Books of the month: From John Grisham’s Camino Winds to Maria Reva’s Good Citizens Need Not Fear

Martin Chilton reviews five of May’s releases for our monthly book column

(iStock/The Independent)

Covid-19 has been hard on many authors, with promotional events cancelled and publication dates delayed. On the bright side: a number of fine books are still coming out in May.

I am an Island (Doubleday) is an inspirational tale about leaving London to live on a remote island in the Scottish Hebrides. Tamsin Calidas discovers how to “recalibrate and find her compass” in a place of beauty and desolation. Although the immediacy of the coronavirus crisis may have postponed worries about global warming, there is melancholy food for thought in Alastair Bonnett’s The Age of Islands (Atlantic Books), including his analysis of why the gorgeous Isles of Scilly are in peril from rising sea levels.

Among the novels taking a reader further afield is Paul MM Cooper’s beguiling All Our Broken Idols (Bloomsbury), which is set in ancient Assyria and modern Iraq. Fran is the protagonist of Helen Fitzgerald’s compelling Ash Mountain (Orenda Books), which is about a single mother who returns to her Australian hometown to care for her dying father just as a terrible bush fire erupts. The cover image, taken by Rob Dixon in 2019, is an apocalyptic image of a little girl standing in a doorway gazing at a firestorm. Returning to a childhood home is also at the centre of Lesley Thomson’s creepy thriller Death of a Mermaid (Head of Zeus).