PAPERBACKS

FAULT LINES

Doug Johnstone (Orenda, £8.99)

It’s Edinburgh, but not as we know it. A fault has opened up, creating a volcanic island in the Firth of Forth known as the Inch and causing frequent earth tremors throughout the city. Volcanologist Surtsey sneaks on to the Inch for a romantic tryst with her married professor, Tom, but finds his murdered body instead. Pocketing the phone Tom used exclusively to contact her, she decides not to call the police but to keep their relationship and his death a secret. Her actions catch up with her, however, when a text arrives on the secret phone reading “I know you were there”, the affair is revealed and suspicion for Tom’s murder settles on her. Surtsey makes questionable decisions and is a tough character to like, but with her stressful home life she’s not entirely unsympathetic, and the increasing volcanic activity is a gift to a thriller writer, rumbling ominously away in the background before ramping up for the climax.

BEREN AND LÙTHIEN

J.R.R. Tolkien (Harper Collins, £8.99)

The names Beren and Lúthien can be read on the gravestone of Tolkien and his wife Edith, and their story was the author’s most personal; a tale he worked on for years but never completed, although it is partially reworked in Lord of the Rings with Aragorn and Arwen in their place. Beren is a mortal and Lúthien the daughter of an Elven king who disapproves of their union and sends Beren on a number of dangerous quests to prove himself worthy of her hand, echoing real-life opposition to the couple’s marriage. Tolkien drafted three versions at various times, two prose pieces and one long poem, and his son Christopher has pieced this book together from no fewer than 12 sources. It remains fragmentary, with names, plot points and details mutating from one version to the next, but Christopher Tolkien is an informed and enthusiastic commentator on the evolution of this seminal tale, which launched his father’s extensive explorations of Middle Earth.

THE MARS ROOM

Rachel Kushner (Jonathan Cape, £13.99)

Like Orange is the New Black, The Mars Room is aimed straight at America’s wilful ignorance of its female prison population, challenging preconceptions, presumptions and indifference. It’s centred on 29-year-old Romy Hall, who was a lap dancer at the Mars Room in San Francisco and is now at Stanville Women’s Correctional Facility, serving consecutive life sentences for murdering a stalker. One of the most crushing aspects of her confinement is her separation from her young son, who is now a ward of the state. It has to be said that there isn’t a tremendous amount of forward momentum in this novel, but Romy provides a window into the circumstances of female prisoners, the result of exhaustive research by Kushner, who found that powerlessness over their own lives, usually from a very young age, is their overriding common factor. A powerful, tragic novel, it’s a didactic book, but neither shies away from the crimes these women have committed nor denies them compassion.