In these pages, you'll find short extracts from many of the novels we're publishing this year, along with introductions by the authors themselves.

The novels in these pages will take you from Cork criminals to a group of drop-out spies, via a remote community in the moorland of Lancashire, another in the wilds of Orkney and a farmhouse in the west of Ireland; from people running away from their past to those trying to cover it up to those almost too young to have one; from the clubs and restaurants of a London awash with money whose provenance is unquestioned to the remnants of a world transformed by plague.

There's no unifying theme, or location, or time, but they are by turns entertaining, styling, cynical and moving, and always brilliantly observed; and we hope that that you will find within these pages some books that will end up mattering to you, as they matter to us.