Greatly hyped debut about a Manson-esque Californian cult at the end of the Sixties. CULT FICTIONThe Girls by Emma Cline (Chatto & Windus)Greatly hyped debut about a Manson-esque Californian cult at the end of the Sixties. Cline has been praised for her psychological insight in this account of a young girl, Evie, attracted to a group of women in thrall to a charismatic, soon-to-be-infamous man. Slowly, as her obsession with the group intensifies, she's drawn to unthinkable violence.THE ISSUEWe've escaped junk status - for now. But for an idea of the challenges the country faces in the coming months and the obstacles to overcome to avoid that ultimate downgrading by the ratings agencies, look no further than emerging markets guru and Morgan Stanley chief global strategist Ruchir Sharma's important new book, The Rise and Fall of Nations: Ten Rules of Change in the Post-Crisis World (Allen Lane).Sharma spends some time on South Africa, discussing among other issues corruption, leadership, life expectancy, decline of development, slowing economic growth, social unrest and our lowly position on the Human Development Index (we're currently tied with Vietnam and El Salvador in 116th place; Norway is first). It is, alas, not a good-news story.The point of the book, however, is to recognise countries that are likely to succeed and likely to fail through the framework of his 10 rules. Get the rules right, and you're good to go. Some of it is basic stuff - the number of professionals in the working population, the political system, debt management, and so on. Some stuff can't be helped, like geographical location (we, for example, are half a world away from the major markets).But for the surest signs of impending economic disaster we need to go on what Sharma calls "hype watch": nations that are heralded with great fanfare as surefire future success stories - the Brics countries, say - are usually destined to fail.CRASH COURSEOn the other hand, we could just enjoy life - by learning from Denmark, the happiest country in the world (currently fourth on the HDI). Coming in time for Christmas are a whole bunch of coffee-table books exploring the Danish concept of "hygge", which, loosely translated, means "cosiness" but is more than that, a feeling of wellbeing with family and friends, of sitting by the fire with hot chocolate, or even putting on dry clothes after being caught in a rainstorm. So not quite the Nordic noir we've come to expect from the frozen north, but definitely more of what a nonfiction specialist has described as the "Scand-wagon".Titles include: The Little Book of Hygge by Mei Wiking, Hygge by Charlotte Abrahams, The Art of Hygge: How to Bring Danish Cosiness into Your Life by Jonny Jackson and Elias Larsen, and The Year of Living Danishly by Helen Russell.THE BOTTOM LINE"Humans are a species that fidgets." - Hands: What We Do With Them - and Why by Darian Leader (Hamish Hamilton)...