Books to read

Hotel Du Jack And Other Stories by Dan Brotzel: Dip into this collection of short stories and you find yourself nimbly leaping from story to story. Brotzel packs each mini escapade with surprise and wit, playing deftly with form and tone and probing what is absurd and poignant in everyday life. Each story can turn on a phrase, and there’s a powerful sensation that something sinister is inching towards you with every line.

America Was Hard To Find by Kathleen Alcott: In the late 1950s, against the backdrop of the Mojave Desert, an Air Force test pilot and a bartender have a brief but intense affair. Each will go on to find fame, infamy or both. America Was Hard To Find is an ambitious attempt to capture three turbulent decades of political unrest. A striking voice, visceral and electric.

Miss Austen by Gill Hornby: It’s well known that Cassandra Austen, Jane’s sister, burnt many of the writer’s letters after her death. What caused her to destroy them remains a mystery. In Miss Austen, Hornby imagines scenarios that could have caused Cassandra to take such action. Hornby is clearly familiar with Austen’s writing and is able to mimic her style, but at times, the narrative is bogged down by sentimentality.

People Like Us: What it Takes to Make it in Modern Britain by Hashi Mohamed: The author casts a judgmental eye over social mobility in Britain today. Race, class, confidence and language are considered along with Mohamed’s own experiences, as the successful barrister tells the story of how he transformed his early life as a refugee of the Somali civil war.