by Kate Morgan (Mudlark £16.99, 352pp) A judge and jury at Exeter crown court were presented in 1884 with a chilling and somewhat unusual problem: is it acceptable to kill and then eat a ship’s cabin boy? In the dock, accused of murder, were sailors Thomas Dudley and Edwin Stephens. They had been taking the yacht Mignonette, along with Edmund Brooks and 17-year-old cabin boy Richard Parker, to Australia when it sank off the coast of west Africa. The crew drifted helplessly in a dinghy for more than three weeks. After ten days with no food and little fresh water, Dudley and Stephens held down the sickly cabin boy, butchered him with a penknife and ate his remains. Four days later, they were rescued.