DENNIS BROE enjoys the political edge of a series that unmasks British imperialism, resonates with the present and has been buried by Disney

TEENAGER Violet moves with her mother from a city life to look after an ailing relative in a small town hidden in the woods of rural New York in The Devouring Gray by Christine Lynn Herman (Titan, £8.99), a debut novel and presumably the first in a series.
To Violet, Four Paths seems like the armpit of America, a dull and insular place cut off from the world. But, as it turns out, her mother's hometown is much worse than boring. It’s deadly.

MAT COWARD presents a peculiar cabbage that will only do its bodybuilding once the summer dies down

A heatwave, a crimewave, and weird bollocks in Aberdeen, Indiana horror, and the end of the American Dream

A corrupted chemist, a Hampstead homosexual and finely observed class-conflict at The Bohemia

Beet likes warmth, who doesn’t, so attention to detail is required if you’re to succeed, writes MAT COWARD