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HIGHFIRE

by Eoin Colfer (Jo Fletcher £16.99, 384 pp)

Meet Vern, a trash-talking dragon; Squib, a swamp-dwelling Cajun of scant resources and good intentions, but avoid at all costs Constable Hooke, the meanest lawman in the South.

Hero, villain, swamp and dragon are all you need for a tale of such scabrous, hilarious excitement that you’ll drink it up like a wyvern on the vodka: in large gulps.

While the stakes could not be higher — Vern could be the last dragon in existence and is standing in the way of Hooke’s villainous plots — there’s plenty of time for obscene jokes, thrillerish twists, a sweet love story, digressions on dragon poo and dragon (ahem) junk, along with characters bizarre enough to make Carl Hiaasen blush.

A dazzling first adult novel from bestselling children’s author Colfer.

THE GOD GAME

by Danny Tobey (Gollancz £16.99, 464 pp)

As the online world develops, perhaps it’s inevitable to look for God in distributed networks. But when four disaffected high-school youths start messing with a digital deity, you just know the law of unintended consequences will kick in.

Are they playing the game, or is the game playing them? Playground bullying, girlfriends, test results, Harvard applications — even Donald Trump — are thrown into the mix as the students discover that you don’t get anything for nothing and choices reduced to a simple Y/N binary can have terrifying implications.

Do you love your father when God’s just told you that he cheated on your dying mother?

Now do you hate him enough to ruin his life . . .

THE UNLIKELY ESCAPE OF URIAH HEEP

by H. G. Parry (Orbit £8.99, 496 pp)

Mr Darcy, or rather five versions of his snootiness, are washing their cravats in a launderette, Scheherazade is running a bookshop (natch) and Heathcliff’s coming over all passionate and gloomy in the high street!

Yes, with our favourite literary heroes and heroines released from their papery prisons, things are about to get complicated, especially when the ever so ‘umble Uriah Heep appears and the fictional population reaches critical mass and wants to take over . . .

With birth secrets, reversals of fortune and heart-warming subplots, this dazzling, literary potboiler sweeps us from the ivory towers of academe to the murky violence of the Dickensian underworld and onto a brilliant resolution.

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