The Art of Losing, By Rebecca Connell

This assured psychodrama by a young South London writer is brimming with entertaining thrills. Louise has always blamed her mother's death on a failed love affair.

Determined to track down the man responsible for her parent's misery, she heads to Oxford, where she starts to pursue a middle-aged English tutor called Nicholas. In a book as menacaing as any crime novel, Rebecca Connell spins a complex tale of domestic betrayal, allowing both stalker and seducer their own version of the same events. As ever, provincial Oxford provides a deceptively cosy backdrop to some deliciously cold-blooded calculations.