LATEST TITLES

THE FARM by Joanne Ramos, Bloomsbury Publishing, £12.99 (ebook £10.90) ★★★★★

THE Farm is a finely wrought and delicately paced tale of high-end surrogacy, that is also a biting critique of inequality.

Jane, a meek Filipina immigrant and single mother is persuaded to become a Host at Golden Oaks, an exclusive, remote luxury centre.

Hosts are surrogates for superrich women unable or unwilling to carry their own children. In exchange for hefty bonuses, Hosts are confined in a gilded cage of optimal healthcare and rigorous surveillance, and cut off from their own family and friends.

Jane starts to chafe at the bonds of her lucrative confinement, and she’s not the only one.

The novel is brilliantly plotted and quietly devastating in its satire. Moving, ethically complex and gripping, The Farm is a great novel.

THE FURIES by Katie Lowe is HarperCollins, £12.99 (ebook £7.99) ★★★★ ★

WHEN a student is found dead in the grounds of a private girls’ school the police can’t understand how she died. But Violet, a fellow student, knows.

Following in the footsteps of Angela Carter and Joanne Harris, debut novelist Katie Lowe also draws on the cinematic legacy of The Craft, Heathers and Mean Girls in this tale of Greek myth, revenge and murder.

Part inverted detective story, part study of the intensity of teenage female friendship heightened by hormones and inexperience, The Furies twists and turns at shocking speed, keeping the reader guessing throughout.

A promising, enjoyable debut but its weakness is how blatantly Lowe displays her apparent influences – think The Secret History by Donna Tartt – and the minor characters are starved of detail to focus on Violet’s obsession with her new friendship.