Here on Earth, by Alice Hoffman (Vintage, £6.99 in UK)

It takes a brave writer to attempt a present-day variation on Wuthering Heights. Alice Hoffman, who always works to a formula of practical, ordinary experience laced with surrealist touches, does precisely this in this characteristically compelling performance about a doomed relationship. The beautiful small-town New England setting evoked here possesses a significant element of menace as well as regret. A strong sense of lives gone somehow wrong hangs over the narrative. Beautiful March Murray returns home after a twenty-year absence to attend the funeral of a woman who cared for her as a child. With her is her troubled, resentful teenage daughter. Faced by memories, March also encounters her first love, Hollis. A sick, damaged personality, he emerges is not only the dark heart of the book, but a formidable feat of characterisation.