Hell’s Half Acre
Susan Jonusas
Scribner, £16.99, pp332
In Kansas in 1873, a remote cabin was found with the bloody remains of dismembered bodies buried around it. The blame was attached to a family who had lived there, the Benders, and the ensuing manhunt became a national sensation in a post-civil war America scarred by conflict. Jonusas takes this grisly saga and turns it into a carefully researched and horribly compelling examination of unimaginable evil intruding upon everyday life, laying waste to all around it in the process.
The House With the Golden Door
Elodie Harper
Head of Zeus, £16.99, pp489
Elodie Harper’s The Wolf Den was one of last year’s most vivid and transporting books, telling the story of sex workers in a Pompeii brothel in fascinating detail. Its gripping sequel leaves the downmarket milieu of the fleshpots to depict its protagonist Amara’s new and luxurious life as a courtesan. But selling one’s body is a transaction in which the man holds all the cards, as Amara seeks revenge on her former owner and, even more dangerously, falls in love. Harper’s recreation of this ancient world continues to thrill.
Great Circle
Maggie Shipstead
Transworld, £8.99, pp673 (paperback)
There aren’t many novels of more than 600 pages that leave you desperate for more, but Shipstead’s magnificent book effortlessly conjures up a long-departed world of adventure and glamour. It focuses on the aviator Marian Graves, lost while attempting to circumnavigate the world, and on the film star Hadley Baxter, who becomes obsessed with resurrecting the vanished pilot on screen. Beautifully written and endlessly readable, this rapturous novel soars as high as Graves herself and, thankfully, never crash-lands.
• To order Hell’s Half Acre, The House With the Golden Door or Great Circle go to guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
