William by Mason Coile (Baskerville, £14.99)
Henry is a robotics engineer who suffers from intense agoraphobia, unable to leave the house he’s turned into a digitally controlled fortress that responds to commands only from him or his wife. When she’s out, he works on improvements to William, possibly the creepiest robot in fiction. Even Henry finds his creation unsettling – he has nightmares about it, and keeps it locked in the attic, hesitant to reveal it to others. Bestselling Canadian horror author Andrew Pyper is using a pseudonym for his SF debut. It’s a gripping modern take on Frankenstein that skilfully plays on fears about AI and the dangers posed by new technologies. The tension mounts in a brilliantly plotted story combining horror tropes, suspense and metaphysical speculation about the nature of the soul: a terrifying, thought-provoking read.
The Tapestry of Time by Kate Heartfield (HarperVoyager, £16.99)
Set in England and France during the second world war, this novel centres on a family with the gift of second sight. As rational young women, the Sharp sisters dismiss their experiences as coincidence (Kit), imagination (Ivy) or a talent for pattern recognition (Rose), until they realise they may be able to aid the war effort. Their father has a theory that the Bayeux Tapestry was begun before 1066, to be used as a predictive tool in warfare. In the summer of 1944, Ivy is an undercover agent in France, and art historian Kit has stayed on in Paris, when they learn of a Nazi plan to take the tapestry, leaving Paris to burn. The sisters are the only ones who can stop them – if they survive long enough. Paranormal elements are expertly woven with real history to create a convincing and exciting tale.
