For 24 hours only, we're offering a 30% discount on Helen Oyeyemi's novels White is for Witching and Mr Fox and Sunjeev Sahota's debut novel Ours Are the Streets.

It’s a bright afternoon in 1938 and Mary Foxe is in a confrontational mood. St John Fox, celebrated novelist, hasn’t seen her in six years. He’s unprepared for her afternoon visit, not least because she doesn’t exist. He’s infatuated with her. But he also made her up.

“You’re a villain,” she tells him. “A serial killer . . . can you grasp that?”

Will Mr Fox meet his muse’s challenge, to stop murdering his heroines and explore something of love? What will his wife Daphne think of this sudden change in her husband? Can there be a happy ending – this time?

Get 30% off Mr Fox

We asked Picador authors Gabriel Roth and Megan Abbott to share an email exchange about their novels, The Unknowns and Dare Me, respectively. Prepare to be entertained.

Author Qais Akbar Omar has selected the pictures that best capture the places and people in his book, A Fort of Nine Towers. He takes us from the fort itself across the stunning countryside of Afghanistan, via monuments destroyed in wars and thriving markets.

This masterful short story, Comet, is taken from Salter's Collected Stories.

What could be better than a novel that begins with a quote from X-Men? Gabriel Roth's debut The Unknowns does just that. Sebastian Faulks says it's 'fast, funny, [and] full of snappy dialogue'.

Read the opening scene here!

Sunjeev Sahota's first novel, Ours Are the Streets, was published by Picador in 2011. He is currently working on his second novel about a group of illegal immigrants living in Sheffield. 'I think – I hope – I’m around halfway through a first draft,' he says.

Here's his life in books.

Picador intends to find out at the Latitude Festival this July. 

Does his love of Cormac McCarthy help you read him like a book? Would you run a mile from a super-fan of American Psycho? Does her love of Bridget Jones’ Diary scream needy and desperate or sweet and approachable?