"When the wolf chooses its kill, something strange happens – the prey senses it's been chosen. If the animal bolts, that's when the wolf attacks." A prowling wolf in the English countryside fascinates a recently-bereaved teenager in The Wolf Road (Everything With Words, £7.99), the debut novel from poet Richard Lambert.
Lucas, who is 15, has lost his parents in a car crash, and his pain is compounded by having to move in with the grandmother he hardly knows and the bullies at his new school. Haunted and angry, he is unsure if the wolf he sees is a figment of his imagination – and if he should run towards the wildness or away from it. This is both a love letter to nature and a satisfying allegorical exploration of grief, marking Lambert as a very welcome new voice in YA fiction.
From the more established corner, there's Philip Pullman's Serpentine (Penguin, £7.99), which offers another brief glimpse into the world of his most beloved heroine, Lyra Silvertongue. This slim hardback, with illustrations from Tom Duxbury, is very much a gift book rather than anything substantial, but the short story does offer some insights into the relationship between Lyra and her daemon Pan that will tide readers over as they await the final volume in The Book of Dust trilogy.
The acclaimed Alex Wheatle, whose experiences in prison after the 1981 Brixton riots were recently explored in Steve McQueen's Small Axe film anthology series, tackles his usual concerns of racism and injustice in Cane Warriors (Andersen Press, £10.99). Unlike his recent Crongton books, though, this story delves into the past: Jamaica, 1760, on the verge of a slave uprising against British plantation owners. Protagonist Moa is not yet fully grown but all too familiar with violence. When he is asked to kill his overseer as part of the rebellion, he reflects: "I had seen many dead bodies but was yet to see the death mask of a white man."
Horrors of slavery
Moa’s story is filled with many such unsettling, telling details that powerfully convey the horrors of slavery. “Do we have to fight for ever for just ah liccle piece of dreamland?” his friend asks. “Why dem hate us so?” It’s a moving book and the sort that deserves the label “important” for its thematic concerns and historical content, although the constant back-and-forth between the relatively formal narration and the phonetically-spelled dialogue is a distraction. We’re never quite given the chance to fully immerse ourselves in the patois, which feels like a missed opportunity from a writer with such a gift for distinctive voices.
Sally Nicholls ventures into the more recent past with The Silent Stars Go By (Andersen Press, £12.99), in which 19-year-old Margot is home for Christmas. It's 1919 and the shadow of the Great War still hangs over everything. The soldiers who made it back still talk of little else; her own brother is traumatised by his experiences. The love of her life, Harry, once presumed dead, has returned to the village in one piece, but unaware that the child Margot's respectable parents are raising is his own.
This is a quietly devastating drama about a once “difficult” girl who now feels “as though all her personality and contrariness had been washed away, leaving something limp and wet-raggish and spinisterish”. It is for the best that Margot’s parents are raising her son, and yet she aches at not being recognised by him as his mother. “What could you do with this grief that had nowhere to go?” Nicholls often writes skilfully about situations with no easy resolutions and this latest tale is no exception.
Thoroughly enjoyable
Not all work set in the past needs to put a reader through the emotional wringer. Laura Wood's A Snowfall of Silver (Scholastic, £7.99) is a thoroughly enjoyable love story based in the world of 1930s theatre. Aspiring actress Freya leaves home in as dramatic a fashion as possible, donning the "Victorian urchin costume" she wore when playing Oliver Twist in a local production and declaring herself "a runaway, of course" to a boy she meets on the train. "Oh, at last, this is living!"
Improbably, Freya’s tenacity pays off and she joins a touring company as a wardrobe assistant, soon to become an understudy. That she will end up on stage is inevitable; what happens next is not. The gap between reality and fantasy – even in a world that depends on building a fantasy night after night – is explored in this warm, hopeful read.
Robin Talley's The Love Curse of Melody McIntyre (HQ, £7.99) also delves into the world of theatre; in this instance we see backstage at a school production of Les Misérables. Legend has it that the theatre is cursed, so each year students come up with rituals to counteract it. It's been suggested to stage manager Melody that disaster stalks the show whenever she's in a relationship – so she vows not to fall in love this time.
Musical theatre
Plausibility and this book are not even on nodding terms with one another, but if fluffy romantic comedies involving girls falling for one another against the backdrop of musical theatre is your thing (and I recognise this may be a niche interest), you may be inclined to forgive it.
Finally, Karen McManus always produces satisfying mysteries and The Cousins (Penguin, £7.99) is no exception. One summer, three estranged cousins reunite on the resort island that made their grandparents rich. Finding out what happened more than 20 years ago, when the previous generation were disowned with a single note, is one of many goals the unlikely trio have for their stay. This expertly-plotted novel offers up many pleasing twists before its crescendo of an ending.
