The Accidental Immigrants is set on the Mediterranean island of St. Mira. It’s an independent country with historic ties to Greece but also a sizeable post-colonial British presence. In the wake of financial crises and an ineffective centrist government, it has also recently seen the rise of a nativist political party, the ‘Firsters’. When a bomb goes off at a British military base on the island just weeks before a general election, everything falls into place for a whitewash for the Firsters. Our focal points on the island are Tess, a translator with both St. Miran and British roots, and her partner Arlo, a Brit teaching the ‘Life in the UK’ course to St. Miran residents who want to emigrate to his home country. As the Firsters sweep to power, and immediately introduce new laws targeting foreigners on the island, Tess and Arlo find themselves strangers in the land they have made their home for years.

The Book of Records has as its central thread the story of Lina, a young girl who has been forced to emigrate from her homeland (seemingly part of China), and with her father has arrived at a mysterious enclave called 'the Sea', a shapeshifting and timeshifting fantasy of a refugee camp. In the process they have been separated from Lina's mother and brother, with their present whereabouts and status unknown. Among their minimal possessions are three volumes taken from The Great Voyagers encyclopedia series, which Lina obsessively reads and memorises.

Gliff is set in a near-future dystopian version of what seems to be somewhere in England. In it we meet two children, the slightly older Briar/Brice/Bri and their younger sister Rose. Their mother has been taken away for dissent and we initially find them in the care of her boyfriend Leif. They come home to find their house with a red line painted around it, which they take as a cue to flee. When the same happens to their camper van, Leif takes the children to a 'safe house' and sets off alone to look for their mother. From there on in, Bri and Rose are left to fend for themselves.

Prophet Song focuses on Eilish, a microbiologist and mother of four (ranging in age from a baby to a seventeen year old) living in Dublin. In the background is the looming threat posed by a new authoritarian government in Ireland. Her husband Larry is an official in the Teachers’ Union, at the start of the novel still absorbed in his work and organising protests against the new government, believing the protections he has been used to in a democratic society still apply. Relatively rapidly, though, we learn that this is a new and significantly darker world, in which protests are violently suppressed and Larry himself is taken in for questioning by the stasi-esque Garda National Services Bureau (GNSB). Within days, he has disappeared, along with many other men in Eilish’s immediate circle.