STRETCHING and pummelling language to capture the voices of clickbait columnists, self-help writers, and teenage Islamic State (IS) brides from the East End, the latest fiction distils the past decade through characters who feel real enough to be neighbours. Saying the profitably unsayable, the columnist Miriam Leonard, “Lenny”, pulls all the strings in Universality by Natasha Brown (Faber & Faber, £14.99; (£13.49); 978-0-571-38901-8).
Lenny’s “hot takes” propel us inside the world of activists, bankers, and book festivals, as the columnist shifts her biography and opinions to take best advantage of geopolitical events and the public mood. She is consistent only in her love of alcohol. Her appeal to her protégés raises questions on perceptions of privilege, and the moral sacrifices that young women make to overcome odds stacked against them. Brown’s literary gear changes from activist idealists to melodramatic magazine writing to rambling book-festival questions are flawless.
The film producer Heather reflects on the dissonance between the image that she presents at conferences for aspiring female leaders in America and the reality of being family breadwinner in “The Marriage Clock”, one of 12 short stories in Show Don’t Tell by Curtis Sittenfeld (Doubleday, £16.99 (£15.29); 978-1-5299-2589-0). 
We meet Heather in the small hours of the morning as she tends her vomiting three-year-old daughter before catching an early flight to meet a Christian self-help author, Brock Lewis, to persuade him to let her studio adapt his bestselling relationship guide.
Lewis’s calculated wholesome charm, combined with Heather’s desperation to seal the deal to maintain her professional reputation, leads her to doubt her own marriage. But Lewis’s innuendo and tactile gestures turn out to have no substance, and Heather’s confrontation of the author’s manipulative behaviour ripples out into positive change for her marriage and career. Other stories explore school reunions, looking up old friends, and the porous border between content and commercials.
The insecurity of academic teaching makes Nadia search for an attention-grabbing research specialism in Fundamentally by Nussaibah Younis (Weidenfield & Nicholson, £16.99 (£15.29); 978-1-3996-2392-6). Rehabilitating IS brides fits the bill, and the lecturer soon finds herself putting theory into practice in Iraq. Stationed in Baghdad’s green-zone compound, managing a resentful team of two, Nadia has to convince women held in a prison camp of tents that she is not working for the security services and has their best interests at heart. Encountering the “hijabi rude girl” Sara, who left London as a teenager to marry an IS fighter, makes Nadia reflect on finding love after abandoning her Islamic faith, and come to terms with who she is, now that love is gone.
