A Bumper Year for Fiction, says Anna Nicholson

2008 is shaping up to be a bumper year for fiction. Fresh from the triumph of the Costa Awards, A L Kennedy’s Day, now out in paperback, leads the field. As well as recently published titles from James Meek ( We Are Now Beginning Our Descent ), Ali Smith (Girl Meets Boy ) and James Kelman (Kieron Smith, Boy), expect new titles from newish writers, Ray Banks, Angus Dunn, Sharon Blackie and Zoe Wicomb as well as crime favourites out in paperback now from Val McDermid, Ian Rankin, Catriona McPherson and Stuart McBride. John Burnside’s The Devil’s Footprints crosses genres and is a great winter read, opening with the arresting image of footprints in the snow of a ‘creature that had not only walked on two legs through the streets and wynds from one end of the town to the other, but had also ascended their walls and crossed their high, crowstepped roofs...’.

This month, we begin with Jenny Turner’s first novel, published last year in hard cover and now out in paperback. The Brainstorm is a stylish debut from Turner, who hails from Aberdeen and has a background in literary matters and experience on magazines such as Edinburgh Review and the London Review of Books. The central character, Lorna, who works for an unnamed company in an office on Canary Wharf in London, has to make sense of what she’s doing at work and who she is when she experiences a kind of ‘brainstorm’. The amnesia device is a clever one, allowing the narrator to experience office life and London in the 90s as a kind of innocent.

Douglas Galbraith’s latest novel is King Henry, based on the true story, and I hadn’t heard this before, of Henry Ford’s attempts to stop World War One – bad for business, of course. Galbraith’s previous novel, A Winter in China, was an enjoyable read but didn’t get much attention. I confess that I mix him up with that bestselling writer, Douglas Kennedy, whose style of book jackets are not dissimilar to Galbraith’s (perhaps it’s deliberate).

Ruth Thomas’s Things to Make and Mend comes out in paperback this month. Well reviewed in hardcover, TTMAM is a witty and unexpectedly moving story of two school friends who meet up in their late 30s at a sewing convention. Thomas is brilliant at conveying the inner thoughts of young women and has a sure, understated style that reveals the strong emotions flowing underneath apparently ordinary lives.

The City of Literature’s campaign swings into town once more with the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Four editions of the RLS tale are appearing this month and it’s good to see the Gaelic version appearing at the same time. (See coverage here).

Finally, the bodice-ripper and what a great, tongue-in-cheek title it has - Heat of the Knight. You know the pack drill by now; I can’t improve on the blurbs of these books: ‘Treachery looms in 1747 Scotland, as battle lines run deep between the proud, struggling clans and the Highland Rangers who torment them - and a young widow fights to save her honour - and her life.’ So go on, pour yourself a glass of honey mead and devour...you know you want to.