BOOKMARKS

NOW a TV series starring Hugh Laurie, this tells the story of Dr Eldon Chance, a neuropsychiatrist who unwisely becomes fascinated by his patient, Jaclyn Blackstone, the abused but apparently schizophrenic wife of a Californian homicide detective who also happens to be a violent and jealous man.

In his bid to help her, Chance treads the very edges of the law in the company of a streetwise young man known only as D, who is adept with a switchblade. Will Chance succeed in saving his patient or will she morph into her alter-ego?

This is James M Cain territory, twilight noir at its very best, where nothing and no one are ever what they seem. – Daily Mail

HAS there ever been such an endearing and quirky female character as Eleanor Oliphant, a woman whose life is governed by routine? In the week she works as a finance clerk, at weekends she retreats to her flat with pizza and a couple of bottles of vodka.

This all changes when she and a friend from the office help a stranger who has collapsed in the street. This act of kindness marks the beginning of Eleanor stepping out of her self-imposed comfort zone. Reading this made me laugh and cry. As Eleanor’s traumatic past emerges, my heart went out to her, willing her forward as she reconnects to life in this uplifting and heart-warming novel. – Daily Mail

LINDA lives with her parents in what’s left of an old commune in the woods of northern Minnesota. She has become an observant and self-possessed teenager, intrigued by a new teacher, whose interest in at least one of his young pupils is more than scholastic.

When Patra and her 4-year-old son Paul move into the house across the lake, Linda is hired to babysit. But when Leo, Patra’s husband, arrives, she is excluded from the family unit and events hurtle towards the tragic conclusion that has been hinted at from the beginning of the novel.

The adult Linda looks back at these traumatic childhood events, making her point about the discrepancy between thought and action. A vivid sense of place and grim foreboding make this Booker-shortlisted novel hard to put down. – Daily Mail

I WOULD gladly read this extraordinarily accomplished debut again (and again). Its heroine is hairdresser Yejide, newly married and hoping for a baby. But, in spite of her ever-more desperate efforts, she fails to conceive and her husband, persuaded in part by his mother, takes a second wife.

Yejide is eventually granted a child, but her happiness turns to despair when she learns that he is gravely ill with an incurable disease. Meanwhile, the political turbulence gripping her country is no mere backdrop, but part of the fabric of everyday life.

Adebayo’s plot twists are matched by her compassion and commitment to psychological complexity.

Scarred and flawed as her characters are, they lodge like arrows in the imagination and heart. – Daily Mail