12 Brilliant holiday reads

ARE YOU LYING COMFORTABLY IN A SUNNY SPOT ON THE BEACH? THEN WE’LL BEGIN...

ONE of the best things about going on holiday is getting to catch up on all those talked-about books you haven’t read yet. Whether you’re a Kindle addict or prefer the real thing there’s something to suit all tastes in our round-up.

TOP PICKS THE MINISTRY OF UTMOST HAPPINESS Arundhati Roy (Hamish Hamilton)

THE heaviest tome on our list comes 20 years after Arundhati Roy’s debut novel, The God Of Small Things.

The Ministry Of Utmost Happiness mines her research on India’s troubled political system, delicately braiding together strands of the brutal and toxic Kashmir conflict, with the difficulties faced by a community of hijra (transgender people, now recognised as the ‘third gender’ in Indian law) and the fate of a baby abandoned on a rubbish-strewn street.

Roy’s use of language is beautiful and inventive – she demands your mind and your time, and the rewards are huge.

THE SUNSHINE SISTERS Jane Green (Macmillan)

DEFINITELY the ‘beachiest’ book of our 12, this is the story of beautiful and charismatic B-movie actress Ronni’s three daughters.

Self-absorbed and disinterested, Ronni wasn’t the mother she wanted to be. Nell, Meredith and Lizzy have been left to their own devices, estranged from their Ronni – and each other – until in adulthood they are summoned home as Ronni has motor neurone disease and is at the end of her life.

Can this fractured family forgive their past and heal? This novel pulls on the heartstrings, but also feels like coming home.

SMALL GREAT THINGS Jodi Picoult (Hodder & Stoughton)

WHEN a newborn baby dies after a routine hospital procedure, there is no doubt who will be held responsible, the black nurse who has been banned from looking after him by his white supremacist father.

What follows is a tense courtroom drama after nurse Ruth Jefferson is charged with his murder and her fate lies in the hands of white public defender Kennedy McQuarrie.

Picoult is an accomplished storyteller and this is a thought provoking book about prejudice and power.

ELEANOR OLIPHANT IS COMPLETELY FINE Gail Honeyman (HarperCollins)

ELEANOR has worked at the same boring job for eight years. She has the same routine; home, the Archers and pasta and salad for tea. On a Friday evening, she buys a pizza and two bottles of vodka to see her through the weekend. Eleanor, who’s 31, was in care through much of her childhood and has hazy flashbacks to a traumatic event.

When scruffy new office IT guy Raymond and Eleanor see an elderly man take a tumble, it draws the two of them together into a tentative friendship that will eventually help Eleanor break free from her lonely existence and learn how to live.

She’s a joy to read as a character.

CRIME AND THRILLERS INTO THE WATER Paula Hawkins (Doubleday)

THE follow-up to the huge-seller The Girl On The Train is set in a village in Northumberland, where Jules Abbott returns home following the death of her estranged sister, Nel.

Was it suicide or foul play? The plot quickly thickens, as the stretch of water where she’s found has a long history as the scene of a series of tragic female deaths.

Nel herself was artistically obsessed with this place, known locally as The Drowning Pool, and the book similarly seeks to draw us in to its darkly compelling depths. Hawkins is very good at describing characters experiencing extreme emotions, and there are passages and scenes that are gripping.

THE CHILD Fiona Barton (Bantam Press) JOURNALIST Kate Waters is back

and this time investigating the decades-old skeleton of a baby found on an east London building site. Kate is determined to find out who buried the baby and if it’s Alice Irving, a newborn stolen from a local maternity hospital in the Seventies. The pace of Kate’s investigation is matched by the unravelling story of Emma Massingham, who is struggling to come to terms with her own past. Every couple of chapters, Barton kicks the novel’s suspense into a new gear, and you won’t be able to put it down until all the secrets have been shared.

THE GIRLFRIEND Michelle Frances (Pan Macmillan)

LAURA and her son Daniel have always been close, but he’s been away at university. When he returns home after graduating, she relishes spending time with him.

In a matter of days though, Daniel meets Cherry, a bright, ambitious estate agent who has always wanted more for herself.

Laura invites Cherry over for a family meal, but rather than forging a friendship, the two women get off to a less than auspicious start.

Michelle Frances’ skill lies in taking a relationship familiar to many, and creating two characters who transform it into something much more malignant, keeping the reader on a knife-edge throughout.

HE SAID, SHE SAID Erin Kelly (Minotaur)

THIS best-seller is so gripping you might forget to sip your poolside mojito, you will be so busy turning its pages.

When Laura and her boyfriend Kit witness a brutal rape, their testimony helps to put the culprit behind bars. The victim seems grateful but years go by and things take a sinister turn –15 years later the couple are living in fear under assumed identities.

Told in the words of Kit and Laura in alternating chapters, this is an exploration of the lengths to which people will go to conceal a lie. Kelly keeps you twisting and turning all the way and you will love it.

MYSTERY THE ESSEX SERPENT Sarah Perry (HarperCollins)

WATERSTONES’ Book of 2016, Sarah Perry’s novel is now out in paperback making it much easier to take on holiday. The beautifully written book is set in 19th-century England and tells the story of Cora Seaborne, a widow freed from a controlling unhappy marriage who retreats to the Essex countryside with her son, where she hears rumours about the so called ‘Essex serpent’, which is being blamed for a spate of mysterious deaths.

BEST NON-FICTION I FOUND MY TRIBE Ruth Fitzmaurice (Chatto & Windus)

RUTH FITZMAURICE and her husband Simon were happily married and expecting their third child when he was diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease in 2008. Given only three years to live, he is still alive nearly a decade later, but can now only communicate with his eyes.

Fitzmaurice struggles – with Simon’s decline and the pressure of looking after their five children. But in the midst of all this, she finds her ‘tribe’ – the Tragic Wives’ Swimming Club, a group of friends who regularly brave the Irish Sea to gain a fleeting moment of exhilaration, normality and freedom.

Fitzmaurice’s book is poetic, devastating, life-affirming and funny. WEDDING TOASTS I’LL NEVER GIVE

Ada Calhoun (W.W. Norton & Company)

ADA CALHOUN’S new book of essays is no place for soul mates and generic declarations of togetherness. Instead, there’s resentment for missing flights, breaking bathroom taps and finding other people attractive.

If this sounds cynical, it’s not meant to be; Calhoun is supportive of love and those who seek it out. Her sweetest moments are those where she zones in on the minutiae of her marriage and being a parent.

Calhoun reserves her final essay for the one speech she would give newlyweds.

Hopeful, sensible and grounded in reality, it serves as guidance to those in long-term relationships and those embarking on them.

BUT SERIOUSLY John McEnroe (W&N)

IF you’re missing McEnroe’s iconic voice in his Wimbledon commentaries, dip into his second autobiography. His first, 2003’s Serious, charted his childhood and early days of tennis – which progressed to seven Grand Slam singles titles, the ‘Superbrat’ reputation and a tumultuous eightyear marriage to actress Tatum O’Neal, marred by her addiction battles, his hot temper and a prolonged custody battle for their three children.

Now, the follow-up deals with his struggles to reinvent himself as a father, art collector, musician and broadcaster, his relationship with second wife Patty Smyth, and his efforts to be the best father he could to his six children.