The Fury
Alex Michaelides
Michael Joseph, £18.99, pp368
Michaelides’s deliciously twisty and fiendishly clever third novel takes the classic locked-room mystery and delivers a fresh spin on the genre. When former film star Lana Farrar invites a group of friends to a private island, she doesn’t anticipate the resentments, passions and violence that will ensue. What sets the book apart is its innovative structure and the compelling voice of its narrator, Elliot Chase; wonderfully sinister and beautifully unreliable, he guides us – with sleights of hand aplenty – through this impressive and highly enjoyable tale of subterfuge, secrets and murder.
Our Moon: A Human History
Rebecca Boyle
Sceptre, £22, pp336
Boyle’s fascinating debut explores our scientific and cultural relationship with the moon. Delving deep into our archaeological past, she reveals the art and artefacts that demonstrate the moon’s role in ancient ceremonies and mythologies. In astronomy, she explains the moon’s likely genesis as debris from the Earth, and illustrates how it is critical to the mating rituals and reproduction of many plants and animals.
Wolfish: The Stories We Tell About Fear, Ferocity and Freedom
Erica Berry
Canongate, £10.99, pp432 (paperback)
The wolf is “a piece of cultural taxidermy, fabricated by humans with parts gathered across time and space”. So states Berry in her comprehensive investigation into the place of wolves in the natural environment and the role they’ve played in our cultural history. Wide-ranging in her remit, Berry segues effortlessly from the reintroduction of wolves at Yellowstone national park to Pliny the Elder’s belief that wolves held pharmacological benefits for women’s bodies.
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