This month’s best books Pandora
Literary editor Sarra Manning picks her five favourite reads for January
Wahala by Nikki May
(Doubleday, £14.99, out 6th January)
Believe the hype around this buzzy debut, because Wahala is a fast-paced, just-another-chapter-before-bed tale of family, food and ride-or-die friends. Boo, Ronke and Simi are three Anglo-nigerian women with very different lives, but their trio is rock solid until Isobel arrives on the scene and takes a wrecking ball to everything they hold dear.
Five Tuesdays In Winter by Lily King
(Picador, £14.99, out 20th January) A collection of 10 stories, Five Tuesdays In Winter captures those intense, defining moments in life without veering into melodrama. Standouts for me are the title story about the manager of a used bookstore quietly in love with one of his employees and When In The Dordogne about a neglected teenage boy left in the care of two college students, who ends up having the best eight weeks of his life.
Little Wing by Freya North
(Welbeck, £12.99, out 20th January) I can’t remember the last time I read a book in one sitting, or sobbed so hard at the end, but Little Wing is a really special novel. In 1969, a scared pregnant teenager is banished to the remote island of Harris in the Outer Hebrides. Some 35 years later, Nell also finds herself amid the desolate beauty of Harris as she tries to make sense of her life and discover who she really is. If Little Wing doesn’t get you right in the feels, then you’re not human.
Free Love by Tessa Hadley
(Vintage, £16.99, out 20th January)
The Swinging Sixties had barely hit suburbia until the Fischers, placid diplomat Roger and his mildly discontented wife Phyllis, invite the wannabe revolutionary son of friends to dinner. When Phyllis and Nicky end up kissing, it causes Phyllis to make a shocking decision that will affect them all, especially her unhappy, ungainly daughter, Colette. Free Love is an absolute joy to read from a writer who never puts a word wrong. Fans of Small Pleasures will love it.
by Susan Stokes-chapman
(Harvill Secker, £14.99, out 27th January)
Travel back in time to Georgian London where Dora Blake works for her odious uncle in her late parents’ famed antiquities shop. When her uncle mysteriously acquires an ancient Greek vase, Dora teams up with young scholar, Edward, to uncover its mysteries but soon realises some things are best left unknown. Based on the myth of Pandora’s box, this is an immersive, evocative story full of romance and intrigue.