A selection of novels to read this summer

Eleanor Catton’s novel is an elegant thriller about what it means to sup with the devil. Birnam Wood is a witchy guerrilla gardening group run by Mira Bunting, a charismatic horticulturist, and her sidekick, Shelley Noakes. For years the group has cultivated small plots of urban land in Christchurch, New Zealand. Their equipment is salvaged and they barter what they grow. Mira works full time for the collective. Her ambition is for it to make “radical, widespread and lasting social change”. When an area of rich arable land is abandoned, Mira senses that Birnam Wood may have found its playground. But someone else is interested: Robert Lemoine, an American tycoon with a calculating mind and a preternaturally calm exterior. “Birnam Wood” is distinguished by its character studies: Ms Catton, who won the Booker prize in 2013 for “The Luminaries”, skewers anti-capitalist activists with the same relish she exhibits in chewing up the billionaire class. Read our full review.