Nudibranch is a dark and seductive foray into the surreal by Irenosen Okojie, the winner of the AKO Cain Prize for African Writing. In this collection of short stories, offbeat characters are caught up in extraordinary situations that test the boundaries of reality. A love-hungry goddess of the sea arrives on an island inhabited by eunuchs. A girl from Martinique moonlights as a Grace Jones impersonator. And a homeless man goes right back to the very beginning, through a gap in time.

Carys Bray is a Costa short-listed author of When the Lights go Out, which brilliantly explores a marriage in crisis. The book centres on the relationship between Emma, preparing for Christmas, and her husband Chris, preparing for the end of the world. In his mind, desperate times call for desperate measures. He has turned off the heating, has filled the garage with rice and beans and wants the family to practise suturing on the pig’s trotters he’s put in the freezer. He has other plans that, if voiced, Emma would surely veto. But what if, while preparing for disaster, he unwittingly precipitates it?