NEW NON FICTION

The Secret Twenties

Timothy Phillips, Granta

At the height of the Jazz Age as British high society danced during the Roaring 20s, the establishment was worried about manoeuvres of a different kind. Paranoid about the number of Russians who had emigrated to British shores after the 1917 Russian revolution, the British government searched for evidence of espionage. Hundreds of Russians were expelled and the UK broke diplomatic ties with Moscow, as distrust reigned in this early Cold War.

Riot Days

Maria Alyokhina, Allen Lane

As a member of the Russian feminist punk group Pussy Riot, Alyokhina was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment along with her bandmates after the group performed in protest inside a Moscow cathedral in August 2012. Here, Alyokhina draws on her diary, legal documents and news clippings to tell the story of the band, its activism and her own fight against the prison system that incarcerated her, including successfully suing the penal colony in which she was serving time for breaching her rights.

The Land Beyond

Leon McCarron, I B Tauris

Filmmaker and traveller Leon McCarron treads a thousand miles of wild walking trails and ancient trading routes from Jerusalem to Jordan and across the deserts of the Sinai for his latest adventure. In doing so, the adventurer relays the conversations with the people he meets: from desert Bedouin to families struggling to make ends meet in the West Bank. The trip took him 87 days of mainly solo trekking and he discovered what most of us here already know: the region is famous for its hospitality with good reason.

What Happened

Hillary Rodham Clinton, Simon & Schuster

When Hillary Rodham Clinton lost the US presidential election to Donald Trump last year, it was a deeply personal humiliation. This candid memoir finds the former first lady working through her guilt and anger and re-evaluating what went wrong with her campaign during which, as she says, “she had been unable to connect with the deep anger so many Americans felt”. The list is long, but she reserves much of her fire for James Comey, the former director of the FBI, over his decision to reopen the case into her emails so close to voting day.