After her spectacular appearance on Traitors, Harriet Tyce is back in our picks of the
Witch Trial by Harriet Tyce (Wildfire £18.99, 400pp)
Matthew Phillips, an Edinburgh heart transplant surgeon with family problems, finds himself on the jury in the sensational trial of two teenage schoolgirls accused of murdering classmate Christian Shaw, 18.
It is a trial that horrifies the nation – and awakens the age-old fear of witches.
The jury hears of Tarot card readings and Ouija boards, of animal sacrifices, curses and coven meetings in a shed on the edge of an allotment.
But then their fierce defence begins – and terrifies Matthew, as he doubts his sanity.
A star of the latest season of The Traitors, Tyce, a former criminal barrister, delivers a story that is all too believable – are the girls monsters? Just don’t read it at night.
Can YOU work out who the Traitors are?
Spies and Other Gods by James Wolff (Baskerville £20, 272pp)
Six months from retirement, and with his brain increasingly unreliable, the head of British Intelligence, Sir William Rentoul, finds himself confronted by a crisis.
Someone from within his nest of spies has made an anonymous complaint to Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee about a highly sensitive case involving an Iranian assassin and a string of dead bodies across Europe.
Aphra McQueen, apparently just a lowly researcher, arrives to investigate – but is not what she seems.
So begins this delicious spy story written by a former British intelligence officer. It displays not only a wry wit and insider knowledge, but also a disdain for the spying establishment – reminiscent of the great Len Deighton.
Adrift by Will Dean (Hodder & Stoughton £22, 400pp)
Adrift is available now
Peggy Jenkins and her 14-year-old son Sammy are living a nightmare. They are trapped on a narrowboat moored on a remote canal in the Midlands, where Peggy’s domineering husband Drew, a writer, subjects them to a rule of terror.
They cannot make a sound after 9pm as he has to have absolute silence to concentrate on his new book.
On top of that, Sammy is ridiculed at school for his ginger hair and desperately thin arms – the other boys call him ‘Noodles’.
Peggy is only waiting for Sammy to get to 18 before she whisks him away, but can they survive?
This is a portrait of menace and wickedness that is both painful and hypnotising.