Get cool by the pool with books summer’s hottest reads

Thrillers, with their tick-inthe-box characterisation and severely limited plot lines in which the goodie invariably turns out to be the baddie and/or vice versa, have stopped thrilling me. You might as well play Patience or Join-the-Dots. Holidays – when your imagination has time to roam – are perfect for tackling something more interesting. Emile Zola’s novels never let you down. A good short one is Thérèse Raquin (Vintage Classics, €11.19) – dark and creepy – but if you want something longer then I’d go for The Beast Within (Pocket Penguins, £7.99) – even darker and creepier.

Although he had an obsessive interest in chronicling life as it was lived then, Zola was also something of a visionary: The Ladies’ Paradise (OUP, €9.34), about a vast new department store shutting down local trade, heralds our own age of chain stores and globalisation.

And each year I seem to discover a new modern novelist. Last year, it was Meg Wolitzer; the year before that Tessa Hadley. Until this year I’d never read Ann Patchett. Her most recent novel, Commonwealth (Bloomsbury, €11.99), is an exhilarating and beautifully crafted dissection of an extended family. I’ll definitely be taking another of her novels away with me on holiday this year. My daughter says that Bel Canto is the one I’d like best and so that’s what I’ll be packing, because she’s always right.