Tag: Dolly Alderton fiction

Sir by Martin James Miriam pits a New York accountant against the Controllers of a simulated world. Read our analysis of its dreams, dread and big ideas.

An earl's daughter and a shepherd's son, born on Armistice morning 1918, grow up on the same Norfolk estate and end up holding the fate of September 1940 in their hands. Archer's final novel, published the day after his death, is pure storytelling, generous, funny and impossible to put down.

Thirty-two short chapters about a run-down street in Monterey, held together by almost no plot at all: two attempts to throw a party for a man who has never asked for anything. Steinbeck's warmest book, and the one where his tenderness is hardest to argue with and hardest to defend.

Forty-seven protocols across sleep, exercise, stress, nutrition, light, learning and inner life, each with numbers you can act on tomorrow morning. The free behavioral advice is excellent. The certainty sometimes outruns the studies, and the commercial ties sit uncomfortably close to the prescriptions.