It’s a strange sensation, reading about a reader reading within a book. In Austin Wright’s Tony and Susan (Atlantic Books, £14.99), the reader within the book is as much part of the story as the story itself, and it’s a clever, enthralling device.

The reader is Susan Morrow. She left her first husband Edward 15 years ago and they are now both in second marriages. One day, out of the blue, she receives a package from Edward — the manuscript of a book he has written, which he asks her to read.

She dips in and out of the book, interrupted by the children, the laundry, visits to the dentist, preparing meals. Like Susan, the reader becomes engrossed in the manuscript, ‘Nocturnal Animals’. It begins with a maths professor — the Tony of the book’s title — driving his wife and daughter to their holiday house in Maine.

But something terrible happens on the road, which sets their normal civilised life violently off course. Susan, the reader, cannot believe what is happening in the story; she finds it utterly compelling, and reluctantly emerges to fulfil her duties in the household. As the story progresses towards its shocking conclusion, Susan marvels at how good a writer Edward has become, but wonders why he has sent it to her. And why name a character in the book after her? Is it an act of revenge, or regret?

It’s the sign of an excellent book that one is disappointed to reach the end. This is true for Susan; it’s true for me with Wright’s book — and Edward’s manuscript. Page-turning for both of us, Susan and me.

This novel was first published in 1993 and went out of print. In an enlightened move, Atlantic Books have republished this unusual, thrilling combination of a portrayal of reading and a riveting thriller.

Here’s another excellent book: Florence & Giles by John Harding (Blue Door, £14.99). It’s inspired by Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw but plagiarism doesn’t come into it — this is thoroughly ingenious and captivating in its own right, despite many similarities. Florence and Giles are brother and sister, orphaned and left in the hands of their distant uncle — who, in turn, leaves them to the housekeeper and governess in a remote mansion. The children’s first governess dies, suddenly, and in unexplained circumstances. She is replaced with a Miss Taylor, who immediately sets herself as an enemy of Florence and ingratiates herself to Giles. Florence believes she is an evil spirit who will harm to her beloved brother, and, despite the danger, she gathers evidence to prove it.

Having opened slowly, the novel suddenly takes the brakes off when the new governess arrives. It hurtles uninhibitedly towards its conclusion, carrying Florence and Giles, and Miss Taylor, with it.

This is a book in which nothing is certain — neither for the characters, nor for our perception of them and of what is happening.

It’s a scarily good story, in an arrestingly unusual narrative voice. For Florence, having secretly taught herself to read in defiance of her uncle’s wishes, has developed her own idiosyncratic vocabulary and grammar that provide as much of the enjoyment for the reader as the story itself.