Books to Look Out For in June 2026: Part Two

June’s second fiction preview begins with one I took a punt on largely because of the publisher, World Editions, whose list is always interesting.

Kit Fan’s Goodbye Chinatown explores events in Hong Kong since the 1997 handover through the experience of Amber whose parents brought her to London after the horrors of Tiananmen Square in 1989, aged ten. In 2001, she opens a fusion restaurant, attracting the attention of the daughter of a Chinese multibillionaire and winning her financial backing. By 2008, when the financial crash precipitates another global crisis, Amber’s parents have returned to Hong Kong, her mother furious at attempts to stamp out the freedom of young protesters willing to die for it. Moving and heartfelt, these passages turn Fan’s novel from an enjoyable, polished piece of fiction into something more thought-provoking and involving. Review shortly…

I was delighted to see a new Daniela Krien in the schedules having loved everything I’ve read by her, from Someday We’ll Tell Each Other Everything to The Fire. My Third Life follows Linda who’s left Leipzig to live in the countryside after the death of her teenage daughter and the breakdown of her marriage, hoping to recuperate from cancer and find solace in a simpler life. Her growing friendship with her neighbour offers the chance of a renewed happiness she’d dismissed as impossible. ‘In her signature crafted prose, bestselling author Daniela Krien explores what it means to meet another version of yourself later in life, and how to surrender to new realms of love and acceptance’ says the blurb. I can’t recommend Krien highly enough.

Acclaimed poet Ulrikka S. Gernes’s A Girl Left the Room sees the fourteen-year-old daughter of parents preoccupied with their art and stormy marriage, growing up in the isolated family home, enchanted by the attention of a family friend who snaps her with her own camera at a gallery opening. Eg extracts a promise from Tanja to send him the shot, beginning a correspondence which flatters and charms her, too naïve to understand she’s being groomed. ‘Written with courage and precision, this is a daring novel about a young girl’s loss of innocence and the betrayal of those who surround her’ says the blurb making me want to read it.

Agnes Lidbeck is another Scandinavian author I’d not come across before I spotted her new novel, All My Love. It follows Petra and Johnannes, apparently the ideal couple, both from privileged backgrounds, and their friends Julia and Axel who are very different. In an increasingly destabilised society, relationships shift and change between these four as their country curtails the freedoms of its citizens. ‘People begin to disappear. The personal and the political collide. It is easier, at first, to look away than to let the facts in. Until they arrive at the door’ according to the blurb. Lidbeck is much praised by Katie Kitamura who describes her writing as ‘bold, blisteringly intelligent, delicious playful’ although I’m not convinced the latter applies to this one.

In Brodie Crellin’s A Sense of Occasion the occasion is a funeral the preparations for which become increasingly fraught. Mary’s daughter is finding it difficult to keep on top of arrangements while the best intentions of her father to be supportive are derailed by his old habits. Meanwhile her cousin is travelling from Naples, distracted by a bag of cocaine in the car’s boot, hoping her past bad behaviour will be forgiven. ‘Darkly funny, deeply entertaining, and intensely moving, A Sense of Occasion subverts and perverts your expectations to reveal the fractious desires that simmer beneath the surface of our lives’ says the blurb promisingly.

Guy Ware’s short story collection sounds like it takes a more sobering approach. ‘A Day Like Any Other explores death – natural, assisted, promised and unexpected – with compassion, wit, a steady gaze and a desire to confront the challenge we mostly prefer to avoid: why live at all? It is the perfect collection for anyone who’s going to die one day’ according to the blurb which does hint at a bit of dark humour. I’ve enjoyed Ware’s novels, particularly The Peckham Experiment, so have hopes for this one.

That’s it for June’s new fiction. As ever, a click on a title will take you to a more detailed synopsis should you want to know more, and if you’d like to catch up with part one it’s here. Paperbacks soon…