Red Queen by Juan Gómez-Jurado (translated from Spanish by Nick Caistor)

You’ve never met anyone like her … Antonia Scott is special. Very special. She is not a policewoman or a lawyer. She has never wielded a weapon or carried a badge, and yet, she has solved dozens of crimes. But it’s been awhile since Antonia left her attic in Madrid. The things she has lost are much more important to her than the things awaiting her outside.

She also doesn’t receive visitors. That’s why she really, really doesn’t like it when she hears unknown footsteps coming up the stairs. Whoever it is, Antonia is sure that they are coming to look for her. And she likes that even less.

Stolen by Ann-Helén Laestadius (translated from Swedish by Rachel Willson-Broyles)

Nine-year-old Elsa lives just north of the Arctic Circle. She and her family are Sami – Scandinavia’s indigenous – and make their living herding reindeer.

One morning when Elsa goes skiing alone, she witnesses a man brutally killing her reindeer calf, Nastegallu. Elsa recognises the man but refuses to tell anyone – least of all the Swedish police force – about what she saw. Elsa comes of age fighting two wars: one within her community, where male elders expect young women to know their place; and against the ever-escalating wave of prejudice and violence against the Sami. When Elsa finds herself the target of the man who killed her reindeer calf all those years ago, something inside of her finally breaks. The guilt, fear, and anger she’s been carrying since childhood come crashing over her like an avalanche, and will lead Elsa to a final catastrophic confrontation.

Heart Sutra by Yan Lianke (translated from Chinese by Carlos Rojas)

The Heart Sutra is the most mysterious scripture in Chinese Buddhism.

In Yan Lianke's new novel, disciples of China's five main religions – Buddhism, Daoism, Protestantism, Catholicism and Islam –gather for a year at the Religious Training Centre of Beijing's National Politics University. They live together, study together, exercise together in the blazing sun, and get caught up in financial and sexual shenanigans. Heart Sutra explores the complex relations between humans and gods, between the secular and the divine, and between genders. The youngest Daoist monk and the youngest Buddhist nun fall in love. But as their faith is tested, will they stay committed to the path of a holy life?

Blue Hunger by Viola Di Grado (translated from Italian by Jamie Richards)

An electrifying descent from loneliness and grief into obsessive, all-consuming love, by an Italian literary star.

When Xu bites Ruben, when she has her in her teeth, naked and bad on top of her, everything is good. In their skyscraper apartment, overlooking Shanghai’s blue-tinged, pulsating nightlife, they swallow the little yellow pills that will make all things dangerous feel safe. In abandoned factories and dilapidated slaughterhouses, Xu pushes Ruben to extremes of pleasure and pain that she has never experienced before, to a place where language breaks down and passion becomes consumption.

Love Me Tender by Constance Debre (translated from French by Holly James)

A memoir of lesbian identity and motherhood, and the societal pressures that place them in opposition.

The daughter of an illustrious French family whose members include a former Prime Minister, a model, and a journalist, Constance Debre abandoned her marriage and legal career in 2015 to write full-time and begin a relationship with a woman. Her transformation from affluent career woman to broke single lesbian was chronicled in her 2018 novel Play boy, and in Love Me Tender, Debre goes on to further describe her transformation and the fall-out.