General fiction
House of Silence by Linda Gillard
Gwen Rowland was a sensible, cautious kind of girl, but then the only family she'd ever known were all dead from a surfeit of unprotected sex, drink and the sort of drugs that don't come in a child-proof bottle. So – her relationship with an actor was a little out of the ordinary, but they seemed to be friends before they were lovers. The crunch came at Christmas when Alfie said that he was spending it with his family – which would have left Gwen on her own. She did slightly twist his arm to take her with him and he was obviously reluctant to comply. When they arrived at Creake Hall, home of author Rae Holbrook and her daughters, Gwen sensed a change in Alfie, a lack of warmth towards his family. Then there was the family photo which didn't fit the known facts and the complication of the gardener who said little but was a very good listener. Full review...
The Spoiler by Annalena McAfee
Several things about this novel intrigued me. It is about two female journalists of very different generations. Also, it is set in the recent past – 1997. While newspaper production had been computerised, it was just before internet access at home and work became affordable and accessible to far more people and so became mass media, and newspapers were almost entirely a print medium – newspaper websites were just around the corner. Annalena McAfee has an insider's knowledge of the newspaper world as she was a journalist for many years, and her career included founding the Guardian's review section in its current form. Full review...
The End of Everything by Megan Abbott
On the surface this book is about the disappearance of a thirteen-year-old girl. Her best friend and neighbour Lizzie relates how she searches for clues, how she discovers that a local man may be involved, and how Evie and Lizzie's families struggle to cope. But look again at the title. What really unfolds here is the story of the effect a single incident has on three families, not two, how that one event came about, and why nothing will ever be the same for everyone involved. It is a book which is complex, deep and very, very intense. Full review...
Back of Beyond by C J Box
Connolly and Harlan Coben, both of whom I've read. So, it was off to a pretty good start. The front cover graphics and large print scream out 'thriller'. We get the essence of Cody early on. He's a man who likes to do his own thing and doesn't take kindly to orders or red tape. All that red tape is shit, is probably how Cody would describe it in his own colourful and down-to-earth fashion. He looks older than his years. Maybe that's down to a messy domestic life and also to the hours he puts in on the job. He lives on his own and has a teenage son he doesn't see often enough. Oh, and he smokes like a chimney and drinks like a fish. In short, he's a mess. But somehow he stumbles through his police work - with a lot of help and support from a long-suffering colleague. Full review...
The Stronger Sex by Hans Werner Kettenbach and Anthea Bell (Translator)
After reading the various comments on the back cover, I was looking forward to reading this book as I love a story with a psychological element. Young Alex is driven to the home of his latest client; a man called Klofft. The reader soon finds out that Klofft has plenty of baggage, as well as plenty of money. He's elderly and very ill and mobility is also an issue for him. So, while he may have set out to impress others with his large home and beautiful things, sadly he seems no longer to be able to enjoy life. His illness confines him to just a couple of rooms. It's apparent that Alex is rather taken with his wife, Cilly Klofft, who is still rather beautiful - for her age. The reader assumes she's in her late sixties or early seventies. But what is it they say about age being only a number for some of us? And age plays a big part, a very big part, in this novel. Full review...
The Company Man by Robert Jackson Bennett
The Times says on the front cover that Bennett is 'clearly a writer to watch' so I had high hopes for this novel. We meet two of the central characters, American policeman Garvey and Englishman Hayes. Garvey's working cv is straightforward enough - he carries out police work, some of which is pretty grisly. But what about Hayes? He appears to be all things to all men but at the end of the day well, he's 'The Company Man' which gives the book its title. And so a complex scenario starts to unravel ... Full review...
Advice for Strays by Justine Kilkerr
If you have ever fancied a grown up version of The Tiger who came to Tea, the cover of this Vintage edition should hook you into reading Justine Kilkerr's first novel. Here sits a sad and patient-looking lion, and the female figure beside him, hidden by an umbrella, has that same vulnerable look of mother and child in Judith Kerr's classic children's picture book. At first this seems like a ridiculous connection, but thinking about it later I'm struck with the analogy, not to mention the similarity in authors' names. Full review...
These Things Hidden by Heather Gudenkauf
Golden girl Allison Glenn was living the perfect teenage life until she was imprisoned for a monstrous crime. Now she's twenty-one and has been released from prison to live in a halfway house. Allison is keen to put the past behind her, but when she returns to her home town of Linden Falls she soon discovers that no one has forgotten her crime, least of all her parents and her little sister, Brynn. Full review...
The Uncoupling by Meg Wolitzer
Dory and Robby Lang had one of those marriages that everyone envies. They're not just lovers, they're best friends too and they never seem to tire of each other. They're both popular teachers at Eleanor Roosevelt High School ('Elro' to those who know it well) where their daughter is a student. It's sometimes difficult to have your parent teaching at your school, but everything seems to rub along reasonably well and Dory was delighted when daughter Willa got a part in the school play. It's Lysistrata and whilst the drama teacher has to tone it down a little it still the play about the women who refuse to have sex with their men until they call a halt to the war they're fighting. Full review...
The Novel in the Viola by Natasha Solomons
Elise Landau arrived in England in 1938, a refugee from Vienna where she and her family had had a good lifestyle. In England she's destined for Tyneford in Dorset where she'll be a parlour maid at the big house. She's not exactly looking forward to it, but she's escaped Vienna with some of her mother's jewels sewn into the seams of her dresses and her father's latest novel, in manuscript, is hidden in the body of her viola. Her sister is leaving for the USA and her parents hope to follow. Surely Elise will be able to join them before too long? She knows that she won't like England. Full review...
The Bride That Time Forgot by Paul Magrs
Christmas is approaching in the seaside town of Whitby and Brenda is busy sprucing up her B&B. She hasn't seen her best friend, neighbour and investigating partner Effie for a few weeks, since Effie's strange gentleman friend Alucard has reappeared. Brenda and Effie are the guardians of the gateway to Hell which just happens to be right on their doorstep in Whitby, but since Effie has shut herself away, Brenda has turned to her friend Robert, the owner of the local hotel to help her with her investigations into the ever present strange goings on in the town, involving vampires, monsters and a rather strange car. Full review...
The Godless Boys by Naomi Wood
Britain. 1986.
The country became a theocracy during the 1950s and since then outbreaks of secular terrorism have been dealt with by exile. The atheists have been sent to the Island where they can burn churches as they please. Aside from a weekly boat bringing donated supplies, the exiled must shift as best they can on a remote snippet of land in the North Sea. Full review...
Toys by James Patterson and Neil McMahon
The novel has a very glamorous opening. We're at President Jacklin's inauguration party and the easy flow of narration gets me seamlessly and effortlessly into the story. There are plenty of comments and observations pertaining to the super-duper hi-tech times of the story, so as early as page 10 Hays and his beautiful wife Lizbeth, who are invitees, are attended to by a well-trained and well-programmed iJeeves butler. I loved that phrase. It made me smile. The Bakers are an impressive and influential couple. As part of the 'elite' society they expect a flawless, ordered life for themselves and their family. And Patterson then informs us that mere human beings have been relegated to menial work and most of them live pitiful lives and serves them right, apparently. They're despised but their labour is necessary to oil the wheels of the important daily lives of the elites. But the elites have extremely ambitious plans. Can they pull them off? Full review...
Naming the Bones by Louise Welsh
Murray Watson is a Doctor of English Literature embarking on a year-long sabbatical to pursue his long-held dream of writing the definitive biography of Archie Lunan and, as a specifically intended by-product, restore Lunan's poetry to its rightful place in the high canon of Scots creativity. Full review...
Rescue by Anita Shreve
When we meet Peter Webster he's a rookie paramedic who takes an emergency call to help a drunk driver who's been badly injured in a car crash. It was touch and go as to whether or not Sheila Arsenault made it, but she did and afterwards Webster can't get her out of his thoughts. Every instinct tells him that he shouldn't get involved with her – that it'll mean trouble – but perhaps it was the long, shining, dark hair that tipped the balance and Webster is involved in an intense love affair. He's also involved in Sheila's life – for better or for worse. Full review...
Serious Men by Manu Joseph
Ayyan Mani is a Dalit, an untouchable, stuck in a flat in Mumbai's slums but hoping, somehow, for a better future for his son. Working at the Insitute of Theory and Research he uses all his cunning and wiles to stay ahead of the game amongst the Brahmin scientists. Does he have the intelligence, and nerves, to convince everyone that his son, against all odds, is a genius? Full review...
Monsieur Linh and His Child by Philippe Claudel and Euan Cameron
From a war-ravaged country a bit like a Vietnam or a Cambodia an old man carries the fragile frame of his granddaughter aboard a refugee's ship, staring at the receding horizon all the weeks it takes to arrive at a city a bit like a Seattle or a New York. He and she are given the basics of a new life together but it's up to him, Monsieur Linh, to find friendship, which he does, accepting uncomprehendingly the chatty company of a fellow mourner called Bark. Full review...
Invisibles by Ed Siegle
The closest Brighton usually gets to Brazil is in the pages of a dictionary, but in Invisibles the two are drawn together in the life of Joel Burns, a thirty-five year old dentist who lives in Brighton as does his mother, Jackie, and partner Debbie from whom he is separated. When Joel sees a news clip of a bus hijack in Rio de Janeiro, where Joel and Jackie lived until Joel was ten, he is convinced that one of the bystanders is his Brazilian father. What makes this more unusual is that Jackie has always told Joel that his father is dead, although Joel has never quite bought into this story which is at least part of the cause of his problems with Debbie. The solution? Head off to Rio and see if he can track down this person. Full review...
The Cuckoo Parchment and the Dyke by Michael Dhillon
Tristan Jarry is the world's most famous artist but he's rather moved on from selling his work for millions and has just kidnapped Angelique Burr, the step-daughter of the President of the United States. She's not an innocent child but an abused and abusing woman, now a journalist and at times well able to hold her own with Jarry. He's got helpers though - and forward planning - and it's not long before Angelique finds herself involved in a trail of destruction and death as Jarry works towards his purpose. He intends to resurrect Dada, the iconic movement founded in 1916 in Zurich with the intention of protesting against the war. He'll tell Angelique so much – but not what he finally intends to do. Full review...
The Afterparty by Leo Benedictus
I opened the front cover and was confronted with the lines 'This book is different. You've really never read a book like this before.' Confident words, I thought but will the book live up to this lofty expectation I now had? And when I got round to reading the notes at the end of the novel, I was pleasantly surprised and also rather taken aback, I have to say. So, a refreshing take on the modern work of fiction, I thought, as I started on Chapter One. Full review...
The Death of Eli Gold by David Baddiel
Eli Gold is recognized as the 'the greatest living writer' - although his claim to this is slipping by by the day as he is on his death bed. He's not a nice character - his attitudes to his five wives and his children are deplorable and he has been bound up in his own 'genius'. He's a bit like the best and the worst of Saul Bellow, Philip Roth and Norman Mailer combined. Now dying in hospital in New York, the book explores this event from the perceptive of four people in his life; his eight year old, precocious daughter by his current wife; his first wife watching on the news from an old people's home in England; the angst-ridden son of his third marriage, himself a pale imitation of the author that his father is; and a mysterious fourth character who appears to have a very different motive for seeing Gold snr and who may be linked to Gold's fourth wife who died in a mutual suicide pact with her then-husband, from which Eli survived. (In fact his identity is revealed in the publisher's blurb on the jacket, but I'll let you decide if you want to know this or to let the story unfold as I did). Full review...
The Taker by Alma Katsu
When Dr Luke Findley begins his nightshift at Aroostook County Hospital in St Andrews, Maine, things are quiet until Lanny McIlvrae is brought in by the police. Lanny is covered in blood and claims she has killed a man and left him in the woods. Desperate to escape, Lanny quickly asks for Luke's help, but he is not sure at first, so Lanny decides to tell Luke her life story, a story that begins in the early Puritan settlement of St Andrews in 1809 and spans nearly two hundred years, taking Lanny from her home to Boston and beyond. A story that is rich, imaginative and entirely authentic, filling the majority of the novel, and there wasn't a moment when I questioned her reliability as she tells Luke everything, chapter by chapter, as he helps her to escape, slowly drawing him and the reader into her world. Full review...
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender
The title of this novel first caught my eye. How can food feel emotions?
Actually, it is Rose who discovers that when she is eating she can taste the feelings of the person who cooked or prepared the food. I was a bit worried that this initial gimmick of the book from which the title is taken would become annoying, but really this is another very well-written and readable novel about growing up in a dysfunctional family. Rose is about to turn 9 at the beginning, and comes home to find her mother making her birthday cake. She can't resist tasting the cake, and at first it is delicious: 'Warm citrus-baked batter lightness enfolded by cool deep dark swirled sugar'. But then she has 'the sensation of shrinking, of upset, tasting a distance I somehow knew was connected to my mother'. Full review...
Where Would I Be Without You? by Guillaume Musso
I love the cover, which I think angles this book firmly towards women. With that old Beach Boys hit from the Sixties as the title, it encapsulates everything you need to know when choosing this book. It's not really crime fiction, in that it lacks a whodunnit aspect in favour of following the protagonists, a French cop and a Scottish master criminal, through a romantic entanglement and into the jaws of death. The interest is in which of the two men will gain command of the other – and who is really driving the action – when both their attentions are focused on the same girl. Full review...
Shake Off by Mischa Hiller
Shake Off is the latest from the pen of Mischa Heller, a student of the John Le Carre universe where the Spies had to Come In From The Cold. Set in the 80s against a backdrop of daggers and cloaks, wests and easts and defectors and double agents, Heller's protagonist, Michel Khoury, hooked on pain killers and posing as a student, has been tasked with the unlikely mission of scouting for a Cambridge location in which to host secret talks between those Palestinians and Israelis who seek a 'secular democratic state for Jews, Christians and Muslims'. Full review...
When God Was A Rabbit by Sarah Winman
When God Was a Rabbit is a book that tugs at the emotions in a sweet but uncompromising way. It's in no way a RomCom but if you are a fan of that genre of film, I would suggest that you might too enjoy this book as it shares many of the traits if not the storyline. The analogy to a movie is apposite too as first time author Sarah Winman's 'day job' is as an actor - she has appeared recently in Holby City, for example. Full review...
The Book of Crows by Sam Meekings
Having lived in China for a substantial period of time, Sam Meekings has clearly soaked up a great deal of the culture; something he has already put to great effect in his first book, Under Fishbone Clouds. In The Book of Crows, his third book, he continues to show his talent as a non-Chinese raconteur of Chinese culture, but goes one step further by telling a story that spans several periods of Chinese history, thereby giving the reader a glimpse into different people's lives. Full review...
The Story of Beautiful Girl by Rachel Simon
The book begins with widow Martha, an ex-teacher in her seventies living alone in her farmhouse in the Pennsylvanian countryside. Martha's life is filled with loneliness, a phone that never rings, and she rarely sees other people. But all that is set to change one rainy night in 1968 when Lynnie and Homan knock on Martha's door. Lynnie and Homan have escaped from The School for the Incurable and Feebleminded, a harsh institution where people with disabilities are kept away from the rest of the world. Martha takes the couple in and soon discovers that Lynnie is carrying a new born baby. Full review...
Get Me Out Of Here by Henry Sutton
Hapless (and you could also say hopeless) Matt is fed up with his rather sad and unexciting life. So, at every opportunity he wants to spice it up a bit. But does this strategy work? We're barely pages into the book when we see that Matt is an out-and-out snob. He knows all the designer labels for the best clothes, the best shoes (handmade, natch), the best champagne label ... I think you may get my drift here. That's fine. As long as you can pay for this high life, what's the problem? Well, Matt's problem is cash - or the distinct lack of it. He's down on his financial luck at the minute so it's time to try another angle ... Full review...
The Curious Mystery of Miss Lydia Larkin and the Widow Marvell by Joolz Denby
I was a bit surprised by this book when it arrived. Joolz Denby is a punk poet, and has written four noir crime novels, including Billie Morgan, longlisted for the Orange Prize. This quirky little novella with a long title features a large black cat and recipes at the back. Has Joolz really written a cosy? Full review...
Three Miles by Robert Dinsdale
Captain Abraham Matthews is so desperate to catch the villainous Albie Crowe and bring the youngster to justice that some people would say he was obsessed. After six months, Matthews has finally tracked down his prey, and captures him just three miles from the police station. But with Albie's boys trying to rescue him, other men without Abraham's moral compass more interested in vengeance than justice, and the Luftwaffe dropping bombs on Leeds, this is set to be the longest three miles of either of their lives... Full review...
Saving Max by Antoinette Van Huegten
The one-page Prologue sees us at the scene of the crime. Two teenagers and a lot of blood - one of whom will not survive. Seems like an open-and-shut case - but is it? We then go back in time to a medical consulting room in downtown New York. Hot-shot lawyer and time-pressed, single mum Danielle is trying to understand her severely disabled son. Even allowing for the normal teenage angst and racing hormones, things are not good at home. She knows it. Max knows it. And the medical profession at large, know it. Something needs to be done before things get out of hand. Full review...
The Lake of Dreams by Kim Edwards
The book opens with a lovely and intriguing sentence - 'My name is Lucy Jarrett and before I knew about the girl in the window ... I found myself living in a village near the sea in Japan.' Who could fail to be drawn into a story after reading that, I thought. I was hooked immediately. Edwards gives us a fleeting taste of life in Japan, particularly the importance (almost reverence) of nature and gardens, public and private. This sets the tone for the novel which is captivating and interesting, but put together beautifully, unhurried. Full review...
Coconut Unlimited by Nikesh Shukla
It is the early 1990's and Amit, Anand and Nishant are three young Asian boys in an all white private school. As such they are considered massively uncool by default. Too bad then that their Asian peers in the North London Gujarati enclave known as Harrow think that they are a bunch of stuck up toffs. Soft. Weak. No street cred whatsoever. Worst of all they are labelled as 'Coconuts' (brown on the outside, white on the inside). There's only one thing for it - start a hip-hop band. The fact that they don't have any songs, talent or initially any idea what hip-hop actually sounds like isn't really a problem. As everyone knows, forming a band makes you 'pretty cool' and after that the girls simply fall at your feet. Full review...
Into The Darkest Corner by Elizabeth Haynes
The book didn't actually look that appealing. The cover is on the sepia side of dull. I didn't know the author's name and the title didn't really grab me. When I started reading we were straight into the transcript of a court case in which it seemed that a police officer was being questioned in court about his relationship with a woman. He was accused of being violent to her, but it seemed that the boot was really on the other foot. Then we were into a story – or even two stories – with two time lines some four years apart. Within ten minutes I couldn't put it down. Full review...
Lumen by Ben Pastor
Cracow, Poland, October 1939: The Germans have recently occupied Poland and are seeking to establish their authority. Captain Martin Bora of the Wehrmacht (the German army) has just arrived in the city from the battlefield to take up a posting to Intelligence. His boss asks Bora to drive him to a convent every day to see the renowned Abbess, rumoured to have mystic and healing powers. A few days later, though, she is found shot dead in the grounds of her convent. Bora is asked to investigate and report back. He proceeds to investigate who shot her and why, but as his investigation continues, there are more questions for Bora and the reader. Where does this case fit in with the priorities of the occupying forces? Full review...
The English German Girl by Jake Wallis Simons
When it began it wasn't pleasant, but there was hope that it would get better. Rosa's father, Otto was a doctor and she lived with him, her mother, Inga, elder brother Heinrich and younger sister Hedi in a pleasant flat in Berlin. The turn of opinion against Jews was slow – an anti-Jewish pin handed to Rosa as she went shopping, friends who felt that they couldn't remain such obvious friends – certainly for the time being – and a change of employment for Otto. It was better for the patients if they didn't have contact with him, even if he was a good doctor. Full review...