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Fine fiction and masterly memoirs for thelazy days of summer, chosen by Olivia MarksLines inthe sandTHE MARS ROOMby Rachel Kushner (Jonathan Cape, £17)Stanville Women’s Correctional Facility, afictional prison in California, is the gritty – andblackly comic – setting for Rachel Kushner’snew novel, in which 29-year-old mother RomyHall is staring down two consecutive lifesentences (plus six years). She is joined by a castof inmates, and a young male prison teacher, asKushner sets out to tell the tale of a life derailedand the bleak reality of incarceration in theUnited States – and cements her status as oneof America’s finest writers in the process.``````AN EXCELLENT CHOICEby Emma Brockes (Faber & Faber, £17)To have a baby, or not to have a baby?It’s a question that most women will askthemselves at some point in their lives.Emma Brockes always knew she wantedchildren but at 38, and in the early stages ofa same-sex relationship, the main questionwas not if, but how? In her latest memoir, theaward-winning Guardian journalist and authorgenerously details with wit and wisdom howshe made the decision to become a singlemother, and what it took her to get there.``````AFTER THE PARTYby Cressida Connolly (Viking, £15)In the summer of 1938, Phyllis Forrester, herhusband and their children have just returnedfrom abroad to live in Sussex when tragedystrikes within her glamorous new social circle.With the threat of war edging closer, Phyllisis drawn into a world of fervent idealism andbecomes a dedicated follower of the “Leader”:Oswald Mosley. In her latest novel, CressidaConnolly expertly evokes a changing nation,and a woman whose life is altered forever.``````MY YEAR OF REST AND RELAXATIONby Ottessa Moshfegh (Jonathan Cape, £15)The provocative thriller Eileen earned OttessaMoshfegh a Man Booker nomination and areputation as the enfant terrible of fiction.Her second novel tells the story of a young,privileged woman who – bored with her job andin the wake of her parents’ deaths – decides toshun the vacuous party world of millennium-eraNew York by going into “narcotic hibernation”for a year. Full of snark as well as compassion,this book will speak to anyone who came of agein the early 2000s – and cringes to remember it.``````CLOCK DANCEby Anne Tyler (Chatto & Windus, £19)With this her 22nd novel, Anne Tyler, now in herseventies, shows that her talent for making theunremarkable remarkable remains undiminished.Willa Drake, Clock Dance’s protagonist, is a kindbut passive housewife who, in a new home andwith her children gone, has lost purpose. Whenshe receives a phone call asking her to help herson’s ex-girlfriend, Willa’s quietly disappointinglife is lent new meaning, as she is finally offereda chance to forge her own future.``````THE TERRIBLEby Yrsa Daley-Ward (Penguin, £10)In her beautiful and harrowing memoir, YrsaDaley-Ward – a writer and model who madeher name as one of a new generation of “Instapoets” – builds on her acclaimed debut poetrycollection, Bone, stretching its verse into lyricalprose to paint a picture of her fracturedupbringing in Lancashire in the 1990s and early2000s. Daley-Ward writes with disarminghonesty about her sexuality, struggles withaddiction and the dark places she hasinhabited – both mentally and physically. Q DON HONEYMANARTS & CULTURE72