Whodunit has a touch of Idunit

and I made an amazing creation out of pressed flowers and bric-a-brac. It won! I went on stage to collect my prize dressed as a present. You had to go as something beginning with P. The cool kids went as punks but I made myself a costume out of a box and addressed it to myself. Pseudo Echo’s cover of Funkytown was a big hit at that time and I remember everyone doing the side-to-side dance move to it.

Do you upcycle a lot in your household? My partner Jacob Leaf, who took many of the photos in Play Wild, is a very clever DIYer who can turn a pallet into pretty much anything — chairs, tables, boxes, you name it. We have a great council-run recycling centre up the road from us where we live in West Auckland and find lots of bargains there.

Play Wild: Nature Craft Projects for Tamariki by Rachel Clare, Bateman Books, $29.99 us back to the racially charged year 1968 and is set in smalltown Freeman

County, Virginia. White lawyer Jack Lee has never stepped into a courtroom to represent a black man. Jerome Washington is charged with the brutal murder of an elderly couple in their own home after he is found alongside their bodies when the cops arrive. Washington worked for the couple and the racist cops arrest him.

Lee takes on the defence of Washington, convinced he is innocent. A pulsating thriller with many an unexpected twist in the plot, and an unforseen finale. Tony Nielsen

Listen For The Lie by Amy Tintera, Penguin Random House

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What if everyone thought you’d murdered your best friend — and you couldn’t remember anything?

It could be true, you were found covered in her blood. Five years later, Lucy returns to her Texas town where the popular Savvy was bludgeoned to death, ostensibly to attend her grandmother’s birthday.

But there’s also a very handsome true crime podcaster who has turned up too, and he wants to know exactly who did murder Savvy.

This lively novel is told through Lucy’s eyes, and she really doesn’t know if she killed her best friend. She’s in many ways a rather unlikeable character, too — cheats on her now ex husband, prone to drunkenness. As the story unfolds, it’s revealed she’s also a battered wife.

The story is funny, entertaining, and quite a page-turner as both you and the writer try to figure out what happened.

Linda Thompson