neither - and instead become embroiled in a life and death struggle against assassins, demi-gods, and the cunning plans of the Mistress.Only Sirius, Nathan's faithful magical dog, has not forgotten the boy. Bent on revenge, he returns to the shattered remains of Mordew - only to find the city morphed into an impossible mountain, swarming with monsters. He senses something in the Manse at its pinnacle - the Master is there, grieving the loss of his manservant, Bellows - and in the ruins of the slums Sirius finds a power capable of destroying his foe, if only he has the strength to use it.The stage is set for battle, sacrifice, magic and treachery in the stunning sequel to Mordew. ... Welcome to Malarkoi..

English Magic moves through fields and parklands, estates and empty beaches.It lands at Heathrow Airport, takes a taxi to the suburbs, finds emptiness and oppression. It strikes out for the countryside on May Day, to where maypoles whirl and haybales blaze, and where blessings sound like threats.It's in a flat, drags itself out of half sleep... and there's something tapping behind the gas fire...In her debut collection of short stories, Uschi Gatward takes us on a tour of an England simultaneously domestic and wild, familiar and strange, real and imagined. Coupling the past and the present, merging the surreal and the mundane, English Magic is a collection full of humour and warmth, subversion and intoxication. It announces the arrival of a shining new talent.

'There are three kinds of strike I'd recommend: a housework strike, a labour strike, and a sex strike. I can't wait for the first two.'Things Are Against Us is the first collection of essays from Booker Prize-shortlisted Lucy Ellmann. Bold, angry, despairing and very, very funny, these essays cover everything - from matriarchy to environmental catastrophe to Little House on the Prairie. Ellmann calls for a moratorium on air travel, rages against bras, gives Doris Day and Agatha Christie a drubbing, and pleads for sanity in a world that - well, a world that spent four years in the company of Donald Trump, that 'tremendously sick, terrible, nasty, lowly, truly pathetic, reckless, sad, weak, lazy, incompetent, third-rate, clueless, not smart, dumb as a rock, all talk, wacko, zero-chance lying liar'.Things Are Against Us is electric. It's vital. These are essays bursting with energy, and reading them feels like sticking your hand in the mains socket. Lucy Ellmann is the writer we need to guide us through these crazy times.

JOSEPH is trying to focus on a plumbing job, but is too distracted by the terrible things that have been happening in his family. JOSEPH believes that his son has tried to murder his wife. JOSEPH is afraid that his wife is going to leave him. JOSEPH is terrified that his son will try to kill again. Insignificance - the debut novel for adults from Carnegie Medal-nominee James Clammer - unfurls over the course of twenty-four hours, placing the reader right inside the head of its struggling narrator. A tender act of empathy for the uncertainty and awkwardness of a vulnerable man, Insignificance is also a masterclass in burning tension - as we start to fear not just for the safety of Joseph's family, but that Joseph himself may not even make it through the day....

Elliott is something of a genius. More than that, Elliott is an ideal friend, and to know him is to adore him. But few people do know Elliott, because he is also stuck. He lives in a wheelchair in an orphanage. It''s 1979. Elliott is forced to spend his days in an empty corridor, either gazing out of the window at the birds in a tree or staring into a white wall wherever the Catholic Sisters who run the ward have decided to park him. So when Jim, blind and mute but also headstrong, arrives on the ward and begins to defy the Sisters'' restrictive rules, Elliott finally sees a chance for escape.

FRANCIS PLUG is back! Adjusting to life as a newly published author - interviews and publicity are coming his way, not to mention considerable acclaim. But Francis can''t understand why people think he was writing fiction... He also has other problems - and very little money. Fortunately, he''s handed a lifeline when he lands a job as Writer-in-Residence at the University of Greenwich. The urgent questions build and build - and Francis is in no state to answer them. Will he keep his job? Will he be able to secretly sleep in his office? Will anyone find out that he did a wee in the corridor?

Paul Schreber is a man who wants to go home - but can't. He is a man crippled by an illness he doesn't understand - and sometimes doesn't even know he has. He's no condition to face the worst - but the worst keeps on happening to him. His family is disintegrating, past traumas are coming back to haunt him - and so are those troubling, seemingly laid-to-rest fears of persecution...

Chosen by The Observer as a Fiction Pick for 2016 and described as a 'scintillating novel of ideas', Feeding Time is a debut like no other: a blast of rage against the dying of the light. Dot is losing the will to live. Tristan is sick of emptying bedpans. Cornish spends entire days barricaded in his office. And Ruggles... well. Ruggles is damn well going to escape those Nazi villains and get back to active duty. The mix is all the more combustible since Dot, Tristan, Cornish and Ruggles are all under the same roof - that of a rapidly declining old people's home called Green Oaks. There's going to be an explosion. It's going to be messy. And nobody knows who will pick up the pieces.

Meet Francis Plug, a troubled and often drunk misfit who causes chaos and confusion wherever he goes. And where he most likes to go is to real author events, collecting signatures from the likes of Salman Rushdie, Hilary Mantel, and Eleanor Catton, all the while gleaning advice for a self-help book he is writing with the novice writer in mind. His timely manual promises to be full of sage wisdom and useful tidbits to help ease freshly published novelists into the demands of life in the public eye. Essential reading for anyone with an interest in the literary world - or, in fact, humanity in general. Because while it is a brilliant slapstick comedy, blurring fact, fiction, and absurdity to astonishing effect, How To Be A Public Author by Francis Plug is also a surprising and touching meditation on loneliness and finding a place in the world. Francis, it seems, just doesn't fit in. And as you read, you may wonder if he'll even make it to the end of his own book...