MUSTREADS

Out now in paperback

WAITING FOR THE LAST BUS by Richard Holloway

(Canongate £9.99, 176 pp) IN THE parish church of St Mary Magdalene in Newark, Nottinghamshire, are a couple of medieval paintings: one is of a dancing skeleton; the other a young man holding a purse.

‘The skeleton’s message to the young man was clear,’ writes the former Bishop of Edinburgh, Richard Holloway. ‘As I am today, you will be tomorrow. It was. . . a prompt to observers to make them think about how to prepare for their end.’

These days, he observes, ‘we spend a lot of time and effort not thinking about death’. But what if we learned to think about our mortality in a different way? ‘If we let it, death will reveal the beauty of the world to us,’ he suggests.

Holloway’s bestselling book is a wise and humane guide to the mystery of life and death for readers of any faith — or of none.

WHERE SHALL WE RUN TO? by Alan Garner

(4th Estate £8.99, 208 pp) ALAN GARNER is the author of such beloved children’s classics as The Weirdstone Of Brisingamen and The Owl Service.

He grew up in wartime Alderley Edge, in Cheshire, and his memoir vividly evokes the sensations of his childhood: the sound of bombers passing overhead, and searching for shrapnel with his gang after the allclear had sounded. Like many writers, he was inspired by a particular teacher, in his case Miss Turner, who one day set his class a puzzle — the prize was a bar of Cadbury’s chocolate. Alan solved the puzzle, but another pupil claimed the chocolate.

Years later, Miss Turner asked Alan to present the prizes at her school’s speech day.

A few days later, a packet arrived in the post. It contained a bar of Cadbury’s chocolate and a note that read: ‘Better now?’

THE WATER CURE by Sophie Mackintosh

(Penguin £8.99, 240 pp) SISTERS Grace, Lia and Sky live in what was once a grand hotel, on an island surrounded by forest and sea.

Their parents, Mother and King, subject them to harsh ‘therapies’, including the ‘ water cure’ of the book’s title, intended to purge them of the toxins with which, they claim, the world beyond their refuge is contaminated.

Every few months, King ventures into the world for supplies. On his return, bringing food, bleach and magazines that the girls are forbidden to read, ‘he always smelled foul’.

One day, he sets out, but does not return. Some time later, there is a storm at night. In the morning, three figures are lying on the beach: ‘Men have come to us,’ says Mother.

Mackintosh’s dystopian fiction, longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, draws on fairy tale and Shakespearean themes for its exploration of female vulnerability and power.