Our pick of the latest releases
The Village
Nikita Lalwani
Viking, £12.99
Nikita Lalwani's marvellous novel tells the story of Ray Bhullar, a young woman and television director of British-Asian descent who stays in a village in India with two colleagues to make a documentary for the BBC about the residents there. Inmates would be a more accurate description, because the village is an open prison where the prisoners – convicted killers and their families – have unprecedented freedom of movement to come and go. That does not mean they are free of the demands of society or their past actions. Ray's understanding of the prisoners' situation – and her own – changes as she begins to film and find out more about the tragedies of their lives. Lalwani ably explores identity, belonging, law, justice and morality subtly and movingly. She develops her characters and her storyline at an engaging pace and gradually racks up the tension to produce a compelling read. Pól Ó Muirí
The Secret Anarchy of Science
Michael Brooks
Profile Books, £8.99
Under the white lab coat, is the scientist a secret anarchist who will stop at nothing to get a Nobel Prize? Scientists use mind-expanding substances: the environmental pioneer Stewart Brand, who first had the idea of a photograph of Earth from space, and Kary Mullis, who visualised the structure of DNA, were both influenced by LSD. Scientists pick experimental results to suit their theories and block the work of rivals: two brilliant women, Barbara McClintock, in genetics, and Lynn Margulis, in biology, had to fight the derision of the scientific establishment to have their ideas accepted. Scientists cut corners when they have to: Brooks tells hair-raising tales of self-experimentation contrary to ethical rules, all in the cause of medical science. Brooks's highly readable account purports to prove that scientists are anarchists but proves, instead, that they are flawed humans "who make discoveries not despite their humanity, but precisely because of it". Tom Moriarty
Ghastly Business
Louise Levene
Bloomsbury, £7.99
Dora, a doctor's daughter, would like a career in medicine herself. But this is 1929, a time when a bright girl could be shooed away because her father thinks a career will harm her reproductive health. Instead Dora finds herself doing secretarial work in the pathology department of a large London hospital. This introduces her to gruesome postmortems, scandalous court cases and one very caddish man. The tone of this light novel can be wobbly – the sudden death of a little boy is dismissed far too briskly – but the book is strong on evoking the pure discomfort of life in 1920s Britain. Dora's father forces her to live in digs where her landlady begrudges every crumb of food. This is a world where people still communicate by terse telegrams or postcards; Dora's landlady owns a telephone, but tenants are forbidden to touch it. An effective escape from today's woes. Mary Feely
