Having started on Saturday to read the paperback of Gavin Francis’s Island Dreams (Canongate), in which the doctor and writer explores our fascination with islands, and the tension between isolation and connection, I opened The Observer Magazine on Sunday to find a piece by Paula Hawkins, bestselling author of The Girl on the Train, on what islands mean to her: how they free the imagination, but also stir up fear. On a birthday trip this year to the Isle of Lewis, she writes, “My mind started to turn, as it seems to do when I find myself in lonely places, to murder.”