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Jeanine Cummins' heart-stopping and heart-rending novel American Dirt follows a mother and son on the run from the Mexican drug cartels.

Lydia Quixano Pérez runs a bookstore in Acapulco, Mexico, where she lives with her husband, Sebastián, a journalist, and their eight-year-old son, Luca. While there are cracks beginning to show in Acapulco because of the drug cartels, her life is, by and large, fairly comfortable. But when a man starts visiting her store, buying books and striking up a friendship, she has no idea initially that he will be responsible for turning her life upside down.

Forced to flee, Lydia and Luca soon find themselves miles and worlds away from their comfortable middle-class existence. Instantly transformed into migrants, they ride la bestia - trains that make their way north toward the United States. As they join the countless other Central and South Americans trying to reach el norte, Lydia soon sees that everyone is running from something. But what exactly are they running to?

Adults is the latest, devastatingly funny and moving book from critically-acclaimed author Emma Jane Unsworth (whose Novel Animals was adapted into a 2019 feature film).

It’s centred around thirty-five-year-old Jenny, who’s desperately trying to find her place in the world. Sure, she’s a grown-up in theory – she owns her own house and has a job writing for an achingly hip magazine – but she certainly doesn’t feel like it.

She’s broken up with her boyfriend Art (who she hoped might have been her forever man), and she’s clearly not cutting-edge enough for her role at work (and spends all day online-stalking flawless woman on social media).

Tiffy and Leon share a flat, and a bed – but have never met.

Tiffy Moore needed a cheap flat, and fast. Leon Twomey works nights as a palliative care nurse and was desperate for cash. So, Leon occupies the one-bed apartment while Tiffy's at work in the day (sleeping on the right side of the bed), and the rest of the time she has the run of the place (and sleeps on the left).

Their friends think they're crazy, but surely this is the perfect money-saving set-up?

But with obsessive ex-boyfriends, demanding clients, wrongly-imprisoned brothers and, of course, the fact that they’re still only communicating through post-it notes, they're about to discover that if you want the perfect home you need to throw the rule-book out the window.

This new adaptation by Rhiannon Tise of George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss marks the 140th Anniversary of George Eliot’s death this year.

George Eliot's most autobiographical novel draws on her personal pain at the loss of the close bond with her brother who had cut off all contact with her. It resulted in one of the great novels of childhood, and one of literature's most unforgettable heroines. Like Anne of Green Gables and Jane Eyre, Maggie captures the dilemma of being the clever girl in the family, the ugly duckling, the misplaced foundling who longs to be recognised for the genius she secretly knows herself to be.

As the rebellious Maggie’s fiery spirit and imaginative nature bring her into conflict with her narrow provincial family, most painfully with her beloved brother Tom, their fates are played out on an epic scale.

Megan Phelps-Roper grew up in Kansas in the infamous Westboro Baptist Church. The religious sect, the subject of two Â鶹ԼÅÄ 2 Louis Theroux documentaries, put great faith in its own “literal” interpretation of the Bible – both horrifyingly homophobic and anti-Semitic.

Megan’s grandfather, Fred Phelps, was the pastor. He would load up his pick-up with placards with inciteful slogans like “God hates fags”, and the congregation – consisting of Megan’s aunts, uncles, cousins, siblings and parents – would set off to spread what they believed was God’s message. They picketed schools, and even funerals, in an attempt to express these poisonous opinions (as well as appearing widely on TV and radio) and rejoiced in the world’s worst disasters.

But social media opened up Megan’s world and led her to build a friendship with a man outside the church. And when Westboro began to turn against her family, Megan had a decision to make: stay, or leave and make a new life.

The debut novel by Candice Carty-Williams, a darkly comic depiction of a young woman trying to navigate her way in the world, was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award.

Queenie Jenkins is a 25-year-old Jamaican British woman living in London, and she’s close to a breakdown. She’s from two different cultures, but doesn’t feel like she’s fully part of either.

She works on a national newspaper culture supplement, but is constantly comparing herself to her white middle-class colleagues. And a messy break up from her long-term boyfriend, Tom, pushes her into several disastrous flings with men, who do nothing for her self-worth.

After a series of dodgy decisions, Queenie wonders what she’s doing and why, and who she really wants to be. And it’s her loyal friends – not a man – who give her answers, including a faithful female colleague called Darcy. Despite this little nod to Bridget Jones’s Diary, this novel is about finding yourself, not Mr Right.

Nicola Coughlan from TV hit reads this abridged version of Michelle Gallen's brutally funny, and often brutal, novel Big Girl, Small Town, set in the stiflingly small (fictional) town of Aghybogey near the Northern Irish border.

27-year-old Majella O’Neill is awkward, overweight, opinionated, and misanthropic. Every day is the same: she dresses in the same clothes, goes to work in the local chipper called “A Salt and Battered!” (where she hooks up with her married co-worker, Marty), has the same takeaway dinner (microwaved fish and chips) and watches reruns of Dallas in bed. She also looks after (and cleans up after) her alcoholic mother; her dad disappeared during the Troubles, and no one knows if he’s dead or alive.

But Majella's safe routine is disrupted when her grandmother, who was brutally beaten during a break-in, dies.

Jia Tolentino is a staff writer at , whose work has appeared in many publications including , , and . Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self Delusion is her new, stunning collection of essays, all about modern life.

Jia writes about the cultural forces that warp our vision, shape us and define us (and the era we live in), from the rise of an all-pervasive internet, to the cult of weddings, to the pressure to be more beautiful and efficient every day. She also explores what Class A drugs and megachurches have in common, and the short life of the literary heroine.