Bazzle, Bradley

The stories here are offbeat and dark, skewing either horror (“The Milkman,” “The Mask of Cajolo,” “Magellan”) or postapocalyptic dystopian (“The Franklin Thesis”). Readers with a penchant for the weird and feverish will enjoy, but this is not an essential purchase.

Like Graeme Simsion's The Rosie Project without the rom-com element, this sharply observant literary novel will appeal to readers who enjoy quirky narrators and fans of socially conscious fiction.