The best recent crime and thrillers – review roundup
The House on Fripp Island by Rebecca Kauffman; Seven Years of Darkness by You-jeong Jeong; The Other Passenger by Louise Candlish; The Devil You Know by Emma Kavanagh; Die for Me by Luke Jennings
The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again by M John Harrison review – brilliantly unsettling
Harrison is fabulously alert to the spaces between things in this novel of collapsing certainties in a haunted England
We Are Attempting to Survive Our Time by AL Kennedy review – telling without showing
From a row at a zoo to the tale of a Holocaust survivor – the promise of these short stories is deadened by detail
The Double X Economy by Linda Scott review – the need to empower women
Calling out hostile men ... a rallying cry for global female equality and a strong counter to ‘lean in’ feminism
Splash! by Howard Means – a refreshing dip into the history of swimming
From Roman baths to the ‘Australian crawl’ and the politics of swimming, this chronicle is ideal for readers missing the water
The Golden Rule by Amanda Craig review – a rollicking summer read
This exuberant tale of a struggling young mother plotting murder in Cornwall ricochets between wild fantasy and social truth
The best recent thrillers – review roundup
Missing memories and secret lives galore in new titles from Karin Slaughter, Louise Candlish and more
The Bird Way by Jennifer Ackerman review – an enthralling study
A revelatory book about the avian world – the second by the acclaimed American science writer – shows why it makes no sense to view birds en masse
The Prison Doctor: Women Inside by Dr Amanda Brown review – why care is better than custody
A GP at Europe’s largest women’s jail questions whether prison is the right place for people with mental health issues
Radioactive review – Marie Curie biopic fast-forwards to Hiroshima
Rosamund Pike plays the physicist with dignity and froideur in this respectful drama that shows her brilliant discoveries – and their effects
Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars. by Joyce Carol Oates review – a portrait of a family and a nation in crisis
Running the gamut from tragic to funny, Joyce Carol Oates’s immersive new novel is an uncomfortable snapshot of modern-day America
In brief: Defiant; Looking for Eliza; The Forager’s Calendar – review
Robert Verkaik revisits aviation history and Leaf Arbuthnot casts a quiet spell
The Weekend by Charlotte Wood review – intimate and insightful
Three women in their 70s reflect on their lives
The Price of Peace by Zachary D Carter review – how liberals betrayed Keynes
A persuasive new biography argues that it was Blair and Clinton who finally ended JM Keynes’s dream of a fairer life for all
His Imperial Majesty by Matthew Oates review – a natural history of the purple emperor
This regal butterfly has a short lifespan but is ‘a mighty metaphor for our relationship with beauty, and with nature’