Curtain Call
by Anthony Quinn
Jonathan Cape (e-book)

Anthony Quinn is an English critic and novelist whose fourth work of fiction takes place in a vividly realised London during an unnamed 1936. Clues are there: the abdication crisis and the climactic events taking place against the Crystal Palace fire of November 30. The story is essentially a five-hander. Suave social portrait painter Stephen Wyley embarks on an affair with actress Nina Land. During their first tryst at the Imperial hotel, Nina saves a prostitute named Madeleine Farewell from a serial killer who has been terrorising London. Quinn adds other players into the mix: James Erskine is a haughty, brilliant and recklessly promiscuous theatre critic, while Tom Tunner is his secretary and amanuensis, always threatening to leave his demanding employer. The quintet criss-crosses in ways that are artful if occasionally convenient. When Wyley falls foul of a Fascist Blackshirt, the fault springs from his own moral laxity and self-attention to the nature of incipient evil. This may be a novel set almost 80 years ago, but has much to teach us today.

Mr Bones: Twenty Stories
by Paul Theroux (read by various)
Brilliance Audio (audiobook)

Paul Theroux's latest short-story collection is ready for audiobook download. These 20 newish tales are set across the globe, although many return to Theroux's Massachusetts hometown of Medford. There are few home comforts here, however. The titular story is narrated by a young man whose father is transformed - he might say released - by donning "black face" and indulging all of his pent-up fury. There is a similar trajectory for the accountant in who visits Thailand, falls for a "transvestite" and discovers parts of himself that he never knew existed. Travel broadens the mind of a Theroux character - but not always in positive or healthy ways. In this, the carefully narrated stories double as excavations of Western male rage when confronted by otherness - whether female ( ) or foreign ( ). Narrators Garrick Hagon, Jennifer Woodward, Vince Pirillo and Tim Flavin do a fine job catching Theroux's often elusive tone, at once mischievous and seductive.