In a Land of Paper Gods. By Rebecca Mackenzie. Tinder Press. $29.99.

Rebecca Mackenzie's debut novel is inspired by the history of missionaries in China and the boarding schools established to educate their children. She sets her fictional school in the Lushan mountains during World War II and uses the voice of 10-year-old Etta to tell her story of life at the school and then in a Japanese prison camp. Etta is considered a "wild" spirit and a bad influence on others because of her vivid imagination but, eventually, her strange prophecies bring comfort to her distressed classmates. Despite echoes of Ballard's Empire of the Sun, Mackenzie's novel is a beautifully written exploration of faith and fortitude.

That Devil's Madness. By Dominique Wilson. Transit Lounge. $29.95.

Dominique Wilson was born in Algiers but her family fled to Australia during the Civil War. Wilson uses her background to create her heroine, photo-journalist Nicolette de Dercou, who, in 1978, returns to Algeria from Australia to lay the ghosts of her past. There she meets the enigmatic, charming Steven Morris, "known for his controversial coverage of civil conflicts". Wilson interweaves the story of Nicolette's family and their life in Algeria from 1896 until the war of 1958. Naïve and idealistic, Nicolette searches for her childhood friends but becomes involved in a more dangerous situation than she expected.

The Book of Memory. By Petina Gappah. Allen and Unwin. $29.99.

Award-winning Zimbabwean writer Petina Gappah's debut novel tells the story not only of her albino heroine, Memory, but of Zimbabwe's transition from colonial Rhodesia to independence. Memory is in Chikurubi Prison in Harare, convicted of the murder of her guardian, Lloyd Hendricks. An American journalist suggests that, in preparation for her appeal, Memory should write her account of what happened. Memory believes, like Scheherazade, she is "writing to keep myself alive". Her account moves between her memories of the past and her present life in prison in a poignant story of fate, superstition and the search for truth.