A work best served cold

From a witty revenge debut to a wry and persuasive defence of rage, Martin Chilton shares his favourite reads for June

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Most casual viewers who have watched footage of the bizarre goose-stepping ceremony sporadically held at the Wagah border post, by rival soldiers from India and Pakistan, will surely raise a smile at Sam Dalrymple's description of it as looking like something "that wouldn't be out of place in Monty Python".

There is little else cheering in Dalrymple's excellent Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia (William Collins), which expertly examines the way the Indian empire was divided into 12 separate nation states between 1931 and 1971. It is a disturbing story of hatred, violence and treachery. There was British deceit too, by the way, in playing down the true size of the Indian empire. “Maps depicting it in its entirety were only published in top secrecy,” states Dalrymple, whose book is packed with riveting detail.

Meanwhile, the intricacies of the universe’s “mechanisms” are explored in Joanne Baker’s Starwatchers: A History of Discovery in the Night Sky (Bloomsbury), a thoughtful blend of science and history. Her book also carries worrying warnings about what humans are doing in space today – “using it just as a playground”, as she puts it, “or worse a war zone, ripping it off, ignoring its cultural significance for everyone on earth”.

Two new fiction books also worth flagging up are Wendy Erskine’s debut novel The Benefactors (Sceptre), a funny and dark novel about family life, set in Northern Ireland, and Joyce Carol Oates’s Fox (Fourth Estate), the disturbing tale of a paedophile teacher drawn to girls with “delicate, doll-like features”. It’s long (672 pages) but suspenseful.

The choices for novel, biography and non-fiction book of the month are reviewed in full below.

Novel of the Month: Bring the House Down by Charlotte Runcie