THE BEST NEW FICTION
The Bad Angel Brothers Paul Theroux
Hamish Hamilton £20 Theroux’s fans will be hard-pressed not to suspect that this darkly comic tale of vicious sibling rivalry draws on his own well-documented history of family spats. When globetrotting geologist Cal returns to his Massachusetts home town, the stage is set for a rapid escalation of a boyhood feud with his older brother, a suave lawyer who slyly sets out to undo the life Cal has built for himself. A knockabout psychological suspense novel.
Anthony Cummins
Love Untold Ruth Jones
Bantam Press £20 No-nonsense Grace is nearly 90. Her granddaughter, uptight Elin, is a head teacher whose marriage is crumbling, while her greatgranddaughter, arty Beca, is about to fall in love for the first time.
Add to the multi-generational mix Grace’s long-lost daughter, recovering alcoholic Alys, and you can expect emotional upheavals, perceptive observations and a move-you-to-tears ending. It’s a story that glows with warmth and hard-won wisdom.
Eithne Farry
The Skeleton Key Erin Kelly
Hodder & Stoughton £16.99 The ever-intriguing Kelly’s latest centres around a 50-year-old children’s book with clues to real buried treasure (clearly modelled on Kit Williams’s Masquerade). The author’s daughter, Nell Churcher, has grown up in the shadow of the book and its obsessive fans. But when the work is relaunched for the internet era, it’s not only Nell’s life that is threatened as the treasure hunt is renewed in deadly earnest. A rich and fascinating puzzle.
John Williams
All The Broken Places John Boyne Doubleday £20
The long-awaited sequel to The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas is an eloquent meditation on guilt, complicity and redemption. Gretel ekes out her twilight years in London, the world unaware that her father was the commandant of a Nazi concentration camp. But concerns for the son of a neighbour force her into the open. Flashbacks to post-war France and 1950s Australia flesh out a remarkable novel, with humanity at its core.
Max Davidson