ACTS OF CUPIDITY

Love cynic Erron Grover and hopeless romantic Casey Hart led very different lives, but their roles as Apollo agents have brought them together in their afterlife. By day they match up pre-destined couples to fulfil their daily quota of assignments; by night they can be found sipping cocktails in their favourite jazz bar.

But when several of their missions result in a bizarre series of deaths, they find themselves under suspicion of involvement – and the fabric of reality starts to unravel. Faced with the collapse of civilisation, far too many geese and a few questionable soul reapers, the two men are forced to go on the run to solve the murders and save the world . . .

QUEER GEORGIANS

Mother Clap’s Holborn coffee house is open to all comers, a place of companionship and community, until a tip-off leads to a midnight raid.

Two women, exiled from their families, set up a utopian homestead in a remote Welsh cottage, inspiring a generation of Romantic poets.

The celebrated Chevalier d’Éon, soldier, diplomat and spy, challenges a rival to a fencing match. The sweepstake is not over who will win, but whether the Chevalier is a man or a woman.

Goldengrove

A dark theatrical comedy about the vexed and violent relationship between Britain and Ireland, from twice Booker-shortlisted author Patrick McCabe.

It’s the summer of Brexit, and in a seedy hotel room on the South Coast of England, Chenevix Meredith finds his old comrade Henry Plumm murdered in the bathtub. Piecing together their shared history, Meredith looks back at the years they spent in Dublin half a century ago, running a theatrical agency and rubbing shoulders with actors and assassins alike in the swirling smoke of public houses. What their clients didn’t know, is that the flamboyant pair were undercover agents of the British state, posted to identify terrorist networks.

Goldengrove is a deeply immersive, satirical novel in which nothing is as it seems and no one is who they say there are. Steeped in film noir, classic crime and popular culture, McCabe blurs the lines between what’s real and what’s staged in this absurd game of cat and mouse.

MERE

Deep in the Fens, an order of holy sisters lives in quiet isolation, cut off from the outside world by a treacherous marsh known as the mere. Convent healer Hilda and her fellow nuns follow God’s path under the steely guidance of their abbess.

But when a young servant boy goes missing in the marsh, rumour and division spread like wildfire through the community and the abbess’s grip falters. Where is the boy? Who took him? Why can he not be found?

Then, newly arrived Sister Wulfrun has a vision: a curse is upon them and change must be brought. As the convent is swept up in a fight for its very survival, Hilda finds herself caught in her own battle between her conscience and her growing feelings for the enigmatic Wulfrun . . .

HERMIT

After a puzzling death in the wild bushlands of Australia, detective Dana Russo has just 12 hours to interrogate the prime suspect – a silent, inscrutable man found at the scene of the crime, who disappeared without trace 15 years earlier.

But where has he been? Why won’t he talk? And exactly how dangerous is he? Without conclusive evidence to prove his guilt, Dana faces a desperate race against time to persuade him to speak. But as each interview spirals with fevered intensity, Dana must reckon with her own traumatic past to reveal the shocking truth . . .

Fun And Games

It’s his last summer on the small island where he has grown up. He should be enjoying the weeks until his exam results come through, but instead he’s desperately trying to keep his head down after his mother’s nude sext to another man was leaked to the whole island. He’s doing his best to distract himself with his Gaelic football ambitions, going out with his mates and a blossoming, sort-of, romance with his slightly older co-worker Amber.

But soon John must face up to the choices before him: to stand out or fit in and whether to love and let himself be loved, despite, or perhaps because of, the flaws that make us all human.

The Increment

It is a long, hot summer and the country is suffering an epidemic of road rage.

What isn’t making the news headlines, though, is that the SAS’s secret assassination squad, the Increment, is killing ex-soldiers.

These two strands of violence become ever more tightly intertwined as ex-SAS man Matt Browning is drawn into an adventure that takes him to Russia and ends explosively in the UK.

Frida Slattery As Herself

When Frida Slattery and John Reddan meet in a Dublin pub in 2005, neither can imagine how they will come to shape and define each other’s lives.

Frida is struggling to launch her acting career, while John is already gaining a name for himself as a director. From the first they see in each other potential and the chance to create work that matters, though the lines between collaboration and exploitation, friendship and desire will prove dangerously slippery.

With the financial crisis looming, the next 16 years takes them from Dublin to London, via New York and LA, and through success and disappointment, joy and heartbreak. Their connection is tested and stretched to the point of rupture, but something remains that outlasts both their work and their own shifting perceptions.

GUNK

Jules has been divorced from her ex-husband Leon for ­five years, but she still works alongside him at Gunk, the grotty student nightclub he owns in central Brighton. She spends her nights serving shots and watching, from behind the bar, as Leon flirts with students on the dancefloor.

But then Leon hires nineteen-year-old Nim to work the bar – and her arrival jolts Jules awake for the ­ first time in years. When Nim discovers she’s pregnant, Jules agrees to help. As the months pass, and the relationship between the two women grows increasingly intimate and perplexing, it emerges that Nim has her own unexpected gifts to give.

Now, alone in her small flat, Jules is holding a baby, just twenty-four hours old, who still smells of Nim. But no one knows where Nim is, or if she’s coming back. What could the future – for Jules, Nim, and this unnamed baby – possibly look like?

Your Child Next

Things have been difficult for Annie since her husband left; her teenage daughter, Isla, has become a ghost of her former self. Annie’s terrified that Isla might do something desperate, and she’ll lose her, too. So when Annie receives a video of herself crying at Isla’s funeral, her blood runs cold.

Confused and horrified, Annie races upstairs to check on Isla, who is alive and well. The video has been faked. But who sent it and what do they want?

One dark truth soon becomes clear: Annie is the latest in a string of parents being blackmailed, and Isla will be killed if Annie goes to the police or if she fails to give the sender what they want. Annie has a deadly choice: comply with the demands, or try to unmask the dangerous criminal.