The very hottest summer READS
Skulduggery on the high seas. The dean of St Paul’s who wrote sexy poems. And an amazing escape from Auschwitz. Lie back and soak up...
FICTION VLADIMIR JULIA MAY JONAS
Picador £14.99
A reboot of the campus novel for the #MeToo era that introduces a thrilling new talent. Its narrator is a middle-aged
English professor at an American liberalarts college whose husband has been suspended over allegations by former students. Vladimir is the handsome younger colleague who rocks into town and is soon all she can think about. Listen out for echoes of Nabokov and Iris Murdoch.
THE LOCKED ROOM ELLY GRIFFITHS
Quercus £20
North Norfolk’s stark charms stoke the atmosphere in the latest from crime queen Griffiths. It opens as forensic archaeologist Dr Ruth Galloway makes a puzzling discovery among her mother’s belongings: a photo of her cottage in 1963, before she lived there. The ensuing case is a cracker – imaginative and knotty, and set against Covid restrictions.
DEATH IN BLITZ CITY DAVID YOUNG
Zaffre £8.99
Second World War Hull provides the setting for a tense, smartly plotted new police procedural by award-winning Young. It centres on Inspector Ambrose Swift, who’s fresh to the job and stunned by the city’s devastation. In order to solve a series of sadistic killings pinned on black GIs stationed nearby, he’ll need to battle highpowered corruption as well as racism.
THAT GREEN-EYED GIRL JULIE OWEN MOYLAN
Michael Joseph £14.99
A canny dual timeline binds the lives of four characters who live in the same New York apartment. In 1955 it’s schoolteachers Dovie and Gillian, who guard their private lives tenaciously, and in 1975 it’s adolescent Ava and her troubled mum. When Ava receives a mysterious box from Paris with ‘Liar’ scrawled on it, secrets beg to be unearthed.
FIGHT NIGHT MIRIAM TOEWS
Faber £14.99
One of the funniest books you’ll read all year, this is also among the most thoughtful. It tells the story of Swiv, nine, who lives in Toronto with her pregnant, embarrassing mother Mooshie and fearless grandmother Elvira. As the baby’s due date nears and Elvira’s health falters, the unconventional family has to muster all its fight.
THE RABBIT HUTCH TESS GUNTY
Oneworld £16.99
In Vacca Vale, a bankrupt town in
America’s rustbelt, disparate lives converge around a low-cost housing complex called the Rabbit Hutch. The plot will reach its violent dénouement over the course of a single scorching summer, and throughout, tension is mixed with hilarity, heartbreak with hope. It all makes for a gripping, memorable debut full of peculiar wonders.
ONE LAST SECRET ADELE PARKS
HQ £14.99
Escort Dora is certain she knows what she’s doing when she agrees to one final job, playing the role of her client’s girlfriend at his South of France chateau. The glittering backdrop is our clue that it’s all going to go very wrong, and sure enough, someone Dora knows turns up, and suddenly her life is at risk. This is poolside perfection.
YOUNG MUNGO DOUGLAS STUART
Picador £16.99
The Booker-winning author of Shuggie Bain returns to 1990s Glasgow, where the novel’s eponymous hero falls for a boy from the other side of the sectarian divide. Fans will find much to love, including prose that brings vividly to life a camping trip from hell on the banks of Loch Lomond, and masterful storytelling that consistently illuminates the gloom with real tenderness.
MISS ALDRIDGE REGRETS LOUISE HARE HQ £14.99
This is your ticket for a luxury liner bound for New York. The year is 1936, and fellow passengers include narrator Lena Aldridge, a Soho nightclub singer who’s ‘passing’ as white. Lena has had to leave London in a hurry, and when a wealthy American is murdered, his death strikes her as being all too familiar. Expect breathless suspense and glamour galore.
WINCHELSEA ALEX PRESTON Canongate £14.99
Anyone raised on tales of maritime derring-do will seize upon this homage to J. Meade Falkner’s Moonfleet. Set in
18th Century Sussex, it spins a complex yarn involving family feuds, smugglers and spies, rogues and redcoats, plus a goodly amount of high-seas skulduggery. You couldn’t wish for a gutsier heroine, either. It’s all anchored in prose that’s spellbindingly atmospheric.
NON-FICTION QUEEN OF OUR TIMES ROBERT HARDMAN
Macmillan £20
The vast majority of her subjects have never known any other monarch, and there is no better informed chronicler of the long reign of Elizabeth II (pictured, top right) than Hardman. This biography is scrupulously well researched, packed with colourful details and sensitive to the sweep of history. Hardman makes an impressive case for the global ‘soft power’ of the Monarchy. Forget The Crown, this is the real story.
ONE PARTY AFTER ANOTHER MICHAEL CRICK
S&S £25
A Jewish schoolmate of Nigel Farage (right) remembers how the future politician would sidle up to him and say, ‘Hitler was right’. In one episode he tries to entrap a colleague ‘to test his loyalty’. Crick’s brilliant biography documents how Farage, despite his obvious flaws, became ‘one of the most important politicians of modern British history’.
BIRDS AND US TIM BIRKHEAD
Viking £25
In his beautifully illustrated book, naturalist Tim Birkhead explores 12,000 years of mankind’s physical, emotional and spiritual interactions with birds, from neolithic cave painters and ancient Egyptian religious practices to Victorian fashionistas and contemporary scientists. He also delivers a stark warning about the sheer numbers of bird species that are now at risk from extinction as a direct result of human activities.
BACK IN THE DAY MELVYN BRAGG Sceptre £25
Melvyn Bragg (inset below, aged four, in a photo taken by his mother) is a broadcasting legend and an accomplished novelist but this is his finest work and an instant classic. It’s an affecting and evocative account of his workingclass upbringing in the small Cumbrian market town of Wigton and a vivid Cider With Rosie-style portrait of a particular place and time. The ending, with Bragg poised to go up to Oxford, leaves you eager for the next instalment.
SUPER-INFINITE KATHERINE RUNDELL
Faber £16.99
John Donne, the ‘metaphysical’ poet born in 1572, was a contradiction. A man who wrote poems celebrating sex who also became dean of St Paul’s, a soldier who fought the Spanish at Cadiz and became a celebrity preacher whose passionate and inspiring sermons, delivered without notes, specialised in conjuring infinity for his listeners. Rundell, who is also an acclaimed children’s author, shows us every side of his extraordinary life.
WHEN THE DUST SETTLES
LUCY EASTHOPE
Hodder & Stoughton £20 Easthope is the
UK’s leading authority on recovery from disaster, in which capacity she advises the Government. She’s travelled all over the world doing this amazing job and was involved in the aftermath of the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, the Fukushima nuclear disaster of 2011 and the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017. An eye-opening, instructive memoir, filled with humanity.
THE PREMONITIONS BUREAU
SAM KNIGHT
Faber £14.99
Ever felt like you just know that something bad is going to happen? In the 1960s, in the wake of the horrific Aberfan disaster, a psychiatrist and a science journalist set about trying to discover whether some people have an inexplicable ability to tune in to supernatural warnings about the future. Could such precognition provide a valuable national service? This is a fascinating account of their investigation and its unforeseen results.
BURNING STEEL
PETER HART Profile Books £25
A brilliant account of one tank regiment’s experiences during the Second World War, compiled largely from the testimonies of surviving veterans. The 2nd Fife and Forfar Yeomanry didn’t get into action until June 1944, but thereafter the regiment was constantly engaged until the war’s end. In this dramatic book Hart, oral historian at the Imperial War Museum for nearly 40 years, shows us ‘ordinary men, performing extraordinary deeds, in a noble cause’.
STORIES I MIGHT REGRET TELLING YOU
MARTHA WAINWRIGHT
S&S £20 Singer-songwriter Martha Wainwright is from a musical family; the daughter of
Loudon Wainwright III and Kate McGarrigle, and sister of Rufus. Her frank, funny and often moving memoir does indeed contain numerous stories that she might rue recounting, and she tells them in a voice suggestive of an intimate chat with a friend in a quiet corner at a wild party.
PRINCESSES BREAK FREE
TIMOTHY KNAPMAN
Walker £12.99 3+
Imagine a fairytale world where princesses, instead of having to wait to be rescued by a handsome prince, can take matters into their own hands. That’s the premise of this spirited tale centred on Tilly who, bored with being a damsel in distress, decides to rescue herself. Beautifully illustrated by Jenny Lovlie, Knapman challenges gender stereotypes while reminding youngsters that they can do anything they want.
AMBROSE FOLLOWS HIS NOSE
DICK KING-SMITH
& JOSIE ROGERS
Penguin £10.99 5+
What better way to mark the centenary of author Dick King-Smith than with a new book? Recently discovered in an attic, it tells the story of adorable rabbit Ambrose (above), whose sense of smell is put to the test when a girl goes missing. Stephanie Laberis’s images bring the characters leaping to life.
THE MAGIC FARAWAY TREE: A NEW ADVENTURE
JACQUELINE WILSON
Hodder £12.99 6+
Return to the world of Silky, Moonface and The Saucepan Man as the award-winning Wilson brings Enid Blyton’s Enchanted Wood into the 21st Century with a brand new adventure. Engagingly illustrated by Mark Beech, follow Milo, Mia and Birdy as they discover worlds such as the Land of Unicorns after stumbling upon the magic tree while on holiday.
GRANDPA FRANK’S GREAT BIG BUCKET LIST
JENNY PEARSON
Usborne £6.99 9+
The latest from Pearson follows 11-year-old Frank, who suddenly inherits a fortune.
But it comes with a catch – he must use it to take care of a hitherto unknown grandfather. As the duo tackle a bucket list featuring everything from parkour to monster truck lessons, Pearson deals with tricky subjects with her customary blend of poignancy and humour, aided by lively illustrations by David O’Connell.
LOKI: A BAD GOD’S GUIDE TO BEING GOOD
LOUIE STOWELL
Walker £7.99 9+
Tom Gates and Wimpy Kid fans need look no further than this laugh-out-loud offering from Stowell. Naughty Norse god Loki has been banished to Earth by Odin and must show ‘moral improvement’ while living as a regular 11-year-old in order to return home. Presented as a diary, the cartoon-packed text will help reluctant readers while also giving a fun introduction to Norse mythology.