Category: Best new reads

Richell, Hannah (2025) One Dark Night. Simon & Schuster. In Thorncombe there is a haunted wood that lures people to their deaths. When a teenage schoolgirl from Folly View College is found dead the morning after Halloween, her body carefully arranged at the bottom of an old gothic folly, the community fears 'Sally in the… Continue reading June Picks →

Hall, Clare Leslie (2025) Broken Country. J.Murray. Gabriel was Beth's first love. She was seventeen when she met him but when he left it was Frank she married. Frank with whom she built a home and had a son. When Gabriel returns Beth's life is already in turmoil. Is this their second chance? Although recognising… Continue reading May Picks →

Purnell, Sonia (2024) Kingmaker: Pamela Harriman's Astonishing Life of Power, Seduction, and Intrigue. Viking. Pamela Churchill Harriman was an unsung power player of the twentieth-century; a strategic weapon and legend, cultural icon, hostess and a maligned courtesan who operated at the centre of politics across two continents. Purnell has sympathetically researched the life of Pamela… Continue reading April Picks →

Cher (2024) Cher: The Memoir, Part One. HarperCollins. After seven decades Cher's story is too big for one volume. In Part One we are taken from her mother Georgia's dark and unstable childhood, to Cher's less than normal upbringing - miserable hardship, multiple 'fathers', mother's constant search for fame, and always moving moving, until at… Continue reading March Picks →

Kim, Juhea (2024) City of Night Birds. HarperCollins. World-famous prima ballerina Natalia Leonova, after a two-year hiatus that saw her lost in pills and alcohol, is in crisis. Her life and career has unravelled. When she is given the opportunity to rehabilitate herself by dancing her signature role of Giselle, with the Mariinsky Ballet in… Continue reading February Picks →

Kassabova, Kapka (2024) Anima: A Wild Pastoral. Cape. In Kassabova's final book in her Balkan quartet we experience the ancient activity of transhumance - the seasonal movement of herds of sheep, with shepherds, horses and dogs, in search of summer pasture. Anima tells of Kassabova's time with some of the last pastoralists in Europe, on… Continue reading January Picks →

Nicholls, David (2024) You are Here. Harper. Michael, after separating from his wife, takes solitary walks in the English Countryside. Marnie is a work-from-home recluse avoiding contact with others. When a mutual friend initiates a hike on the Coast to Coast Walkway Michael is keen but Marnie is initially reluctant. What happens next is uplifting.… Continue reading December Picks →

Strout, Elizabeth (2024) Tell Me Everything. Penguin/Viking. We meet Strout's ensemble of leading actors who have now all converged on coastal Maine with their interlocking narratives. Although Bob Burgess is the leading man, Lucy Barton is once again a key player, with Olive Kitteridge, now 90 years old, on the side. Lucy, on the verge… Continue reading November Picks →

Lea, Catherine (2024) Better Left Dead. David Bateman. When Lizzy Bean is found dead in her rundown and rubbish strewn beach house, garrotted with a piece of wire, DI Nyree Bradshaw and her team of Northland detectives set out to solve the case. As they follow the clues they uncover a series of linked crimes… Continue reading October Picks →