Vox

On a small isolated island, there's a community that lives by its own rules. Boys grow up knowing they will one day reign inside and outside the home while girls know they will be married and pregnant within moments of hitting womanhood. But before that time comes, there is an island ritual that offers children an exhilarating reprieve. Every summer they are turned out onto their doorsteps to roam wild: they run, they fight, they sleep on the beach and build camps in trees. They are free.

Five women. One question: what is a woman for? In this ferociously imaginative novel, abortion is once again illegal in America, in vitro fertilisation is banned, and the Personhood Amendment grants rights of life, liberty and property to every embryo. In a small Oregon fishing town, five very different women navigate these new barriers. This is a story of resilience, transformation and hope in tumultuous - even frightening - times.

The eagerly awaited new novel from the author of The Age of Miracles. Imagine a world where sleep could trap you for days, for weeks, months.... A world where you could even die of sleep rather than in your sleep. Karen Thompson Walker's second novel is stunning, the story of a Californian town's epidemic of perpetual sleep.

Once upon a time, damaged women came here to be cured. We took them in, fed them glasses of our clean, good water, let them scream at the waves till their lips split like ripe fruit. Now no one is left but my sisters and me. King died a year ago, quite suddenly. Mother has vanished, no one knows where. And the safe compound they built around us, far away from the toxic world, has finally been breached. Three men arrived last week, washed up by the sea, their gazes hungry and insistent. We remember now what our father taught us. 'If the men come to you, show yourself some mercy. Don't stick around and wait for them to put you out of your misery.'

'Somebody's going to be murdered at the ball tonight. It won't appear to be a murder, and so the murderer won't be caught. Rectify that injustice and I'll show you the way out.' It is meant to be a celebration, but it ends in tragedy. As fireworks explode overhead, Evelyn Hardcastle, the young and beautiful daughter of the house, is killed. But Evelyn will not die just once. Until Aiden - one of the guests summoned to Blackheath for the party - can solve her murder, the day will repeat itself over and over again.

'She throws her head back and pushes her chest forward and lets go a huge blast right into the centre of his body. The rivulets and streams of red scarring run across his chest and up around his throat. She'd put her hand on his heart and stopped him dead.' Suddenly - tomorrow or the day after - girls find that with a flick of their fingers, they can inflict agonizing pain and even death.

Wilbrook in Western Australia is a sleepy, remote town that sits on the edge of miles and miles of unexplored wilderness. It is home to Police Sergeant Chandler Jenkins, who is proud to run the town’s small police station, a place used to dealing with domestic disputes and noise complaints. All that changes on a scorching day when an injured man stumbles into Chandler’s station. He’s covered in dried blood. His name is Gabriel. He tells Chandler what he remembers. 

The Silent Patient is a shocking psychological thriller of a woman's act of violence against her husband - and of the man obsessed with uncovering her motive.... Famous artist Alicia Berenson shoots her husband in the head five times and then never speaks again. Five years later, forensic psychotherapist Theo Faber must find a way to get Alicia to talk if he wants to treat her. Only then can he unravel the shocking events of that tragic night five years before....

Anita lives in Karachi's biggest slum. Her mother is a maalish wali, paid to massage the tired bones of rich women. But Anita's life will change forever when she meets her elderly neighbour, a man whose shelves of books promise an escape to a different world. On the other side of Karachi lives Monty, whose father owns half the city and expects great things of him. But when a beautiful and rebellious girl joins his school, Monty will find his life going in a very different direction. 

Connell and Marianne grow up in the same small town in rural Ireland. The similarities end there; they are from very different worlds. When they both earn places at Trinity College in Dublin, a connection that has grown between them lasts long into the following years. This is an exquisite love story about how a person can change another person's life - a simple yet profound realisation that unfolds beautifully over the course of the novel. It tells us how difficult it is to talk about how we feel and it tells us - blazingly - about cycles of domination, legitimacy and privilege. 

An electrifying debut thriller for fans of Anatomy of a Scandal, Apple Tree Yard and Gone Girl. Alison has it all. A doting husband, an adorable daughter, and a career on the rise - she's just been given her first murder case to defend. But all is never as it seems.... Alison's client doesn't deny that she stabbed her husband - she wants to plead guilty. And yet something about her story is deeply amiss. Saving this woman may be the first step to Alison saving herself. 

The drought - or the Tap-Out, as everyone calls it - has been going on for a while now. Everyone’s lives have become an endless list of don’ts: don’t water the lawn, don’t fill up your pool, don’t take long showers. Until the taps run dry. Suddenly, Alyssa’s quiet suburban street spirals into a warzone of desperation; neighbors and families turned against each other on the hunt for water. And when her parents don’t return and her life - and the life of her brother - is threatened, Alyssa has to make impossible choices if she’s going to survive.

The 10-day retreat at boutique health-and-wellness resort Tranquillum House promises healing and transformation. Nine stressed city dwellers are keen to drop their literal and mental baggage and absorb the blissful meditative ambiance while enjoying their hot stone massages. They are all on a path to a better way of living. Or at least a better waistline.... Watching over them is the resort's director, a woman on a mission to reinvigorate these bodies and minds. But to what lengths will she go to achieve her goal? These nine perfect strangers have no idea what's about to hit them.

1940s. With the world at war, Eleanor Trigg leads a mysterious ring of female secret agents in London. Twelve of these women are sent to aid the resistance. They never return home. 1946. Passing through Grand Central Station, Grace Healey finds an abandoned suitcase tucked beneath a bench. The case is filled with a dozen photographs, each of a different woman.

Everyone's invited. Everyone's a suspect. In a remote hunting lodge, deep in the Scottish wilderness, old friends gather for New Year. The beautiful one. The golden couple. The volatile one. The new parents. The quiet one. The city boy. The outsider. The victim. Not an accident - a murder among friends.