THE GUEST, by Emma Cline (Chatto & Windus, $37)
Emma Cline is steadily building a reputation as something of an expert in the interior lives of women and girls on the margins of society.
The American writer’s previous novel, part of a $2-million deal with Penguin, was a dreamy, fictionalised exploration of the Manson girls; their nascent sexuality, desires and vulnerabilities as they were drawn into the 1960s cult. (A collection of, arrived in 2021.)