This month’s BEST BOOKS

Sarra Manning CHOOSES HER FIVE FAVOURITE READS ABOUT TO HIT BOOKSHOPS…

Joan by Katherine J Chen (Hodder & Stoughton, £16.99, out 5th July) If, like me, you’ve always thought of Joan of Arc as a pious teenager in a suit of armour, then this clever, tender novel, full of humanity, will make you see the ‘Maid of Orleans’ in a new light. Katherine J Chen’s Joan is a scrappy, determined and very real heroine. If you liked Ariadne by Jennifer Saint, then this has to be your next read.

The Crane Wife by CJ Hauser (Viking, £16.99, out 14th July)

When CJ Hauser wrote about going on an expedition to study the whooping crane 10 days after calling off her wedding, her piece went viral and led to this book, ‘a memoir in essays’. Freed from how she imagined her life was going to be, Hauser considers love in all its forms and how it shows up in families – both biological and logical – friendship, queerness and in fleeting moments between strangers. The Crane Wife will make you think, laugh, cry and keep turning the pages.

The Family Remains by Lisa Jewell (Century, £16.99, out 21st July)

The long-awaited sequel to the bestselling and super-creepy The Family Upstairs reunites us with brother and sister Henry and Lucy Lamb and Lucy’s daughter, Libby, who was conceived and born in the ‘house of horrors’. But when a bag of human bones washes up on the Thames shoreline, more secrets will be revealed about what happened in that Chelsea house 30 years before. A riveting, rollicking read, guaranteed to send your blood pressure soaring.

To Fill A Yellow House by Sussie Anie (Phoenix, £16.99, out 7th July)

Widower Rupert is the owner of a ramshackle London charity shop and teenage Kwasi is a dreamer who doesn’t quite fit in. Their unlikely friendship is at the heart of this vividly drawn and evocative debut novel. As the years pass and tensions in the community escalate, the sense of kinship that brought them together may not be as strong as the forces that pull them apart.

Square One by Nell Frizzell (Bantam, £14.99, out 7th July)

The debut fiction novel from the author of The Panic Years will strike a chord with anyone who feels that their best life is eluding them. Hanna never expected to be back in her hometown of Oxford after years of being stuck in dead-end jobs and a dead-end relationship. Now she’s living with her eccentric dad, who’s going on Tinder dates, while she’s starting all over again and looking for love in all the wrong places. Keenly observed and hecking funny, this is a book for our times.