Alastair Mabbott

At a time when everyone with a foot in the media door fancies themselves a novelist, Hugo Rifkind has shown considerable restraint. A columnist for this paper in 2002 and for the Times since 2005, he did once pen a largely-forgotten crime caper entitled Overexposure, but Rabbits feels like a “proper” debut, a coming-of-age story drawing heavily on his own background and experience, from the degrees of permissible violence in a private school to “the chalky hash they ship in at Leith”.

Any Human Power has the feel of a book that’s landed at just the right moment, before the story it tells is overtaken by real-world events. As in the novel, MPs are crossing the floor of the House. Looking up from a chapter in which the Prime Minister announces a general election, one finds that Rishi Sunak has done the same. The sentence “There is no universe in which any party dumps its leader five weeks before going to the polls” appears almost verbatim in the next day’s papers.

Seventeen years in the making, apparently, and M.J. Nicholls’ fury appears to have diminished not a jot throughout that time. The Fall and Fall of Derek Haffman is an angry, comedic political satire, which starts out at the Scottish Parliament and extends to encompass Britain’s political system, the venality of those who run it and the complacency of those who let them, its imperial past, its class system, the lies it tells about its history and, for good measure, The Cotswolds.

Published by the small Glasgow imprint Ringwood, T.Y. Garner’s debut novel received virtually no attention when it came out in late February, which is a terrible injustice as it’s a heady dive into late 19th Century Japan by an author of great talent, featuring a protagonist cut off from his roots and forced to find a role for himself in an unfamiliar land.

Glasgow Boys follows two teenagers, Finlay and Banjo, who have spent a large part of their lives in care. As roommates in a hostel in St Andrews, they had forged a special bond, providing, in their unspoken way, mutual comfort and support.

We’ve probably all had dreams about our teeth falling out. It’s a classic sign of anxiety or grief. Shiny, regular teeth are associated with health, attractiveness and financial security. Problem teeth are a source of intense pain, constant distraction and lowered self-esteem. And for the great many people with a phobia of dentists, getting their tooth problems fixed can be an even more daunting prospect than putting up with them. By making teeth the central metaphor of her debut novel, getting its welcome paperback release this month, Lynsey May not only gives her protagonist’s inner turmoil a physical presence but taps into a universal, relatable fear.

What more is there to be said about the allure of vampires, a subject that must surely have been wrung dry by now? In the hands of Genevieve Jagger, it turns out, quite a lot. This strikingly accomplished debut novel is a fresh, psychologically astute take, narrated by a troubled, possibly neurodivergent, young woman scarred by a strict Catholic upbringing and family trauma who befriends a charismatic older man claiming to be a creature of the night.

One of those friends has since become Tory MP for the very Durham constituency in which he grew up. On the hard right of his party, Gary Watson is a toxic, Union flag-waving populist

Esther Rutter was in Japan when it happened. At 21 years old, she had gone to teach English in a rural part of the country and found herself isolated, alienated by the complex pictograms and multiple registers of the Japanese language.

Although it opens ominously enough – its protagonist appearing from nowhere, sweating and dazed, hands outstretched in front of a police car – there’s a lot of fun to be found in Martin Stewart’s appealing and comedic detective novel.