Tapsalteerie, £12
Glasgow Makar Jim Carruth’s The Auchensale trilogy, about landscape and farming in the rural west of Scotland, was superb. Now comes a novel in poetry. Knockan takes its name from the croft in Assynt where a mother welcomes her grown daughter Laura for her annual, predictably fractious visit. Interleaving scenes of their difficult relationship with reflections on the land, and its rocks in particular – Laura’s father was a geologist who explained what lay beneath their feet – Knockan is a highly original account of a family torn apart by loss and grief. Describing the ways people find and lose love, this is a heart-felt and ultimately hopeful depiction of the ways in which the past insists on being a recognised as part of the present. By its end you are left with an eery sense of how interconnected ancient time is to today.
Rasputin and the Downfall of the Romanovs
Antony Beevor
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £25
From the author of Stalingrad, a vivid portrait of the Siberian mystic who brought about the end of Tsarist Russia. Despite being uneducated and exceptionally licentious, this mesmerising peasant was taken into the heart of the Romanov family. The result was political mayhem and revolution.
Voices in Stone: The Lives of Public Statues
Paul Brummell
Hurst, £25
A fascinating account of statues, from earliest days to our own times. In this thought-provoking history, Paul Brummell, currently the UK’s high commissioner to Mauritius, analyses what purpose statues fulfil, explores our relationship with them, and asks what happens if their relevance or appropriateness is felt to have been outlived. A timely analysis of an emotive subject, treated with the seriousness it deserves.
One Morning in March: Dunblane and the Shooting that Changed Britain (Image: Swift Press)
One Morning in March: Dunblane and the Shooting that Changed Britain
Steven McGinty
Swift Press, £20
On 13 March 1996, in the gym of Dunblane primary school, Thomas Hamilton shot and killed 16 five- and six-year-olds and their teacher, and badly injured many of their class mates before killing himself. To mark the 30th anniversary, journalist Steven McGinty soberly pieces together the events of that day, interviewing many of those involved – parents, police and politicians – and continuing the story as a group of the bereaved families campaigned to ban handguns. Thanks to them, the UK now has the tightest gun laws in the world.
Travel Light
Naomi Mitchison
Virago, £10.99
A welcome reissue of a classic of fantasy fiction, first published in 1952. Mitchison’s fairy-tale, with its echoes of Norse mythology, is the story of Halla, who as a baby is thrown out of the palace by her father the king’s new wife. Raised by bears and a dragon, Halla grows into an exceptional young woman. As she heads out into the world, she discovers that she must learn to shape her own future. In her introduction, Samantha Shannon describes Travel Light as “quiet and thoughtful, playful and wayward”.
Under Water
Tara Menon
Summit Books, £16.99
Two disasters shape this haunting debut novel. The first is the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004, when two children, Marissa and her best friend Arielle, are engulfed by the waters and swept apart. Picking up years later in New York, as the country awaits Hurricane Sandy’s arrival, the novel depicts Marissa as a lost soul. An emotionally visceral story, from an Indian-born novelist, it brings together a story of personal trauma and grief, Under Water shows human tragedy mirroring environmental disaster, as the natural world, especially our oceans and forests, comes under intolerable strain.
The Edge of Revolution: The General Strike that shook Britain
David Torrance
Bloomsbury, £20
The Edge of Revolution: The General Strike that shook Britain (Image: Bloomsbury)
It only lasted for nine days, but the impact of the General Strike of May, 1926, when two million workers across the country downed tools and brought the country to a halt, was seismic. Fear of a revolution like that seen in Russia the previous decade made the establishment quake as never before, and even today its repercussions are with us. Digging into the archives to view the strike from all angles, David Torrance imaginatively recreates a turning point in the UK’s political and social history.
The Descent: Witnessing Russia’s Spiral into Madness Under Putin
Marc Bennetts
Bloomsbury, £20
Not a book to calm your nerves, but a fascinating, hard-hitting diary by the Times and Sunday Times’s foreign correspondent. Marc Bennetts lived in Russia for 25 years before his arrest in Moscow for his part in a protest against the war in Ukraine. At this point, he was pulled out of the country, and went to Ukraine. Recording events of the past quarter of a century, including conversations with individuals on both side of the war in Ukraine, from Russians in thrall to their leader, opposition politicians and even a shaman who tried to exorcise Putin, Bennetts portrays Russia’s terrifying descent into violence under a leader hell-bent on shaping the country in his own image.
Liza Minnelli, daughter of actress Judy Garland, on her arrivals at Southampton after stepping off the Queen Elizabeth liner. Complete with her toy elephant ‘Flopears’, she’s arrived in England to join her mother who is appearing in a theater tour (Image: PA Archive/PA Images)
Kids, Wait Till you Hear This! My Memoir
Liza Minnelli and Michael Feinstein
Hodder & Stoughton, £25
One reviewer has described Minnelli’s rollicking memoir a “high-kicking hoofer of a book”, which is just what you’d expect. Disarmingly frank about her complicated childhood as Judy Garland’s daughter, with whom she often battled, and revealing previously unknown details about her life, career, relationships, and her often terrible health, including substance use disorder, she is also forgiving, generous and gossipy. Even though she dishes out condemnation when it’s deserved, there’s nothing vindictive about her. Added to which she is funny. Many showbiz memoirs are a yawn, but Minnelli’s, as told to her friend the singer and pianist Michael Feinstein, looks more like a tonic.
Blood on Old Stones
Alex Gray
Little, Brown, £22
Opening with news of the death of an old friend of DSI William Lorrimer and his wife Maggie, Blood on Old Stones quickly turns into a double-murder investigation on the isle of Mull. The 23rd of the Lorrimer series, which is a staple of the bestseller lists, this is crime fiction with a heart, not to mention all the essential ingredients of a detective story compellingly told.
