The Race

For the last few years, Nina Allan has been attracting a lot of attention and award nominations for the haunting quality of her short stories. Now she brings that same sense of shifting realities to her first novel. The novel opens in Sapphire, a coastal town in an alternative Britain where everything is geared around the racing of genetically modified dogs. Here we meet Jen, wary of her drug-dealing brother but anxious about the fate of her niece who has been kidnapped. The scene then shifts abruptly to our Britain, where a writer, Christy, is telling stories about the imaginary town of Sapphire, stories that resonate oddly with Christy's own life. Finally we shift back to Sapphire to meet Maree, who embarks on a dangerous and mysterious journey that could change the nature of her world entirely. Why it's on the list: Nina Allan is clearly going to be one of the major science fiction writers of coming years, and this debut novel is an excellent introduction to her work.