Kate Vane

The eponymous narrator of The Funeral Cryer muses on the way names constrain and mislead. They are used as signifiers of family and marital status, but her corner of the world is littered with villages named for rivers and mountains that don’t exist. Her daughter, struggling to make a life in Shanghai, adopts an English name at work.

Tech activist and sci-fi author Cory Doctorow turns to crime Marty Hench is a 67-year-old forensic accountant specialising in unravelling the financial and technological structures people use to hide their money. In Red Team Blues, he agrees to take on one last job before he retires – for a tech billionaire whose crypto keys have been stolen. If the thieves can access his system, they will bring down not just his company but the security systems on which all the major tech companies rely.

Sometimes I feel like I want a lighter read, but when I search most of what I find is cookie-cutter romcoms or cosy mysteries. What I’m looking for is something fun but not formulaic, which is bright and entertaining and offers something fresh. The Theory of (Not Quite) Everything fits that bill. Mimi and her brother Art are in their thirties and still live together in their family home after the sudden death of their parents some years ago.