The Midnight Feast by Lucy Foley (HarperCollins, £18.99) Foley’s latest novel is set on the picturesque Dorset coast, where Francesca Meadows has turned the grand house she inherited into a sumptuously Instagrammable eco retreat called The Manor. None of this pleases the locals, some of whom have scores to settle with Francesca.
While she prepares for a lavish summer solstice celebration, complete with the eponymous feast, they are busy conducting a campaign of disruption. We know from the start that things haven’t gone well at The Manor. There’s a house fire, and a body is discovered at the bottom of a cliff, and we shift back and forth in time from before the celebration to after and, finally, during as the story unfolds through the multiple narrators.
Most of them, from entitled and hypocritical Francesca to mysterious Bella, have something to hide. Foley deftly keeps all the plates – old resentments, terrible secrets, new age woo-woo, and a side order of folk horror – spinning for a tense, atmospheric read. Death in the Air by Ram Murali (Atlantic , £16.
99) Ram Murali’s debut novel also features a luxury retreat where things go horribly wrong – here, the location is Rishikesh in the foothills of the Indian Himalayas, an ideal set-up for a White Lotus/Agatha Christie-style “‘closed world” mystery mashup. Charming, affluent and well-educated Ro Krishna finds himself at Samsara, an opulent Ayurvedic spa, where the guests include a film star and his CIA-.
