Some Possible Solutions by Helen Philips

Chosen by Pat

What if you knew the exact date of your death? What if your perfect hermaphrodite match existed on another planet? What if your city was filled with doppelgängers of you?

In these remarkably inventive stories Helen Phillips' characters search for solutions to the problem of survival in an irrational, infinitely strange world. We meet a wealthy woman who purchases a high-tech sex toy in the shape of a man, a mother convinced that her children are from another planet, and orphaned twin sisters who work as futuristic strippers. As they strive for intimacy and struggle to resolve their fraught relationships with each other, and with themselves, we realise these dystopias are uncannily close to our own world.

By turns surreal, witty, and perplexing, these bewitching stories are ultimately a reflection of our own reality and of the biggest existential questions we all face.

Angela: Leader

Pat: Passage

Caroline: Connector

Wendy: Wordmaster

Tracey: Summariser

His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet

Chosen by Caroline

SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2016

The year is 1869. A brutal triple murder in a remote community in the Scottish Highlands leads to the arrest of a young man by the name of Roderick Macrae. A memoir written by the accused makes it clear that he is guilty, but it falls to the country s finest legal and psychiatric minds to uncover what drove him to commit such merciless acts of violence. Was he mad? Only the persuasive powers of his advocate stand between Macrae and the gallows.

Graeme Macrae Burnet tells an irresistible and original story about the provisional nature of truth, even when the facts seem clear. His Bloody Project is a mesmerising literary thriller set in an unforgiving landscape where the exercise of power is arbitrary.