The Reformatory by Tananarive Due (Titan, £9.99)
Set in 1950 in segregated Florida, and inspired, like Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys, by the violent abuse and deaths of Black children sent to the Dozier school for boys, this could have made for an unbearably grim read. Due wrote it to honour the memory of a great uncle who died at the Dozier school, aged 15, in 1939, and never flinches from depicting the horrors of racism and the cruelties it engenders. But around that kernel of truth she has woven a tense, exciting thriller. When 12-year-old Robert Stephens Jr arrives at the reformatory he is assailed by “haints” – ghosts of all the children who died there, to whom the adults and older boys seem oblivious. He is frightened, and struggles to ignore their presence, until he discovers there could be benefits to his talent for ghost-spotting. Or will it make his situation even worse? Never predictable, harrowingly believable and seamlessly blending the real and supernatural, this rich, vividly written novel exerts a powerful grip.
