Ovidia Yu’s most recent tree mystery is set at the end of World War II. We get to know our delightful protagonist Su Lin better and learn of conditions in Singapore at the time.

This third delectable creation of The Thursday Murder club is a perfect blend of the usual ingredients: charming characters, exciting plot, and reliable touches of humour. There’s never a dull moment in the retirement community of Coopers Chase.

For fans of Phryne Fisher, creator Kerry Greenwood’s new short stories provide a fresh treat. Gorgeous, wealthy, self-confident, and a connoisseur of attractive men, the lady sleuth of 1920s Melbourne is busy at her usual occupation. After uncovering lesser mischief as well as solving murders, Phryne does what she deems best, instituting restoration wherever possible.

Priscilla Tempest is a mini-skirted Canadian twenty-something in the conservative men’s world of the Savoy Hotel in 1960s London.

At first Mortimer doesn’t see himself as a likely candidate to win the rat race to space. Though a few, like Celeste, are not keen on the idea of space travel, most of Mortimer’s fellow-competitors were born in the same lab and named after cheeses. Lacking the status of a native of the lab, he feels like an outside contender.

Alexander McCall Smith’s latest Isabel Dalhousie book is a delight. Many of the remnants in the title concern the ordinary doings of the characters. While the lives of Isabel, Jamie and their young sons are quite ordinary, philosophical questions creep in and must be discussed. How do we answer our children’s questions when we don’t know the answer? What should we tell them about God morphs into What do we really believe about God? Should parents impose music lessons on children inevitably goes back into Jamie’s history. He took the lead in asking for lessons, and he also wanted a bassoon. But then, he now plays for the orchestra, so perhaps his case is not typical.

Mick Herron’s latest spy thriller is up to the minute. The fictional shenanigans he’s woven around COVID, Brexit, and internet hate speech are recognizably close to reality.

In today’s world of increasing political, social and religious division, it is doubly heartbreaking to read the lyrical unfolding of a tragedy the reader cannot fail to foresee. Thankfully, the writer leave us with a modicum of hope.

Set in 1950 as India forges its national life after Independence, Khan’s second Inspector Wadia novel features many of the characters introduced in Midnight at Malabar House. The only female inspector in the Indian police service, Persis Wadia once more works with and against a motley array of colleagues and dastardly criminals.

At a Rolling Stones concert in a London park in 1967, “young women in cut-off jeans revel in the easy power of beauty.” Off duty and with friends, Detective Cathal Breen watches the euphoric crowd and worries that wherever they see “peace and transcendence,” he sees “the potential for crime and disaster.”

Indeed, it could be argued that this spiritual practice, hard though it may be, is the most reliable kind of political action. It depends on nothing outside our control, but only on the considerable resources we have within. To learn not to doubt the power of these resources is a worthwhile effort. Mastering this skill frees us. No longer feeling compelled to concern ourselves with the external forces that impinge on us. Thus we can face the challenge issued decades ago by Mahatma Gandhi. As we increasingly observe how outer reality mirrors what lies within, we can attend to the essential task of living the change we hope to see in the world.

“Fiction,” says Neil Gaiman, “is the lie that tells the truth.” Brian McGilloway’s latest novel exemplifies that truth. Set in a roughly contemporary time, it is filled with references to lies and truth, trust and betrayal, as it portrays the long shadows cast by the Troubles. Not only those who were involved are affected; indeed, one of the characters in this novel was not even born when under IRA orders, three people carried out a deed that changed the courses of their lives and has haunted them ever since.

In her classroom in London, the teenage Ada, child of a Greek father and a Turkish mother from the conflicted island of Cyprus, wonders whether it is “possible to inherit something as intangible and immeasurable as sorrow.” Exiled from the warm Mediterranean climate, her widowed father tips a fig tree into a trench and buries it to ensure it survives the winter. The tree knows that “everything is interconnected…loneliness is a human invention.” The loneliness suffered by Ada and her dad after her mother’s death isolates them both, alienating them from one another.