The Rapture, By Liz Jensen

"Maverick weather was becoming the norm" – and in this eerily intense apocalyptic thriller, it takes the form of "heat to die in" followed by a deluge.

Climatic emergency has become the default setting for speculative fiction, but Liz Jensen avoids cliché catastrophe with all her singular talent for uncanny events, psychic twists and bizarre, Ballard-style urban landscapes.

Psychologist Gabrielle, traumatised by an accident, takes on the hard case of Bethany the fantasist – and prophetess? Doomsday cults bloom in this "over-heated, flood-swamped, ransacked" world as Jensen explores the art of survival, whatever the forecasts say.