LATEST TITLES

INDEPENDENCE SQUARE

by AD Miller, Harvill Secker, hardback £14.99, ebook £9.99. ★★★★★

THIS follow-up to Miller’s

2015 book The Faithful Couple is a political thriller set against the backdrop of the Orange Revolution of 2004 in Ukraine.

It charts the diplomatic machinations aimed at averting tragedy as the people rise up to protest the result of a controversial presidential election.

These events are described in flashback as, more than a decade later in London, former aspiring ambassador Simon Davey grapples with a shock reunion resurrecting painful memories of his apparent double-crossing in Kiev.

THE FOUNDLING

by Stacey Halls, Manilla Press, hardback £12.99, ebook £6.47. ★★★★★

SHRIMP seller Bess reluctantly takes her newborn daughter to London’s Foundling Hospital to give her a chance of survival.

She immediately goes back to walking the streets selling scoops of seafood but dreams one day she will be able to give her child a home. A short carriage ride away, Alexandra lives in a comfortable house which she is frightened to leave.

The two seem unlikely to meet, but Halls’ second novel weaves the women’s lives together against the backdrop of 18th Century London.

STRANGE HOTEL

by Eimear McBride, Faber & Faber, hardback £12.99, ebook £7.99. ★★★★★

THIS slip of a novel focuses on a nameless woman who we never encounter outside the confines of a series of hotel rooms around the world.

You slowly piece together the fact that sometimes years, possibly even decades, have passed between each new room, as she grapples with the aftermath of casual sexual encounters, the loss of someone beloved, and seemingly considers leaping from her hotel balconies.

Her interior monologues are both fraught and laboured, leaving you listless and free of empathy as a reader.