Up Against the Night by Justin Cartwright
Frank McAllister is a rich man with houses in Notting Hill, the New Forest and Cape Town. But he is not English, and his sense of alienation is making him restless. He was born in South Africa, a descendant of the famous Boer leader Piet Retief, who was murdered in 1838 by the Zulu King Dingane. Frank is now planning a visit to South Africa with his lover, Nellie. He has an ex-wife he hates, and he’s waiting to be joined by their daughter, Lucinda, when she gets out of rehab in California (bearing a severe shock for her father). Frank has found his Afrikaner cousin, Jaco, on YouTube, facing down a shark; he’s now a Scientologist in America. Justin Cartwright’s writing is coolly elegant and laconic as he describes the chaos and uncertainty Frank finds in South Africa; he is also descended from Piet Retief, and there are vivid historical flashbacks, cleverly imagined.
Bloomsbury, 241pp, £18.99. To buy this book for £15.99, visit thetimes.co.uk/bookshop or call 0845 2712134
Nelly Dean by Alison Chase
Nelly Dean is the narrator of most of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights; the rather dry-tongued housekeeper who entertains Mr Lockwood with the story of her incredibly dysfunctional household. This novel rips the original novel open to fill in all the gaps — although you don’t need to know the original to read this story. As a child, Nelly lived with the Earnshaws as part of the family, and was especially close to Hindley. Then came the famous day when Mr Earnshaw brought home a wild boy and named him Heathcliff, and Nelly is banished below stairs. All the immortal characters are here, and Chase burrows into their psyches to reveal a further layer of family secrets, without harming the integrity of the mother-story. Nelly Dean is a fine companion to one of the Victorian giants.
Borough Press, 474pp, £12.99. To buy this book for £11.69, visit thetimes.co.uk/bookshop or call 0845 2712134
The Loney by Andrew Michael Hurley
The “Loney” is the local nickname for a remote and rugged stretch of coast, where the unnamed narrator and his family go on a penitential pilgrimage every Easter, with Father Wilfred, their parish priest, and a small group of the faithful. Hanny, the narrator’s older brother, goes to a special school because he has never spoken, and their devout mother is awaiting a miracle. In 1973 something strange happened to Father Wilfred at the Loney; he was a changed man, and the pilgrimages don’t start again until he is dead. The new priest, burly Father Bernard, innocently agrees to take them all back — but something ghastly awaits them. This wonderful “horror” novel was first published by a small, specialist independent press, but the quality of the bone-chilling, poetic writing is too good to box up inside a genre.
John Murray, 360pp, £14.99. To buy this book for £12.99, visit thetimes.co.uk/bookshop or call 0845 2712134
Kate Saunders will be at The Times and The Sunday Times Cheltenham Literature Festival on Oct 11. Cheltenhamfestivals.com