Four debuts that disturb and dazzle: New voices to read now

There is nothing better when it comes to books than discovering a favourite new writer, and this summer has seen the arrival of several striking debut novels that push boundaries, both thematically and stylistically. These are books that disturb, provoke and linger in the mind. They are just the kind of books that will stick with you.

What links them isn’t genre or setting but a willingness to confront discomfort: whether in the body, the family or society itself. These books ask readers to sit with pain and ambiguity, not to solve or resolve it, but to acknowledge it.

Four noteworthy debuts to add to your bookshelf this summer:

• Lucy Rose – The Lamb: This is not your typical horror novel. A lyrical, harrowing account of girlhood, trauma and mythic transformation, The Lamb uses poetic language and intense imagery to explore power, vulnerability and sacrifice. Think Carrie meets Medea, but subtler, stranger. It’s uncomfortable, daring, and impossible to look away from.

• Thomas McMullan – Groundwater: Set in a fog-shrouded, rain-soaked corner of Britain, this novel hums with menace. A returning son tries to rebuild a broken family, only to find secrets beneath the soil—literal and emotional. The writing is tight and tactile, leaning into landscape as psychology. If you admire novels that do dread without resorting to thriller tropes, this one deserves a slow, immersive read.

• Fríða Ísberg – The Mark: What if compassion were a government-enforced trait? In Ísberg’s unsettling debut, citizens are tested for empathy in a society teetering toward soft totalitarianism. The premise is speculative, but the emotional register is sharp and contemporary. With clear echoes of Atwood and Orwell, it’s also distinctly Nordic in tone: spare, elegant, and profoundly unnerving.

• JJ Bola – The Selfless Act of Breathing: Quietly devastating, this novel follows a Congolese-British teacher who travels across America, reckoning with his mental health, identity and the burden of survival. Bola’s prose is restrained and rhythmic, and his questions—about masculinity, exile and purpose- are timeless. It’s a novel that aches in the best way.

These debuts aren’t here to comfort. They challenge assumptions, often unsettlingly so. But they also reveal how new writers are reshaping the literary map, with boldness, with care, with voices that don’t flinch. Each signals the start of a conversation we’ll be having for years.

These debuts aren’t here to comfort. They challenge assumptions, often unsettlingly so. But they also reveal how new writers are reshaping the literary map—with boldness, with care, with voices that don’t flinch. Each signals the start of a conversation we’ll be having for years.

Over the past couple of years, we’ve also seen a handful of other novels that have stayed with readers long after publication—quiet successes or cult favourites that continue to spark thought and conversation.

And a few that still linger: Recent novels worth your reading time

Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These has become a modern classic in miniature. It's a novella of moral courage, silence and complicity set in 1980s Ireland. I loved this book. Its quiet power lies in its restraint, its refusal to overstate what it so clearly shows. Similarly, Leila Mottley’s Nightcrawling, another gem, this one written when the author was just seventeen,  drew plenty of acclaim for its visceral, poetic voice and its unflinching look at the criminal justice system through the eyes of a teenage girl in Oakland.

Then there’s Matrix by Lauren Groff: a bold, formally adventurous reimagining of a medieval nun’s life that blends mysticism with power politics. 

And Assembly by Natasha Brown, which precedes her Booker-listed Safe Harbour, remains one of the most piercing, tightly constructed novellas of recent years—compact but cutting, political and deeply personal.

These books don’t dominate headlines, but they deepen the literary landscape. They reward attention. They remind us that the best reading experiences often come in quietly, sit with us, and stay much longer than expected.