We Live Here Now is a set of fourteen short stories set in various corners of the modern world, connected (thematically and often more directly) by their positioning within the broad landscape of modern art and its intersection with commerce and capitalism. It begins with a fictional article by the critic Che Horst-Prosier about the equally fictional artist Sigi Conrad, who has disappeared following her most recent exhibition, which has become notorious for the apparent ‘disappearance’ of a number of its attendees. We are then introduced to twelve characters, seemingly all in some way connected to or impacted by Conrad, across the book’s stories, before most of the cast are reunited (for unclear reasons) in attendance at a mysterious talk, before we return to another article by Horst-Prosier on Conrad’s return, for an exhibition purportedly taking the form of a ‘Klein bottle’ (a device in which inside and outside are the same) and things get even weirder.

The North Road is one of those books that’s very difficult to categorise. Superficially, it’s fairly straightforward: a non-fiction book about Britain’s ‘Great North Road’, a 400 mile stretch that has existed in some form or other since Roman times, now known (for the most part) as the A1(M) motorway. Yet from its earliest pages, it’s clear that it’s a little more complex than that.

Question 7 is a very difficult book to sum up. In simple terms, it’s a memoir, allowing Flanagan to dig deeper into themes he has explored in some of his novels, such as his relationship with his father (whose experiences on the Burmese Death Railway in WW2 were fictionalised as part of The Narrow Road…) and a near-death experience while kayaking as a young man (which informed his debut). But it’s also much broader than that.

Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World (to give it its full title) centres on the 2016 Fort McMurray wildfire. The fire ravaged the hub of Canada’s oil industry, in remote Alberta, destroying thousands of homes and buildings and driving 90,000 people to evacuate in a single afternoon. This story is told in depth, using extensive testimonies and analysis of contemporary sources from residents, journalists, oil workers and journalists to piece together an almost minute-by-minute narrative of the development of a fire of never-before-seen magnitude. Around this story, though, Vaillant includes lengthy digressions - some necessary and illuminating, others more tangential but always interesting