Nicola Monaghan
Chatto & Windus, £11.99
Landing a long-coveted job in the City of London as a trader, tough Essex girl Frankie Cavanagh plunges headlong into the macho hedonism of the financial markets and late 1990s club culture, playing hard
in every sense. Soon she's an accident waiting to happen, up to her eyeballs in sex, drugs, drink and an affair with her boss that spirals out of control. Monaghan's second novel fizzes along with some verve, capturing the empty heart of the greed-is-good generation, but crashes to an unlikely, unsatisfying end.
Also try: Alan Warner, Morvern Callar
THE SAME EARTHKei Miller
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £12.99
Miller's portrait of a small Caribbean village and its inhabitants is a lovingly drawn miniature of Jamaica's culture from the 1950s onwards. It brilliantly captures the social stresses brought about by modernity's collision with the island's rich pagan-Christian heritage. Miller's narrative and emotional range is exceptional, taking in everything from the mysterious theft of polkadot panties and rising Pentecostal fervour, to the perplexing experience of Jamaican immigrants to Britain in the 1970s.
Also try: Russell Banks, The Book Of Jamaica
THE BROKEN LYRE Lorn Macintyre
Black Ace Books, £16.95
This fourth volume of Macintyre's historical cycle, the Chronicles Of Invernevis, charts the final destruction of the great aristocratic houses brought about by the Second World War. Soon-to-be Laird Niall Macdonald, linguist and Rilke scholar, moves among the European nobility, encountering a world without moral centre and fascists such as Unity Mitford. When war breaks out he is recruited as a secret agent, returning to France, where he must make impossible choices in the name of freedom.
Also try: Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited
