The best literary fiction out this week: RUTH by Kate Riley,  I WANT EVERYTHING by Dominic Amerena, DUSK by Robbie Arnott

This unusual debut was apparently based on the author’s experience of growing up in a religious community, and follows the titular Ruth from childhood to motherhood and beyond.

Born into an Anabaptist community in Michigan in 1963, her life story unfolds episodically. There are, however, certain constants, including the communal ‘Stores’, which dishes out everything from birthday treats to regulation underwear.

Private property and television are forbidden, and contrary Ruth, whose heroine is Simone Weil, is far from meek and mild. Yet she sees no reason to break free even as others do.

Her crippling postnatal depression is all the more poignant for being dealt with elliptically; likewise her mischievous and capricious joy, which casts an afterglow on this novel like sunlight through cloud.

In the wake of The Salt Path controversy, this twisty, layered Australian debut feels particularly timely, satirically probing themes of deceit, appropriation and naked writerly ambition.

Our unnamed narrator is a self-despising Melbourne scribbler who, following a case of mistaken identity, finds an irresistible scoop falling into his lap.

Decades ago, Brenda Shales – the celebrated, controversial author of two sensational novels – disappeared, having been found guilty of stealing material. But when our narrator discovers Brenda living nearby, and when Brenda mistakes him for her long-lost grandson, he realises that perpetuating the lie could make his career.

Brenda is an extraordinary creation, while a no-holds-barred piece by the narrator's girlfriend about her mother (‘daughter boarding’, according to gleeful commentators) raises further questions about art, ethics and the stories we all tell ourselves.

Acclaimed Australian novelist Arnott’s fourth novel is a red-in-tooth-and-claw saga that follows thirtysomething twins Floyd and Iris.

The offspring of criminal parents who were deported to the New World, their tainted family name has rendered them outcasts on horseback, condemned to a hand-to-mouth existence. So when they hear of Dusk, a man-eating puma with a bounty on her head, the lure is irresistible.

While time and place are left vague, everything else is drawn vividly, not least the stunning, monumental landscape: a character in itself, it seems to nod to past crimes and extinctions, eerily strewn as it is with bones.

Themes such as colonialism are dealt with somewhat in shorthand, and there are moments when it all feels overly neat, but it’s an absorbing adventure nonetheless.