Read This: Books under the Radar is a weekly post written by a guest author – often a friend of mine, someone I’ve met on my writerly travels, or an author I admire – who recommends three books they think deserve more recognition. If you’re interested in buying any of the books, please click on the covers and give these hidden gems some love. You can see the full list of books which have been selected, as well as the author’s latest book on Bookshop.org, where you can have a browse and buy any that take your fancy. Happy reading!

Read This: Nina Stibbe

One of the joys of being a published author is having proofs of other authors’ books sent me. Sometimes the quantity and how they glare at me from the shelf, unread, can be overwhelming, but occasionally there is an author I always want the proofs of, and this for me includes Nina Stibbe. And then we met at an event full of publishers and we recognised each and she made me laugh, just like her books make me laugh. Here’s what she has to say about herself:

Nina Stibbe is the author of seven books. Love, Nina – winner of the Non-Fiction Book of the Year Award at the National Book Awards 2014, shortlisted for Waterstones Book of the Year – was adapted for BBC television. Her novels Man at the Helm (2014) and Paradise Lodge (2016) were both adapted for serialisation on BBC Radio 4 and shortlisted for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction. Her third novel Reasons to be Cheerful (2019) won both the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction and the Comedy Women in Print Award. A collection of stories and Articles; An Almost Perfect Christmas (2017) was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 over Christmas 2020 Her most recent novel One Day I Shall Astonish The World (2022) was shortlisted for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction. Her latest book Went to London, Took the Dog was published in 2023.

She is on twitter and Instagram as @ninastibbe
Here are her recommendations:

Vera by Elizabeth von Armin

Admirers of von Armin’s The Enchanted April seem seldom to have read Vera published the year before. Maybe it is the gloomy view of marriage (the book is utterly unromantic), or maybe because its cover copy describes it as a ‘sinister thriller’.

Lucy Entwhistle’s father has died leaving her orphaned at 22. Leaning on the garden gate, one day, bewildered and sad, she is disturbed by the sudden appearance of a perspiring middle-aged man. Mr Wemyss is also in mourning – for his wife Vera. Before Lucy realises it, he has taken charge not only of her father’s funeral, but of her whole life. They become engaged —the only blot on the landscape being the spectre of Wemyss’ first wife, who, it seems, has died in mysterious circumstances. It is not until they begin married life that Lucy starts to wonder what happened to Vera?’ Based on von Arnim’s disastrous second marriage to Frank Russell (older brother of Bertrand), this is a troubling portrayal of the naivety of a young woman as she falls into the power of a narcissistic husband. Clearly the inspiration for Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca (published some 17 years later). Though the book is undeniably dark, von Arnim’s mordant wit and humour provide moments of lightness and make it a great read.

Francis Plug: How to be a Public Author by Paul Ewen

This is a very funny, clever novel which gently lampoons the formality and traditions of the publishing world and literary prize industry. Gardener by trade and would-be author, Francis Plug has decided to share knowledge amassed from his attendance of author talks by Booker Prize-winners, which he says comprises “a rich mine of information pertaining to the public skills of our most noted authors. Stage etiquette, audience questions, book signings, wardrobe, performance”, and declaring it “invaluable knowledge for those of us forced to become public authors too.”

We read about a series of fictitious happenings at real events and festivals, as our anti-hero – a troubled and often drunk misfit – ambles from venue to venue enjoying snippets of conversations with the likes of Kazuo Ishiguro, Salman Rushdie, and Penelope Lively.

There are moments when you see through the comic portrayal of the literati and the litfest classes and, at those times, you probably should feel a pang as you look, laughing, at one man’s descent into mental illness. How To Be A Public Author manages to be a brilliant, clever slapstick comedy that raises questions about social mobility, and offers a touching meditation on loneliness. Readers who love it will be rewarded with an equally wonderful, funny sequel; Francis Plug: Writer in Residence.

Read Nina’s Guardian review here

Things are Against Us by Lucy Ellmann

This first collection of essays from Lucy Ellmann is a brilliant, funny, provocative rant against everything wrong in the contemporary world. The voice here continues the tone and wit of first-person narrator from Ellmann’s 2019 Booker Prize-shortlisted novel, Ducks, Newburyport which I also loved (but was almost put off by stupid reviews that couldn’t get past the book’s length). She covers the really big, bad things, of course (the patriarchy, Trump, war, environmental catastrophe, fracking, air travel, misogyny) as well as slighter irritations (the beauty industry, bras, pet dogs, Agatha Christie) and offers surprising insights on some agreeable things (buttons, bikes, jam, The Little House on the Prairie). Ellmann loves a list and so do I.

Importantly, you don’t have to agree with everything Ellmann says to find these essays rousing and energising. She is polemical without being haranguing and because she can’t help being funny— you laugh with her, and occasionally, at her. In a biographical note, she admits to being a “fretful iconoclast, much prone to anger” and I like that we never really know how seriously she takes her herself.

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I haven’t read any of these authors before, although I do have Enchanted April somewhere, bought for me by my son and languishing somewhere on my to be read shelf. Come on Claire, pick it up! Let me know in the comments. And if you’d like to be told about future Read This recommendations, you can follow me on Instagram, or subscribe to my newsletter.

More Read This: Books Under the Radar

Lou Morrish author of Women of War
Francesca Ramsay author of Pinch Me
Sarah Leipciger author of Moon Road
Tim Chapman university librarian
Juliet West author of The Faithful
Lindsay Hunter author of Hot Springs Drive
Gina Chung author of Sea Change
Susmita Bhattacharya author of Table Manners
Vanessa Harbour author of Safe
Freya North author of The Unfinished Business of Eadie Browne
Judith Heneghan author of Birdeye
Clare Mackintosh author of I Promise it won’t always Hurt like This
Barney Norris author of Undercurrent
Jo Leevers author of The Last Time I saw You
Alice Winn author of In Memmoriam
Jane Borges author of Bombay Balchão
Anna Mazzola author of The House of Secrets
Alice Peterson author of The Saturday Place
Jenna Smith bookblogger
Lucy Atkins author of Windmill Hill
Ruth Thomas author of The Snow and the Works on the Northern Line
Jo Furniss author of Dead Mile
Clare Pollard author of The Modern Fairies