Fly in the Ointment by Anne Fine
Bantam Press, £16.99

Lois is doing very well in prison, but there is just one fly in the ointment - “the fact that you still won't face up to your guilt”. What has she done, and why does she feel no remorse? Lois writes her “confession” and invites the reader to decide. She is a chilly individual. Her parents starved her of love, her indifferent husband disappeared, and she has lost her son to heroin addiction. Fine is a storyteller of brilliance, and this short tragedy is utterly compelling.

Voice Over by Celine Curiol, translated by Sam Richard
Faber, £10.99

This is one of those earnest, rather pretentious novels that pop out of France from time to time. It concerns a young woman who works as a station announcer at the Gare du Nord. She falls in love with a man, but he is in love with someone else. Our announcer becomes obsessed with her rival. One of the rival's men friends asks the announcer what she does for a living, and she unthinkingly tells him she's a prostitute. In Britain, this could only have emerged as an uproarious comedy, but the French version is lamentably short of humour.

The Dirty South by Alex Wheatle
Serpent's Tail, £9.99

In Brixton, 20 years after the riots, opportunities for young black males are still pitifully few. Teenager Dennis Huggins has had a secure and prosperous upbringing, but this does not protect him from the temptations and dangers of the drug scene. Dennis falls in love with a girl named Akeisha, and tries to build a decent life. Wheatle conjures up a slice of black South London that is authentic, gritty and witty.

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