From Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi’s coming-of-age novel to Mr Cadmus by Peter Ackroyd, a gripping story by Phil Klay and Ian Rankin’s latest, this week’s best new fiction
The First Woman
Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi Oneworld £16.99
Growing up with her extended family in 1970s Uganda, Kirabo wonders why she was abandoned by her mother. She seeks answers from the local ‘witch’, who teaches her about female rebellion through Ugandan myths – tales that help pave Kirabo’s path to womanhood when she moves to Kampala and then to boarding school as the country undergoes its own transformation under Idi Amin’s dictatorship.
A standout coming-of-age novel about parents, friendship and storytelling.
Gwendolyn Smith
Mr Cadmus
Peter Ackroyd Canongate £12
Appearances are deceptive in Ackroyd’s latest novel, set in 1981. When Millicent and Maud, two middle-aged villagers in Devonshire, find themselves flustered by the arrival of their smooth-talking new neighbour, Mr Cadmus, the stage is set for a cosy, curtain-twitching comedy of manners.
But the story takes a dark turn when nightmarish flashbacks reveal the wartime horror haunting each character. Entertaining and wildly unpredictable, with a soupçon of the supernatural.
Anthony Cummins
Missionaries
Phil Klay Canongate £16.99
This impressive debut shines a light on the globalisation of violence through the stories of a journalist, a guerrilla soldier, an army officer and a Special Forces liaison officer.
Klay, himself a former US marine, has crafted a gripping novel that doubles as a prodigiously well-researched attack on the horrors of war and on America’s covert counter-terrorism tactics. Stunning.
Simon Humphreys
A Song For The Dark Times
Ian Rankin Orion £20
Rebus is getting old. He’s retired, he has lung disease, he’s had to move to a downstairs flat, but he’s still a born detective. So when his daughter calls from the far north to say her husband’s vanished, there’s only one man for the job.
Throw in the murder of a young Saudi and the result is a gripping, complex mystery.
John Williams