Our Kind of Traitor
John Le Carré
Penguin, £7.99
In his latest espionage novel, the long-established master of the genre displays his mastery of technique. Many ingredients from Le Carré’s acclaimed Cold War thrillers are here: a Russian willing to betray his comrades and their secrets in return for a life of safety and prosperity in the UK; a British secret service which ought to welcome the traitor, yet strangely doesn’t; and a well-meaning go- between baffled by the moral complexities of the situation he’s been sucked into. But this is 2011, not 1981, and Le Carré brings the plot bang up to date by making the would-be defector not a spy, but rather a money launderer who’s sloshed his ill-gotten gains into just about every nasty enterprise on earth, from trading in fake medicines and blood diamonds to selling dangerous meat to fellow Russians. An engrossing read, even if Le Carré does leave some questions unanswered. Kevin Sweeney
The Empty Family
Colm Tóibín
Penguin, £8.99
The nine stories in this taut collection are suffused with shadows, absences and missed opportunities. They are divided almost equally between gay male and straight female narrators, and together they constitute an almost forensic examination of unorthodox family groupings. They examine, too, those terrible twins of the conscious mind, memory and forgetting. A Spanish woman returns to the idyllic island of her youth to find that her parents have sold the land from under her feet. A man sits with his father's sister as she lies dying in a nursing home; his aunt, but also the woman who raised him. Tóibín raises plenty of questions in these tales of the emotional winds and tides which buffet the lives of men and women, but resists the temptation to proffer easy – or indeed any – answers. The writing is like a masterclass in short story writing; there's nothing, Tóibín demonstrates, as he changes gear and tone with gleeful ease, that can't be written about with exactitude and delicacy. And the title story has the look of a future classic. Arminta Wallace
The Sickness
Alberto Barrera Tyszka
MacLehose Press, £7.99
Andrés Miranda is a doctor, adept at dealing with illness and death. But when his father's medical tests confirm there is no hope, the doctor becomes a son incapable of dealing with the inevitable, and he lies even though it is obvious that his father already suspects the worst. Dr Miranda's personal crisis causes him to ignore Ernesto, an obsessive patient intent on attention. The father and son have had a close relationship, consolidated by the death years earlier of the doctor's mother in an air disaster. The father expects to be told the truth about his illness, but his son suggests a vacation. Meanwhile Karin, Miranda's lonely secretary, entrusted with the task of dealing with Ernesto, the neglected patient, has taken to writing confusingly warm emails on her employer's behalf. Venezuelan poet and writer Tyszka follows each of his characters through their respective dilemmas in this insistent, eloquent masterwork that articulates the humour, the horror and the vulnerability of desperate situations. Eileen Battersby
The Finkler Question
Howard Jacobson
Bloomsbury, £7.99
So powerful is the endorsement of the Man Booker Prize that its winners need few introductions. Victory means not just literary acclaim, but guaranteed sales, and last year's winner, The Finkler Question, is already installed on bookshelves across the country. Like much of his previous work, Jacobson's latest novel is a comic exploration of British Jewishness, this time told through the travails of Julian Treslove, failed BBC producer and would-be Jew. The story of his relationship with two Jewish friends – and their exploration of a shared identity – unfolds with a warmth and wit which make Jacobson's observations all the more telling. His real strength, however, lies in his ability to layer this narrative with meanings that transcend an overt focus on Judaism to offer a sympathetic exploration of such universal concepts as life, love and loss. All Jacobson's characters yearn for meaning and acceptance, and with deceptive simplicity he charts their search for these through religion, philosophy and companionship. Freya McClements
The Stars in the Bright Sky
Alan Warner
Vintage, £7.99
It's 2001 and five tough-talking, 20-something Scottish girlfriends, and one English rose, meet in Gatwick airport, bound for a last-minute-deal holiday, complete with Ugg boots, gel nails and huge suitcases. Two have happily forsaken their small childhood town for university, and two are convinced they will find fame on Big Brotheror Popstars. A missing passport delays their departure by a weekend, leading to bouts of hard drinking in dispiriting airport hotels and borderline-bitchy arguments, but the girls rub along together with the illogical forgiveness of friendship. When they finally secure a flight to New York the airport's TV screens are suddenly dominated by news that will change their small lives, like everyone else's, forever. Warner's scintillating descriptions and his spot-on dialogue are sometimes let down by a tendency to use phrases and references that are more typical of a male writer in his 40s, but this is easily overlooked as the girls have more than enough personality to keep us hooked. Claire Looby