The Monster's Wife by Kate Horsley (Barbican Press, £12.99)
The Monster's Wife by Kate Horsley (Barbican Press, £12.99)
Horsley's tale of Dr Frankenstein's attempt to create a wife for his monster in Orkney is rich in geographical detail, which rather tends to submerge some of the more delicious, seductive moments such a gothic tale has to offer. Her heroine, Oona, conveys the right mixture of fear and bravado, though, to be an appealing heroine.
Ukraine Crisis: What It Means For The West by Andrew Wilson (Yale UP, £12.99)
What is happening in Ukraine has slightly fallen off the news of late, but this excellent account of what led up to the February uprising and the annexing of Crimea, as well as the background to the shooting down of the Malaysian Airlines plane, is timely and scholarly, full of hard-to-contest facts.
Northanger Abbey by Val McDermid (Borough Press, £7.99)
What McDermid captures so well in her updating of the Austen classic isn't Austen's satirical sense, or her comedic view of everyday manners, but what it is like to be inside the head of a young woman. Cat Morland is overly romantic, of course, and will be disillusioned, but her dreams and ambitions are very real.
Do No Harm: Stories Of Life, Death And Brain Surgery by Henry Marsh (Phoenix, £8.99)
What readers and critics have warmed to so much in Marsh's account of life as a neurosurgeon isn't just the details of crucial operations, but his disarming honesty about his "failures", those operations which have resulted in paralysis or worse, not because he isn't knowledgeable or experienced enough, but simply because he is human.
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