Aerth by Deborah Tomkins (Weatherglass, £10.99)
Joint winner of the inaugural Weatherglass Novella prize, chosen by Ali Smith, this is the story of Magnus, who is born on Aerth, a planet rapidly approaching a new ice age. The small population, decimated by earlier pandemics, seeks to spread kindness and to do no harm to others or the world. Magnus hopes for adventure and as an adult joins a team trying to establish a colony on Mars. But that bare, lifeless place makes him long for the forests of home, and he takes the opportunity to join the first expedition to another world: Urth, a crowded, polluted, rapidly warming planet that’s a distorted, dark-mirror version of Aerth. These other worlds come vividly to life through a series of beautifully composed vignettes. Moving and thought-provoking, this is a memorable debut from a writer to watch.
Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix (Tor Nightfire, £22)
The latest from the popular American horror novelist (How to Sell a Haunted House) is set in a Florida home for pregnant teens in the summer of 1970. It is rare for a male author to write in such convincing, intimate detail about the emotional and physical experience of pregnancy, and with such empathy. He’s also very good at depicting the mood and attitudes of the American south in 1970. The focus is on 15-year-old Fern and her fellow inmates, from rebellious Rose, who imagines she will keep her baby, to mute, terrified little Holly. This could almost be a mainstream realist novel, with all the horror, blood and gore arising from normal human experiences, even after Fern is given a tatty paperback called How to Be a Groovy Witch. Bored, the girls decide to cast a spell, and are shocked when it works. Later they encounter a coven of witches living rough in the woods and begin to realise the high and bloody price that must be paid for witchcraft. An engrossing, compelling read.
