Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman (HarperCollins, £8.99)
This Glaswegian author’s debut novel came out of nowhere to spark a bidding war among publishers, impressing Reece Witherspoon so much that she bought the film rights. Readers internationally have embraced its title character, an eccentric and socially awkward 30-year-old woman who works in an accounts department. She doesn’t have a social life – just a mean, critical mother she speaks to once a week – but a routine of predictable rituals keeps loneliness at bay and, for most of the time, she’s content with life. But the act of helping an old man who collapses in the street catapults her out of isolation and she has to learn to navigate her way through the complexities of human interaction for the first time. It’s no wonder people have taken Eleanor to their hearts. Compassionate and uplifting, this is a charming tale of a young woman leaving loneliness behind and coming to terms with a trauma that has left her literally and figuratively scarred.
Hotel Scarface by Roben Farzad (Penguin, £14.99)
Iran-born, Miami-raised and an unlikely Gerry Rafferty fan, Roben Farzad dedicated 20 years to researching this exposé of the Miami cocaine trade in the 1970s. America went crazy for coke in that decade, and the heart of the booming trade was the Mutiny Hotel. In its ostentatious, excessive surroundings, Colombian gangsters rubbed shoulders with celebrities attracted by the buzz, and the frisson of criminality. By 1980, Farzad records, a third of Miami’s economy was narcotics-based, the entire business community benefiting to some extent. The city had risen to number one on the US homicide charts too. In telling the true story that inspired Scarface and Miami Vice, Farzad reveals how blurred the line between cops and bad guys became. Even the CIA was implicated, using drug-runners to smuggle weapons to the Contras in Nicaragua. A top-notch true crime book, Hotel Scarface lifts the lid on a corrosive scene shot through with addiction, death, callous inhumanity and a few fairly bizarre kinks.
The Angry Chef by Anthony Warner (Oneworld, £9.99)
What gets Anthony Warner angry is the endless stream of fad diets being embraced by a public, and a media that really should know better. In extreme cases, cancer patients are shunning medical science in favour of dietary innovations that don’t stand up to a moment’s scrutiny. Armed with a degree in biochemistry, the help of an anonymous collaborator called Captain Science and many years in the food industry, he furiously debunks the myths behind some of the more prominent food fads and tries to explain why people are continually being taken in by them. Nor does he stop there, going on to attack the generally accepted view that processed food is unhealthy, although some of his advice – he argues that sugar and salt have been demonised – goes against the scientific grain and is open to debate. His broadsides against pseudoscience, however, are solid, although his intemperate language and ranty tone might put off some people who would otherwise be receptive.
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