The Heat of Betrayal by Douglas Kennedy The publisher’s blurb: Robin knew Paul wasn’t perfect. But he said they were so lucky to have found each other, and she believed it was true. In the heady strangeness of Morocco, he is everything she wants him to be – passionate, Read more
The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay First with your head and then with your heart . . . So says Hoppie Groenwald, boxing champion, to a seven-year-old boy who dreams of being the welterweight champion of the world. For the young Peekay, it is a piece of advice Read more
The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal 264 wood and ivory carvings, none of them bigger than a matchbox: Edmund de Waal was entranced when he first encountered the collection in his great uncle Iggie’s Tokyo apartment. When he later inherited the ‘netsuke’, they unlocked a story far larger Read more
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë “There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.” From its haunting first line to its famous closer, “Reader, I married him”, Charlotte Brontë takes her audience by the throat with a fierce narrative of great immediacy. Jane Eyre’s voice on the page Read more
We are all completely beside ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler Rosemary is now an only child, but she used to have a sister the same age as her, and an older brother. Both are now gone – vanished from her life. “I wanted you to have an extraordinary life,” confesses Rosemary’s Read more
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2014 Aged thirteen, Theo Decker, son of a devoted mother and a reckless, largely absent father, survives an accident that otherwise tears his life apart. Alone and rudderless in New York, he is taken in by the family Read more
Dombey & Son by Charles Dickens Mr Dombey is a man obsessed with his firm. His son is groomed from birth to take his place within it, despite his visionary eccentricity and declining health. But Dombey also has a daughter, whose unfailing love for her father goes unreturned. ‘Girls’ said Read more
The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd The struggle of 19th-century abolitionist and women’s rights pioneer Sarah Grimké is at the heart of Sue Monk Kidd’s powerful new historical novel. Set – like her bestselling debut, The Secret Life of Bees – in the American deep south, where she Read more
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho Santiago, a young shepherd living in the hills of Andalucia, feels that there is more to life than his humble home and his flock. One day he finds the courage to follow his dreams into distant lands, each step galvanised by the knowledge that Read more
The Sea, the Sea by Iris Murdoch Review by Amanda Read Charles Arrowby retires from life in the theatre to seclusion in a barely-habitable residence by the sea. He intends to write his memoirs but life has a habit of interrupting. His dreams of a rural-maritime idyll, where he can Read more