The Husbands
Holly Gramazio
Chatto & Windus, £16.99, pp368
Single Londoner Lauren returns from a girls’ night out to find a strange man in her flat. More disturbing still, he claims to be her husband, and all the evidence seems to back him up. So far, so domestic noir, but when he heads into the attic and is instantly replaced by another husband, game designer Gramazio’s debut novel becomes a multiverse romcom, neatly flipping the script on the quest to find The One. Expect pacy humour and lightly philosophical musings as Lauren’s “magic attic” provides an inexhaustible supply of spouses, each different from the next, each catapulting her into a subtly altered existence.
The Book-Makers: A History of the Book in 18 Remarkable Lives
Adam Smyth
Bodley Head, £25, pp400
Academic and experimental printer Smyth assembles a cast of 18 individuals – some expected, others less so – who helped create the book as we know it. They’re arranged chronologically, from Wynkyn de Worde, a German in 15th-century London who grasped printing’s potential to create bestsellers, to New York-based Yusuf Hassan, who produces deliberately lo-fi zines. Agile storytelling and chatty erudition together evoke not just the physicality of the book – its beauty, its complexity – but also its innate humanity. In so doing, Smyth gestures to a long future shaped, perhaps, but unthreatened by digital culture.
Meetings With Moths: Discovering Their Mystery and Extraordinary Lives
Katty Baird
4th Estate, £10.99, pp272 (paperback)
“When did you last meet a moth?” asks ecologist Baird, setting the tone for her laid-back yet tenacious tale of nocturnal pursuit. Light traps at the ready, she navigates subterranean caves, steep cliffs, even car park loos in search of nature’s night-shift pollinators. They’re dazzlingly diverse: the lime hawk-moth never eats, the figure of eighty wears its name on its wings like a caped hero, and the male green longhorn has antennae four times its body length. Along with so many other insects, moths are in trouble, making this call to look more closely at the world around us all the more urgent.
To order The Husbands, The Book-Makers or Meetings With Moths go to guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
