Great holiday POPULAR WENDY HOLDEN
Wherever you’re going, slip one or two of these in your bag – there’s something for everyone in the best reads of the summer, as chosen by our critics
AT THE TABLE by Claire Powell
(Fleet £14.99, 336 pp) The Maguires have problems; parents Linda and Gerry have just separated, daughter Nicole is an alcoholic and son Jamie is drifting into a disastrous posh marriage.
Their stories knit together via meals and drinks. The best is the bust-up in the bijou wedding barn. Brilliantly well-written.
PAPER CUP by Karen Campbell
(Canongate £14.99, 336 pp) KeLLy’s homeless, with alcohol and drug issues. she’s on a park bench in Glasgow when a drunk hen-party bride gives her money — and, by mistake, her engagement ring. Can Kelly return it in time for the wedding? A journey begins, in more ways than one. Moving, funny, amazing.
ONE MOONLIT NIGHT
by Rachel Hore (S&S £16.99, 480 pp) MAddie’s house is bombed in the Blitz and husband Philip is missing after dunkirk. With her children, she seeks refuge at Philip’s childhood home, and encounters odd relatives and a hidden past. But the biggest surprise is yet to come. Gripping, romantic, dripping with wartime atmosphere.
LONDON, WITH LOVE
by Sarra Manning (Hodder £16.99, 432 pp) JeNNy and Nick are North London teenagers who form an unbreakable bond at school. she loves him, but he’s unattainable. They take on the world in their careers and their stories cross all the time. But will they ever get together? A history of hipster style as well as a fabulous romcom.
SCI-FI & FANTASY JAMIE BUXTON A MARVELLOUS LIGHT
by Freya Marske (Tor £16.99, 384pp) iN edWArdiAN england, magic’s a game for a few aristocratic families, until one renegade stops playing by the rules and upsets the well-established order. This brilliant debut, blending romance, adventure and whodunnit, is told with real panache and elegance. in a word, enchanting.
ALL THE SEAS OF THE WORLD
by Guy Gavriel Kay (Hodder £22, 512 pp) you’re immersed in a beautifully detailed fantasy renaissance world, then swept along in its warm, deep, dangerous currents. here be silks and swordplay, undreamed-of wealth and terrible danger for Lenia and rafel, two hard-bargaining seafarers, as they battle fate, enemies and their own doubts to survive.
VENOMOUS LUMPSUCKER
by Ned Beauman (Sceptre £20, 304 pp)
CyNiCAL eco-consultant meets furious eco-scientist in this somewhat brutally satirical and grimly hilarious eco-thriller.
how does the corporate world respond to mass extinction? it turns it into a business opportunity. Then the very rare venomous lumpsucker threatens to derail the gravy train.
HER MAJESTY’S ROYAL COVEN
by Juno Dawson (HarperVoyager 14.99, 464 pp) WhAT does a modern witch from hebden Bridge deal with? Teenagers with identity issues, love affairs, siblings . . . and Armageddon. Members of the royal Coven — first established by Anne Boleyn no less — must put divisions aside to battle ancient evil. Warm, witty and cleverly subversive.
LITERARY FICTION ANTHONY CUMMINS
TO PARADISE
by Hanya Yanagihara (Picador £20, 720pp)
The author of the harrowing bestseller A Little Life split the critics once again with an intricate triptych that moves from a subtly counterfactual 19thcentury New york to a climateravaged surveillance dystopia 100 years hence.
Not for everyone, but few novelists are taking risks like yanagihara right now.
TRESPASSES
by Louise Kennedy (Bloomsbury £14.99, 320 pp) seT in Northern ireland during the Troubles, this propulsive debut follows a Catholic primary school teacher who falls for a married Protestant barrister twice her age. A masterclass in packing vast emotional and thematic range onto a compact canvas, it’s going to hoover up the prizes, if there’s any justice.
WE WERE YOUNG
by Niamh Campbell (W&N £14.99, 288pp) TiP-ToeiNG between satire and sympathy, Campbell’s quietly clever novel unfolds from the middle-aged perspective of a commitment-shy photographer energetically sleeping his way around the bright young things of dublin’s art scene while determinedly looking the other way from the nagging ghosts of his childhood.
HEX
by Jenni Fagan (Polygon £10, 112 pp) FueLLed by righteous outrage at gender injustice, this eerie novella plays with grisly historical events to conjure a meeting between a girl jailed as a witch in
16th-century Scotland and a timetravelling visitor who brings her dismaying tales of persecution faced by women in the present.
CLAIRE ALLFREE
VLADIMIR
by Julia May Jonas (Picador £14.99, 256 pp) A 58-yeAr-old married college professor becomes infatuated with her much younger male colleague in this sharply executed inversion of Nabokov’s lolita.
Female ageing and desire, sexual agency in the era of #MeToo, the relationship between morality and art, even a nod to Stephen King’s Misery: it’s all here in this sexy stealthy slippery debut, one of the year’s hottest reads.
YOUNG MUNGO
by Douglas Stuart (Picador £16.99, 400 pp) MAgic seems to flow from the pen of douglas Stuart, winner of the 2020 Booker Prize for his heartbreaking debut Shuggie Bain. yes, his new novel is once again about a young gay lad and his alcoholic mother beating against the tide in recessionblasted Scotland.
But if one’s heart wept for drinksodden Agnes in Shuggie Bain, this time round Stuart refuses to let his characters off the hook. A tough, uncompromising novel, and possibly all the better for it.
THE EXHIBITIONIST
by Charlotte Mendelson (Mantle £16.99, 336 pp)
Middle-clASS marital dramas set in rambling North london houses are an endangered breed these days.
Thank goodness, then, for charlotte Mendelson’s deliciously spiky black comedy about a dysfunctional couple hurtling towards a celebratory family reunion at the behest of the selfdeluding patriarch, ray, an artist who hasn’t had any professional success for decades. like Tessa Hadley but funnier. And with much sharper claws.
RECITATIF
by Toni Morrison (Chatto & Windus £9.99, 96pp) THiS reissued short story, the only one Morrison wrote, is perfect for whiling away the time in departures waiting for that delayed flight. it’s the story of two girls who meet at a children’s home in 1960s New york and several times after that.
one is black, the other white, and the fact it’s impossible to tell which is which says as much about our own distorted relationship with race as it does about Morrison’s exquisite skill. So thought-provoking you’ll want everyone you know to read it.
STEPHANIE CROSS FREE LOVE
by Tessa Hadley (Jonathan Cape £16.99, 336 pp) TeSSA HAdley’S sparkling eighth novel is her best yet — and the bar was hardly low. Set in 1967, it follows suburban housewife Phyllis as she jettisons her
boring, bourgeois marriage for a passionate affair with a much younger man. A story about change and its limits, its beautifully judged ending will bring you to tears.
LOVE MARRIAGE
by Monica Ali (Virago £18.99, 512pp)
THe first novel in ten years from the author of Brick lane is well worth the wait. A marvellously entertaining clash-ofcultures tale, it revolves around the romance of trainee london medics Joe Sangster and yasmin ghorami — though it’s their parents who are perhaps most memorable.
NIGHTCRAWLING
by Leila Mottley (Bloomsbury £16.99, 288 pp) BASed on a true-life story, Nightcrawling follows black oakland teenager Kiara as her efforts to care for others end with her falling prey to a police-run sex ring.
A remarkable achievement, potently charged and full of tough beauty, from a debut author who has only just turned 20.
THE BEWITCHING
by Jill Dawson (Sceptre £20, 320 pp) AN ATMoSPHeric and powerful story of witchcraft in the 16thcentury english fens, this novel’s relevance to our own era of conspiracy theories and #MeToo is clear and will keep you gripped right through to its daringly beautiful coda.
CONTEMPORARY SARA LAWRENCE
THE LOVE OF MY LIFE
by Rosie Walsh (Mantle £14.99, 368 pp)
THiS beautifully written romance has all the plot twists of a psychological thriller. emma and leo are married with a daughter but leo doesn’t know his wife has kept huge parts of her past concealed. As emma’s lies slowly unravel, he realises he has no idea who she is. A gripping love story perfect for a lazy day on
the beach.
by Dawn Winter (Fleet £14.99, 272 pp)
THiS black comedy stars Frances, an engaging anti-heroine, whose life is a mess. Frances is not looking for a relationship when she meets elaine but she does owe money to threatening drug dealers. Thinking elaine could help pay them off, Frances asks her to move in. unable to get any peace, Frances then decides to sedate elaine. Hilarious, tender, crazy and beautiful.
HUSH
SEDATING ELAINE
by Kate Maxwell (Virago £16.99, 384 pp)
STeVie is 38, single and desperate to be a mother. She is at the top of her career game when she decides to undergo iVF using a sperm donor.
She doesn’t imagine work will change and is shocked to be aggressively side-lined by her boss. She also doesn’t imagine she might not enjoy motherhood or bond with her baby. raw
and compelling.
AGAIN, RACHEL
by Marian Keyes (Michael Joseph £20, 608 pp)
THiS is the sequel to 1997’s contemporary classic about addiction and treatment, rachel’s Holiday. Here, rachel is now head counsellor at the rehab she once attended.
She’s in a relationship, on great terms with her loved ones and adores gardening. The shock reappearance of a man she never got over throws this peaceful existence into chaos. Funny, heartbreaking and so wise.
DEBUTS FANNY BLAKE
LESSONS IN CHEMISTRY by Bonnie Garmus (Doubleday £14.99, 400 pp) reSeArcH chemist elizabeth Zott is a single mother and the disenchanted presenter of a TV cookery show in the 1950s. A woman who refuses to conform, she engineers a quiet revolution among American women.
i adored this confident, witty portrait of an unforgettable woman and her time.
THE SCHOOL FOR GOOD MOTHERS
by Jessamine Chan (Hutchinson Heinemann £12.99, 336 pp) i wAS fascinated and intrigued by this feminist dystopian novel set in a school attended by mothers who have failed their children. Single mother Frida leaves her baby for two hours and is judged guilty of neglect. Her time in the school is more than a little disturbing but will it make her a better mother?
BLACK CAKE
by Charmaine Wilkerson (Michael Joseph £14.99, 400 pp) oNce inseparable, Benny and her brother Byron have been estranged for years. Brought together by the death of their mother, they listen to a recording in which she unwraps the secret truths about their family. A heartfelt story of loss, lies and reconciliation that captivated me.
THE LOVE SONGS OF W. E. B. DU BOIS
by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers (Fourth Estate £9.99, 816 pp)
NArrATed by a young woman, Ailey Paul garfield, her own story is intersected by stories from generations of her family in the American deep South.
reflecting the black history of America, this is an immersive novel that is also lyrical, thought-provoking — and an absolute must-read.
HISTORICAL EITHNE FARRY
A LADY’S GUIDE TO FORTUNE-HUNTING
by Sophie Irwin (HarperCollins £14.99, 352 pp) SoPHie irwiN’S delicious debut follows the career of captivating, conniving Kitty Talbot. Against a glittering regency backdrop, Kitty snares affable Archibald de lacy, but her plans are upended with the arrival of his brooding elder brother, lord radcliffe, who is more than a match for clever Kitty . . .
THE WHALEBONE THEATRE
by Joanna Quinn (Fig Tree
£14.99, 560 pp)
A cruMBliNg old country manor, three unconventional siblings and the looming threat of war makes for a classic coming-of-age tale, as imaginative cristabel, sweet Flossie and charismatic digby attempt to find their roles in life. Brimful of charm, and wonderfully immersive, this is a captivating read.
SHORT STORIES EITHNE FARRY
THE SECRET LIVES OF CHURCH LADIES
by Deesha Philyaw (One £14.99, 224 pp)
FuNNy, moving and tender, these nine stories hone in on the sex lives of black women in the American South, as they negotiate desire and shame and rage and religion. Vividly drawn, emotionally candid and beautifully pitched, it’s an outstanding debut.
HOMESICKNESS
by Colin Barrett (Jonathan Cape £14.99, 224 pp) coNVerSATioNAl, funny and beautifully sad, these slow-burn stories from the award-winning Barrett are populated by misfits and loners living in small town ireland, where life is volatile, emotions run high and valuable lessons are hard-won. Brilliant.