Don’t Skip Out on Me

Willy Vlautin (Faber, £8.99)

Horace Hopper, the son of a Native American father and an Irish mother, is a 21-year-old farm hand in Nevada, working for Mr and Mrs Reece, who have looked after him since he was abandoned by his parents. But Horace’s true ambition is to become a Mexican boxer, and he leaves his old life behind to head out to Los Angeles and try to realise his goal under the name of Hector Hidalgo. While Horace deserves our respect for following his dream, author Vlautin is largely concerned with what he loses in the attempt. On the road, without the stable, caring, decent family environment of the Reeses around him, he starts to become untethered, experiencing loneliness, setbacks and doubt. Former frontman of the Oregon band Richmond Fontaine, Vlautin reflexively takes the side of the underdog and the unlucky grafter, a plaid-shirted Steinbeck bringing his story to life with uncomplicated prose that defines his characters’ world in its every stark, tiny detail.

Neither Oil Nor Water

Jim Ferguson (Clochoderick, £8.99)

Born in 1961, Glaswegian author Jim Ferguson sets this story in 1946, with narrator Euan Andrews looking back from an old folks’ home at his brief career in the Highland Light Infantry. Posted to Jerusalem, Andrews finds it a contradictory place where, as the general puts it, “Our Jewish friends are our enemies, our Arab enemies are our friends.” Realising the impossibility of protecting the interests of both Jews and Arabs, as well as feeling disillusioned about a war he feels disconnected from and in which Scots are only good as “cannon fodder”, he starts impersonating an officer, and it looks like he’s well on his way to becoming a disruptive element when fate steps in with a previously unthinkable possibility. Introducing a sympathetically-drawn central character while expressing misgivings for British responsibility in the Middle East conflict, this lean, modest novella gives a convincing glimpse into the head of a young recruit about to take the biggest gamble of his life.

The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock

Imogen Hermes Gowar (Vintage, £8.99)

One night in 1785, merchant Jonah Hancock answers the door to find that one of his captains has sold a ship of Hancock’s to buy what he claims is a mermaid. A grotesque, mummified homunculus based by first-time novelist Gowar on an exhibit in the British Museum, it’s doubtless a finely-executed fake, but it makes Hancock’s name. Everyone wants to see it, including brothel-keeper Bet Chappell, who thinks it will drum up business for her establishment. Courtesan Angelica Neal’s final job for Chappell is to persuade Hancock to hand the mermaid over. She even marries him, though married life just depresses her. Hancock, however, has one more surprise up his sleeve. Gowar is steeped in the language and imagery of Georgian England, and the enjoyment she must have derived from writing it is palpable, and yet she never gets too carried away by the historical trappings, grounding her story in the economic realities faced by women, and all workers, of the period.