The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle; As You Wake, Break the Shell by Becky Chambers; The Eye of Goliath by Diego Muzzio; Our Cut of Salt by Deena Helm

The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle (Penguin, £9.99)
This short novel won almost every genre award following its 2016 US publication. As a Black writer, LaValle had a conflicted relationship with the works of HP Lovecraft. As a child, he loved the tales of cosmic horror, but grew to recognise the racism and other prejudices of the author. Unable to “throw the man’s stories away” because of how formative they were on his own imagination, he decided to write his own response to one of the most obviously racist, The Horror at Red Hook, recasting it through the perspective of a musician and hustler from 1920s Harlem later known as Black Tom. It’s a powerful tale of horror – both everyday and the occult – told with sheer brilliance.

As You Wake, Break the Shell by Becky Chambers (Hodderscape, £22)
In this cosy science fiction love story set on a distant planet, life is a constant struggle for the human colonists. As the book opens, botanist Signy is yet to meet the love of her life, Cora, a rorqual pilot. Rorquals are gigantic interplanetary creatures, trained by human pilots whose implants allow them to communicate with the beasts as they transport supplies. Chapter 1 is followed by chapter 764, set more than a decade later, when the two women are blissfully married. The non-linear narrative may reflect what we’re told is the rorqual view of time, but it also removes much suspense. The characters are adorable, and the details of growing plants in an artificial environment, or Cora’s relationship with her rorqual, are enjoyable, but readers may grow impatient with the glacial pace and reiterations of their feelings for one another. Even the “naturally solitary” rorqual is given to declaring its love for Cora. In the final pages there’s a tonal shift that ends on a cliffhanger: how Cora and Signy survive is to be revealed in a sequel.

The League of Gentlemen and Inside No 9 co-creator has always displayed a sense of gothic unease, and his new book combines myth, memoir – and his own disquieting drawings

When Reece Shearsmith was a boy, he overheard relatives chatting at a New Year gathering. “One of them was talking about [the ghost of] a woman they’d seen standing on the village green at three in the morning,” he recalls. “Another knew a woman who woke up and found a figure sitting at the end of her bed. It’s my first recollection of being properly scared and loving it.”

From then on, the Yorkshire-born Shearsmith was fascinated by all things uncanny. He would stay up late to watch Hammer horror films – his mother allowed it because she loved them, too – and immerse himself in books including the Hamlyn Book of Horror, Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories and the works of Edgar Allan Poe. His obsession carried through into adulthood and his work: Shearsmith is best known as the co-creator of the surreal comedy series The League of Gentlemen, Psychoville and the horror anthology Inside No 9. “I’ve managed to forge a career from the things I loved as a kid,” he says.