Three Women And A Boat by Anne Youngson (Black Swan £8.99, 336 pp) Two middle-aged women are walking towards each other along a canal towpath. Eve is wearing a business suit and holding an orange carrier bag containing the modest debris of a 30-year career. Sally is dressed as though she hopes not to be noticed. Between them is a dark-blue narrow boat from which a volley of eerie howls is emerging. The howls are coming from a mischievous mongrel called Noah, but Eve and Sally don’t know that. Convinced that something dreadful is happening, they break into the boat, and an adventure begins that will change their lives and that of the narrow boat’s formidable owner, Anastasia.