General fiction
A Life Lived Ridiculously by Annabelle R Charbit
Maxine is from a Jewish family who think that as her 20s are nearing their end, she should be married. Maxine, for her part, hasn't found anyone to interest her and is more concerned with combining her job and her studies and getting away from the yoke of her parents. She is also worried about her possessions and worries that she has too many and that they make her flat look untidy. She just can't get her flat organised the way she likes it, either, with the light not being quite right and never quite being able to decide which room her television should be in. Full review...
The Troubled Man by Henning Mankell
Hakan von Enke was a retired naval officer and a man of routine. Each morning he went for a long walk in the forest near his Stockholm home, but one day he failed to return. It's a long way from Ystad, Kurt Wallander's home town and the only reason he became involved in the case was the fact that von Enke's son Hans was the partner of Wallander's daughter Linda. Wallander became concerned about von Enke some months before when they had a long discussion at his seventy-fifth birthday party. He'd seemed worried and wary of a stranger in the street. Von Enke's disappearance hit the family hard - and then his wife disappeared as well. Full review...
Pantheon by Sam Bourne
The year is 1940. Oxford don James Zennor wants to serve his country, but due to an injury sustained while fighting in the Spanish Civil War he's rejected as unfit. When his wife and young son disappear, though, the trail leads to America in a journey which will plunge him into a world of secret societies, clandestine deals, and the chance to play his part in the war effort after all. If he survives... Full review...
My Policeman by Bethan Roberts
The story opens with two schoolfriends Sylvie and Marion doing what teenagers do best - talking and giggling about boys. Sylvie has a rather dishy and handsome older brother called Tom - and Marion has developed a bit of a crush on him. But it's nothing to worry about, she'll grow out of it. Except she doesn't. Even although, deep down, she has misgivings about this rather lukewarm romance. She's actually sizzling hot for some action, a bit of kissing, a bit of harmless snogging - but Tom's the one who is lukewarm. Why? Full review...
The Child Inside by Suzanne Bugler
Rachel Morgan feels that she does not fit in anywhere. Certainly not with all of the other mums at her son Jono's posh school. Certainly not with all the happy jolly families on the beaches when they are on holiday. And most of all, she no longer feels that she fits in with her own little family. Nothing ever feels right and she continually feels isolated on the outside looking in. Of course, these feelings lead to an increasing sense of dissatisfaction which she can only deal with by dwelling on what she perceives as her happier past. Full review...
Educating Jack by Jack Sheffield
September 1982 sees the beginning of Jack Sheffield's sixth year as head of Ragley-on-the-Forest village school and some of the village regulars are realising that this is going to be a year to remember too. Nora Pratt has been in the coffee shop for a quarter of a century now. Ronnie Smith decides that the world of employment might be for him after all - but is sacked from one job after a matter of seconds. At the cinema it's ET who's pulling in the crowds and Prince William comes into the world along with the 20p piece (well - not at exactly the same time), but it's Jack Sheffield who is going to face the biggest change. Full review...
A Fairy Tale by Tony Ross
In Balaclava Street Bessie was bored. Even her book wasn't helping. It was about fairies and she didn't believe in them, obviously. And even if they did exist they'd have more sense than to live in the gloomy streets around the mill, wouldn't they? Playing with her ball in the back yard she encountered her next-door neighbour, Mrs Leaf and a strange friendship developed between the old woman and the young girl. It was difficult for Bessie to work out if Mrs Leaf actually believed in fairies, but it seemed strange that as Bessie got older, Mrs Leaf seemed to get younger. And who exactly was Mrs Leaf? Full review...
This Isn't the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like You by Jon McGregor
The clue is in the Christopher Brookmyre-styled title. If the events, characters and circumstances in these stories are known to you, then you have my sympathies. A man causes an embarrassment trying to watch his daughter's first school nativity play. Another has a phobia of eggs containing an avian foetus when he puts knife and fork to them. There's a car crash here - and there, a drowning, some arson, some theft... and a lot of clues that point to some national disaster. Take all those clues as one and you eventually see this is more than just a collection of disparate short stories, but a very fractured, obfuscated novel. Full review...
The Thoughts and Happenings of Wilfred Price, Purveyor of Superior Funerals by Wendy Jones
It's Spring 1924 in South Wales, and young undertaker Wilfred is going to learn the hard way how serious the trivial can be. Fascinated by a girl's dress - worn very seductively by Grace, who he has met but twice as an adult - he blurts out a marriage proposal. As much as wants to take it back, she won't let him. He tries to move on, leaving her disappointed, especially when he falls for the daughter of a man he buries, but... There are things dangerously spoken, dangerously left unsaid, and a complex web of divided loyalties and enforced connections, in this brilliant debut novel. Full review...
Shakespeare's Mistress by Karen Harper
The conceit of Shakespeare's Mistress is that Shakespeare was married to Anne Whateley the day before he was married to Anne Hathaway, and Anne W remained the love of his life, with an affair (if you can have an affair with your 'wife') continued in London where the same Anne was also the famed dark lady of his sonnets. There is some basis for this theory in that the parish records do show a mysterious entry into the register for just such a contract the day before the Hathaway marriage but although the author claims this is 'faction', it's very much at the fiction end of that scale and is really a 'what if?' piece. Full review...
The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole by Sue Townsend
The country might be at war over the Falklands but life is hardly straight-forward in the Mole household. Adrian's parents are back together after both had disastrous affairs and it's not long before Adrian is shocked to learn that his mother is pregnant. He's equally shocked to see his father helping Doreen (a.k.a. the 'stick insect') along a path which isn't particularly slippy, although he does notice that she seems to have put on quite a bit of weight. Pandora Braithwaite is as fickle, but adorable, as ever and Adrian's hormones are still playing hop-scotch with his brain. So, what's new? Full review...
A Kind Man by Susan Hill
Meet Eve, and her husband, the title character, Tommy. She's at a bit of a sticky wicket in life, for however much they want a baby, her sister and his feckless husband churn out son after son after son, and go no lengths at all to love them. So when Eve and Tommy do at last have a child, it's a tragedy for it to die when only three years old. But in this plot, which you'll thank me for not going into further, there will be a lot more swings and roundabouts, of torment and ecstasy, doldrums and delights, hell and heaven, to come. Full review...
The Second Coming by John Niven
God has come back from a holiday and has some catching up to do. What’s been happening on Earth for the last couple of hundred years? The realisation hits him hard... it makes him sick in fact. So what’s the answer? To quote the religious cliché, Jesus is. After a board meeting with the senior saints, God decides that his son must be torn away from jamming with Hendrix to go back to the streets of the world to remind the sinners of the way. Full review...
Wonder by R J Palacio
August Pullman was born with a rare genetic defect that has caused extreme facial disfiguration. He has undergone 27 surgeries since he was born and has always been vulnerable to illness. In order to deal with his medical needs and to shield him from the staring and cruelty of the world, Auggie has been home-schooled by his parents for his entire life. But Auggie is stronger now and all of that is about to change. Auggie is about to enter school for the first time – and he’s petrified. ‘Wonder’ is the story of Auggie’s first year at Beecher Prep and his first journey alone into the outside world. But can he confront the challenges that wait for him there and convince his classmates, new friends, family and himself that, underneath his unusual appearance, he is just the same as everybody else? Full review...
The Descendants by Kaui Hart Hemmings
On the face of it Matt King is very lucky. He's descended from one of Hawaii's largest landowners and is a wealthy man as well as being an attorney. He's married to the flighty, flirtatious Joanie and has two daughters, teenager Alex, a model who might just have a bit of a drug problem and ten year old Scottie. She's feisty, clever and - for me - stole the book. Have you ever noticed that when luck changes it doesn't do it in baby steps? It does it in lumps. Joanie is involved in a powerboat accident and sinks into an irreversible coma as a result of a head injury. But there's more piling up. Matt discovers that Joanie has been having an affair. Does the man who's been - er - enjoying his wife have the right to say his goodbyes too? Full review...
Bereft by Chris Womersley
Quinn Walker, a young Australian man fresh from fighting on the European front in World War One, returns to the very town he was drummed out of ten years before, after being accused of raping and killing his own younger sister. Two things have beaten him to the small settlement - one, the global flu pandemic; two a telegram saying he died bravely in action earlier in the war. And the less you know of what he meets and does back in Flint the better, the more to keep this fresh and brilliant book's many intrigues as secret as they were for me. Full review...
This Beautiful Life by Helen Schulman
Richard and Liz are new in town which is always a bummer, except this town is Manhattan so really nothing else could ever compare. They’ve only moved from upstate New York but it seems a world away now. Liz has given up her post at the university to concentrate on kids Coco and Jake and is finding juggling their social lives a full time job in itself but is just about making a space for herself among the other mothers at the school gates. Things are going ok. And then, one day, their nice, comfortable world starts to crumble. Jake receives an explicit email from a classmate and in disbelief, forwards it straight on to a friend. Except rather than coming back to him with advice on what the heck to do next, the friend chooses to send it on to another friend, who does the same. Round and round it goes, round the school, round the city, round the online world. Everyone knows where it came from and soon Jake’s academic future, his father’s career and his whole family’s social standing are hanging in the balance. Full review...
Maine by Courtney Sullivan
The Kellehers' beach-front holiday home in Maine was built on a plot of land won in a bar-room bet at the end of World War II. It's not in the same league as the Kennedy compound at Hyannis Port but there are a couple of substantial properties on the plot and there's still room to spare. It's a place of indulgence, secrets and the sort of burning cruelty which you only get in families who care for each other - some of the time. Maine is essentially the story of a summer at the property - but the seeds of what happens were, of course, planted long ago. Full review...
The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach
The Art of Fielding is basically a US-style campus novel featuring baseball. There are similarities in style between this and many of John Irving's works, with baseball substituting for Irving's wrestling focus. This, to the UK-reader, raises the first potential barrier as we are, as a rule, largely ignorant of the US fixation with the intricacies of baseball. Certainly you don't need an in depth knowledge to appreciate this story - it is really a story of friendship, ambition and the sporting dreams of youth - but despite a loose understanding of the sport I felt that I would have benefitted from more knowledge particularly towards the end when there is a climactic baseball match. You kind of get the point, but I certainly felt that I was missing out on a little of the tension, in much the same way I'd expect a US reader to be perplexed if the story had been based on say, cricket. It's a minor flaw though and it would be a shame if potential readers dismissed it for this reason. Full review...
The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey
The heart of Alaskan native, Eowyn Ivey's debut novel is a re-telling of the Russian fairy tale Snegurochka or The Snow Child. Set here in Alaska in the 1920s, Jack and Mabel have moved from the East coast to start a new life, apart from anything to help Mabel get over the grief of having lost her only child in childbirth. Life in Alaska is tough and Jack struggles to farm his new homestead. Then in the first snowfall of the season, a playful snowball fight leads to the couple building a snowman, or more accurately a snowgirl. The next morning the snowgirl has vanished along with the mittens and scarf that adorned her and Jack sees a ghostly figure, possibly a young girl, running in the woods. Can they have created a snow child? Is this their longed for daughter? Full review...
Winter in Madrid by C J Sansom
Despite being injured at Dunkirk Harry Brett was still willing to do his bit for his country. The deafness from the bomb which killed the man standing next to him on the beach - and the resulting panic attacks had begun to recede and he was willing, if not keen, to go to Spain to do some work for the sneaky beakies. He wasn't a spy by nature or inclination but he was one of the few people who might be able to make contact with - and report back on - Sandy Forsyth who'd been at his public school. There's another old Rookwoodian who's left some history in Madrid. Bernie Piper went to Spain to fight for the International Brigades in the Civil War and was thought to have been killed at Jarama but his body had never been found. The school is not the only link though. Barbara Clare was Bernie's girlfriend - she was a Red Cross nurse - and now she was living with Sandy Forsyth. Full review...
The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾ by Sue Townsend
Adrian Mole was just three months away from his fourteenth birthday when he began writing his diary on New Year's Day. He's just on the edge of true adolescence - pimples are appearing as is a little bit of interest in the opposite sex. He's thinking about what he might like to do eventually, but his first major challenge is the breakdown of his parents' marriage. He writes with a wonderful mixture of knowingness and innocence and usually manages to get things just ever-so-slightly wrong. Full review...
The Rum Diary - A Screenplay by Bruce Robinson
Kemp has lied his way onto a failing newspaper in San Juan, Puerto Rica, as the only candidate for the job, and in a semi-comatose state induced by too many miniatures from the hotel minibar, stumbles into a conspiracy of epic proportions, via classic bar room brawls and nightclub mayhem. On the way he (almost) writes horoscopes and bowling championship stories, meets the fantastically erotic girlfriend of the evil businessman, and teams up with a proto-Nazi out of his mind on a cocktail of hootch and LSD, and a photographer side kick. There is no question that this is Hunter S Thompson territory, especially when all the above is combined with a witty, slow-talking hero who in spite of his alcoholic haze sees clearly through the exploitation of a third world country by its massive first world near neighbour. Full review...
My Dear I Wanted to Tell You by Louisa Young
It takes a while for the full power of Louisa Young's remarkable My Dear I Wanted To Tell You to become apparent, but when it does, it can hardly fail to move you. Set just before and during World War One, it's a story of love and human spirit against the odds. The impact of the book is in what happens to the characters, so I don't want to give too much away, but it's worth pointing out that it's not for the overly squeamish reader particularly in some of the descriptions of surgical procedures, which have clearly been meticulously researched by Young. The title itself it taken from the opening words of the standard letters that the wounded were given to send to loved ones back home. The wounded were required to fill in the blanks. Full review...
Little Bones by Janette Jenkins
While this might sound like the afterlife of a brilliant and unlikely cabaret mimic, it's not. It's a rich, evocative and engaging novel set in the last years of Victoria's reign, in the depths of her darkest London. Fate - and being abandoned by, in turn, her mother and older sister - leaves Jane Stretch living with and working for a doctor and his lumpen, housebound wife. Jane is alternatively called an 'unfortunate' and a 'cripple' for her disabilities and distorted frame, but she has enough bookish intelligence to pass herself off as an assistant to the doctor, who only ever does one operation - abortions, for music hall artistes. The plot is evidently gearing up to reveal how dangerous such a criminal business might be, for the both of them. Full review...
Tiny Sunbirds Far Away by Christie Watson
Tiny Sunbirds Far Away starts in Lagos but soon moves to the rural, oil producing Niger Delta. This allows Christie Watson's young narrator, 12 year old Blessing, to view the traditional ways afresh. It's a clever device and young Blessing is shocked by the rural conditions after a relatively luxurious life in Lagos with a good school and a modern apartment. But when her mother discovers her father on top of another woman, she takes Blessing and her older brother, the asthmatic Ezikiel, back to her family home. Full review...
In Darkness by Nick Lake
Shorty is lying in the rubble of the great Haitian earthquake of 2010. If he's not rescued soon, he will die. Shorty is from Site Soley, the sprawling slum of Port-au-Prince. After the murder of his father and abduction of his twin sister, Shorty has allowed himself to fall further and further into the slum's gang culture. But Route 9 isn't all about drug-dealing and gun-running - it's also about feeding the poor and educating the children. And Shorty has a great deal to teach his readers, as he recounts his life while waiting to die. Full review...
The Child Who by Simon Lelic
Simon Lelic's third book, The Child Who, takes him back to the format that worked so successfully with his first novel, Rupture, avoiding the near-future angle he took, less successfully I felt, with his second book. Lelic's themes are always inspired by real events that have been in the news. Here, he tackles the murder of an 11 year old child by Daniel, a 12 year old. The creative inspiration is surely the James Bulger case and he acknowledges the creative debt to Blake Morrison's As If on that very subject. Full review...
All To Play For by Heather Peace
Back in August 1985 at the time of the Edinburgh Festival a group of people met in what could have been difficult circumstances. They were arrested for causing a disturbance despite the fact that they weren't really involved in the fracas and it was all a misunderstanding. Little did they know that in the following decade they would all be involved - one way and another - in producing drama for the BBC as it went through one of the toughest periods in its history. The tale is told - mainly - by Rhiannon, but we hear the stories of Nicky, Maggie, Jill, Jonathan and Chris. Names will change, but they'll all wander the circular corridors of power in Langford Place. Full review...
Twisted Agendas by Damian McNicholl
Writing about Ireland and the Irish, especially the dimension of the Troubles and the IRA, from a third hand American perspective is a recipe for cliché and stereotype. Balancing and interweaving the story of American journalist Piper with that of Irishman Danny's search for independence in London does enable McNicholl in some part to achieve a wry and knowing stance, making us hope for a clever twist away from the predictably which always seems so close. Full review...
City of Bohane by Kevin Barry
Bohane is a thoroughly lawless town, set in what would appear to be some kind of parallel universe. We are told it is set in 2053, but it's a town without any technology or modern luxuries. It's a violent place fuelled by alcohol, drugs and lust with a patois style language that takes a little work to get into. Novels with this kind of premise have to be beyond good if they are to interest the annual literary prize judges; this is one such book and City of Bohane is nominated for this year's Costa First Novel prize. It is stunningly good. Full review...
Pao by Kerry Young
In her Costa Prize short-listed first novel, Kerry Young brings together a huge number of elements that make up a good story. Set in Jamaica, the time period covers 1938 to almost present day, it is the political backdrop of independence and control over Jamaica's assets that informs much of the story. But while the politics of Jamaica resound throughout the book, it's also a very personal story about the life of the eponymous Yang Pao. Issues of race, class, love, family, ambition and business philosophy - Pao's guiding light is Sun Tzu's The Art of War - are skilfully woven into the mix to make this a great book to curl up with on a cold winter's night. Full review...
Made in Britain by Gavin James Bower
The settings of the intertwined tales of Russell, the working class swot trapped by his conditions, Charlie, the heroic 'lad' who gets caught in the drugs scene and Hayley the naïve wannabee with a single parent father are the school rooms and backstreets, flats, pubs and clubs of Every Town, the vision of twenty-first century deprivation that Bower conjures. Or rather fails to conjure, for the device of making the 16 year olds tell the story from their own first person narrative deprives the reader of a genuine sense of the physical reality in which this story unfolds. Full review...
Bloodmining by Laura Wilkinson
Although Wilkinson has placed her story in the near future, for the most part, you wouldn't necessarily be aware of that fact. Personally, I was delighted as I'm not a fan of futuristic fiction. Full review...
The Forgotten Lies by Kerry Jamieson
In the mid-thirties, the golden age of Hollywood, three aspiring starlets shared a studio house on Lantana Drive as they waited to hear if they were going to have a career in the movies – or not. Charlotte (soon to be Carlie for acting purposes), Verbena, known to her friends (and only her friends) as Bee and Ivy were desperate for the role of a lifetime, which would put their name in lights. There was an added appeal. Whoever won would star opposite Liam Malone – good looking, charismatic and very married with six children. It wasn't just a case of being able to act. Their lives would be under intense scrutiny. Full review...
The Cocaine Salesman by Conny Braam
Picture a world of hellish exclusion, nightmarish noise and images, and horrid violence. Picture one person trying to live through the sleepless nights, the isolation among his peers, the permanent sense of dreadful threat. Picture him needing drugs. His best friend might even be called Charlie. But don't picture an inner city slum, 2012, but a man on the front in World War One. Full review...
Sisterwives by Rachel Connor
When I first read the title (I hadn't yet read the back cover blurb) I glibly thought that it was about two sisters and their marriages. Wrong. This debut novel by Connor is about two very different women (one is no more than a girl really) who just happen to 'marry' the same man. I use the word marry very loosely indeed. Their community, their rules, their descriptions etc can be rather quirky. Marriages are normally called 'sealings'.' Full review...
Why Me? The Very Important Emails of Bob Servant by Neil Forsyth
Catchy title and catchy front cover graphics. What's not to like? It takes a lot to make me laugh generally, but as I had an initial flick through this book, things looked promising. And I was also thinking that it's a pleasant change to see another location (other than perhaps the predictable Glasgow and Edinburgh) get an airing. Full review...
Sherry Cracker Gets Normal by D. J. Connell
Whilst it's wrong to judge a book by its cover, a mere sight of D. J. Connell's second novel 'Sherry Cracker Gets Normal' is enough to make me smile. The title is amusing; the colourful design enticing and the effusive praise for Connell's debut 'Julian Corkle is a Filthy Liar' encouraging. Full review...