Loss Protocol by Paul McAuley (Gollancz, £22)
In a Britain racked by the effects of climate change, about 50 years from now, Marc Winters’ quiet life as a ranger on a nature reserve in Essex is about to be disturbed. Counter-terrorism officers arrive to question him about events from eight years before, when a cult his sister Izzy was part of had self-immolated. He’d hardly been aware of this group of “deep dreamers”, who thought they could change the world through a sort of mental time travel enabled by psychotropic mushrooms. But now both government agents and deep dreamers alike think Izzy must have passed some vital information to her brother, whether he knows it or not. With no idea of the existential danger he faces, Marc sets out to investigate. Beautifully written, blending close attention to the natural world with hallucinogenic dreams and a mind-boggling premise, this is an eco-thriller like no other from one of Britain’s best SF writers.

Night Babies by Lucie McKnight Hardy (John Murray, £18.99)
When their house is flooded, Astrid and her husband take the refuge offered by her friend Flora in the Brecon Beacons. Astrid was particularly affected by the flood, which damaged paintings intended for her first solo exhibition at a prestigious London gallery. The old chapel her friend is renovating becomes her new studio. But instead of working to salvage her portraits, she becomes obsessed with painting the landscape of lake and sky. She tries to shrug off her bad dreams, strange physical sensations, missing items and the dirty, child-sized handprints on the walls, but disturbing facts about the chapel’s history emerge, and she’s not the only one affected by what appears to be a malevolent haunting. She’s haunted, too, by memories of a student art trip to Florence, a significant turning point in her friendship with Flora. Astrid is her own worst enemy, but her issues – ambition, envy, ambivalence about motherhood – will resonate with many readers. A sophisticated, chilling tale that works both as supernatural and psychological horror.

Honeysuckle by Bar Fridman-Tell (Nightfire, £22)
In Welsh myth, Blodeuwedd was a woman made from flowers, a gift for a hero cursed never to have a human wife. She betrays her husband and is punished by being turned into an owl. In this debut novel, set in an alternate reality, a Blodeuwedd is a magical “construct” equivalent to our AI. Living in a remote part of Wales with no other children around, young Rory is given a Blodeuwedd to be his playmate. He names her Daye. She’s his best friend. But when summer ends, she dies with the seasonal vegetation, unless her body is remade from fresh, living flora. Unable to let her go, he learns to reconstruct her four times a year; as a teenager, he alters her body to sexualise her. He thinks she loves him as much as he loves her, slow to realise that all constructs are bound to obey. Chapters from Daye’s point of view reveal her growth into a more complicated non-human creature, as the division between them increases in this thoughtful, evocative fantasy.

Japanese Gothic by Kylie Lee Baker (Hodder & Stoughton, £22)
In 2026, Lee runs away from college in America to hide out at his father’s house in Japan, hoping to evade a murder charge. He remembers killing his roommate, but not why, nor what he did with the body. Unable to confide in his father, he blames sedative misuse for the gaps in his memory, and still struggles with the unsolved mystery of his mother’s disappearance during a family holiday in Cambodia. In 1877, the same house in Japan is the home of Sen, a young woman trained in the skills and duties of a Samurai by her father, who knows the whole family is marked for death for his refusal to accept the recent abolition of the Samurai class. A mysterious door that seems to lead nowhere connects these two times, bringing Sen and Lee together, creating the possibility that they might help one another. A blood-soaked, masterful blend of horror and mystery from the author of Bat Eater.