The Master of Chaos (Sandstone Press), a new collection of short fiction by Guyana-born, UK-based Pauline Melville, is described by Salman Rushdie as “a virtuoso performance.” Diverse in subject and setting — ranging from Guyana to Russia, Syria to Argentina — the stories are linked by Melville’s characteristic dark humour, and her interest in how ordinary and extraordinary people contend with histories of catastrophe and upheaval.

The Snow Line (Scribe UK), the latest novel by Guyana-born, UK-based Tessa McWatt (a past winner of the OCM Bocas Prize for non-fiction), meditates on difference and affinity, love and ageing, through the story of four strangers from various countries and backgrounds who meet at a wedding in India. Unlikely friendships ensue, and soon the four embark on a journey into the Himalayas — and up to the snow line of the title — where, in the rarified air, questions and secrets rise to the surface.

No Ruined Stone (Peepal Tree), a collection of poems by Jamaica-born Shara McCallum (a past winner of the OCM Bocas Prize for poetry), contemplates an alternate history. In 1786, the poet Robert Burns — one of Scotland’s major cultural icons — accepted an offer to travel to Jamaica to work as a bookkeeper on a slave plantation, then changed his mind. McCallum imagines what could have happened had the plan proceeded. These monologues, rooted in actual history and the poet’s searching imagination, describe the experiences not only of Burns, but of his mixed-race granddaughter born into slavery, who later travels to Scotland and passes as white to claim a new life.

Year of Plagues: A Memoir of 2020 (Carcanet), by the Guyanese-British novelist and poet Fred D’Aguiar, recounts interweaving stories of crisis, personal and collective. Within the space of a few months, the COVID-19 pandemic upended ordinary life across the globe, Black Lives Matter protests electrified the United States in a presidential election year, the state of California (where the author now lives) suffered catastrophic forest fires, and D’Aguiar was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. “Combining personal reminiscence and philosophy,” writes the publisher, Year of Plagues “confronts profound questions about the purpose of pursuing a life of writing and teaching in the face of overwhelming upheavals.”