It’s about that time of year when a crapload of folk give up on the southern hemisphere’s grey skies and icy mornings for a sliver of sunshine overseas. If you’re not so lucky so to be jet-setting off to a place of long days and warm nights, we have the next best thing. Snug up in a rug, boil the kettle and snag one of these reads – at least this way you can pretend that you’re somewhere foreign for the length of a steaming cuppa.

THE SUN WAS ELECTRIC LIGHT BY RACHEL MORTON Published just earlier this year, Australian author Rachel Morton’s debut novel has already gathered a few rad prizes. The Sun Was Electric Light follows a disillusioned Australian woman as she moves from the hustle and bustle of New York to a dreamy lake in Guatemala in an attempt to search for something beyond herself.

FAKE ACCOUNTS BY LAUREN OYLER Get ready to hoot and holler – Lauren Oyler’s irreverent writing is so simply funny yet brimming with intelligence. Fake Accounts is the story of a young American woman who runs off to Berlin for no reason but to not be in America any longer. There, she confronts the wry realities of expat socialising, dating app mayhem and even the odd ghost from her past.

EXCITING TIMES BY NAOISE DOLAN Another debut novel that will have you thinking that its author has seen some shit, Naoise Dolan’s Exciting Times is exactly that – one heck of an exciting time. That’s not to say that the mundanities of real life don’t arise, though, with all their relationship mishaps and economical tensions for this Irish woman living in Hong Kong. Naoise has been compared to fellow countrywoman Sally Rooney, although we think Naoise writes in a league of her own.

EITHER/OR BY ELIF BATUMAN While this ripper read is technically a sequel to Elif Batuman’s stellar novel The Idiot, you most certainly can chow down Either/Or on its own. Selin – the loveable, awkward Harvard student at the centre of the story – leaves America again for a stint of travel and discovery. This story is a quest of some sort, although what Selin goes out looking for isn’t exactly what she finds.

LIFE OF THE PARTY BY TEA HACIC-VLAHOVIC Living in a foreign country isn’t always filled with new friends and crazy parties – although, in Tea Hacic-Vlahovic’s Life of the Party, it is. This chaotic rave of a book follows American Mia as she struts from the club to a party and back to the club in Milan. Some scenes that unravel around Mia are lost in translation, and some scenes just unravel. Life of the Party is like a martini – bitter at times, but mostly a whole lot of fun.