BEGINNING MIDDLE END by Valeria Luiselli (4th Estate £16.99, 368pp)Beginning Middle End is available now from the Mail BookshopLuiselli’s most recent outing, Lost Children Archive, was nominated for a clutch of awards, and this novel was widely tipped for a 2026 Booker Prize nod. It failed to make the cut, but it is nonetheless ambitious, richly suggestive and current in its consideration of migration and climate crisis. Our protagonists are a mother and a daughter, travelling in Sicily against a background of wildfires and an erupting Etna. The mother, an author, is grappling with her latest book, and if Beginning Middle End has a plot, then it’s about those foundational elements of narrative itself. SKY CITY by Jacqueline Crooks (Jonathan Cape £18.99, 384pp)Sky City is available now from the Mail BookshopFIRE Rush, Crooks’ Women’s Prize shortlisted debut, earned praise from Maggie O’Farrell and Bernadine Evaristo, among others.