Shelf life: Looking at secular books

‘Book of the year’ is quite an accolade, and for a first time novelist it is an award which will mean an ongoing contract, a place in the best seller charts and a display in Waterstone’s window. The recipe? Well, take a lot of snow, mix in a 19th-century fur-trading post, some pretty tough women and a sprinkling of Native Americans, then carefully stir in a murder. Stef Penney has taken some dramatic ingredients for her first novel The Tenderness of Wolves and formed an ambitiously complex mystery out of them.

Secular Shelf Life Sarah Allen