My Holiday Reading

Last night I was all prepared to take photos of the books that I was taking with me on holiday when I realised that half of them were still at work. Ok, I thought, that’s fine, I’ll do it tomorrow evening. This would have worked if I’d remembered to do it before I packed them all. It’s been one of those week. Anyway, I’ve used the images from the publishers’ websites – all you’re really losing out on is the sight of my wooden floor and I think you’ll all cope without!

I’ve been a little lax with reviews recently so I’m taking four review copies with me to France and will definitely review all of them by the end of September (I actually have deadlines for two of them, which helps.) And so, behold the lovely books coming with me:

Publisher: Picador

ISBN: 978-1447212058

Publication date: 2nd August 2012 (hardback)

Summer seemed to arrive at that moment, with its mysterious mixture of salt, cold flesh and fuel. 

Nick and her cousin, Helena, have grown up sharing sultry summers at Tiger House, the glorious old family estate on the island of Martha’s Vineyard. As World War II ends they are on the cusp of adulthood, the world seeming to offer itself up to them. Helena is leaving for Hollywood and a new marriage, while Nick is to be reunited with her young husband Hughes, due to return from London and the war. Everything is about to change.

Neither quite finds the life she had imagined, and as the years pass, the trips to Tiger House take on a new complexity. Then, on the brink of the 1960s, Nick’s daughter Daisy and Helena’s son Ed make a sinister discovery. It plunges the island’s bright heat into private shadow and sends a depth-charge to the heart of the family.

Magnificently told from five perspectives, Tigers in Red Weatheris an unforgettable debut: a simmering novel of passion, betrayal and secret violence beneath a polished and fragile facade.

Publisher: Pan Macmillan

ISBN: 978-0330544252

Publication date: 30th August 2012 (paperback)

York , 1577: Hawise Aske smiles at a stranger in the market, and sets in train a story of obsession and sibling jealousy, of love and hate and warped desire. Drowned as a witch, Hawise pays a high price for that smile, but for a girl like her in Elizabethan York, there is nowhere to go and nowhere to hide.

Four and a half centuries later, Grace Trewe, who has travelled the world, is trying to outrun the memories of being caught up in the Boxing Day tsunami. Her stay in York is meant to be a brief one.

But in York Grace discovers that time can twist and turn in ways she never imagined. Drawn inexorably into Hawise’s life, Grace finds that this time she cannot move on. Will she too be engulfed in the power of the past?

Publisher: Tinder Press

ISBN: 978-0755394364

Publication date: 28th March 2013 (hardback)

In the wake of a suspicious fire, Amaranth gathers her children and flees from the blazing Mormon compound where her children were born and raised. Now she is on the run with no one but her barely-teenage daughters, Amity and Sorrow, neither of whom have ever seen the outside world, to help her. After four days of driving without sleep, Amaranth crashes the car, leaving the family stranded at a gas station, unsure of what to do next. Rescue comes in the unlikely form of a downtrodden farmer, a man who offers sanctuary when the women need it most.

AMITY & SORROW is the story of these remarkable women, their lives before and leading up to the night they fled, and their heartbreaking, hopeful future. Over the course of a season Amaranth will test the limits of her faith, and her daughters will test the limits of her patience. While Amity blossoms in this new world, free from her father’s forbidding rules and ecstatic worship, Sorrow will move heaven and earth trying to get back home…And, meanwhile, the outside world hasn’t forgotten about the fire on the compound.

Publisher: Doubleday

ISBN: 978-0857521194

Publication date: 8th November 2012 (hardback)

A second short story collection from Joanne Harris, author of Chocolat and Peaches for Monsieur le Cure. ‘Stories are like Russian dolls; open them up, and in each one you’ll find another story.’

Conjured from a wickedly imaginative pen, here is a new collection of short stories that showcases Joanne Harris’s exceptional storytelling art. Sensuous, wicked, mischievous, uproarious and wry, here are tales that combine the everyday with the unexpected; wild fantasy with bittersweet reality.   From the house where it is Christmas all year round, to a ghost who lives on a Twitter timeline; from the Congo where a young girl braves the raging rapids to earn a crust of bread, to Norse gods battling for survival in Manhattan; and a newborn baby created with sugar, spice and lashings of cake, these stories will ensnare and delight you with their variety and inventiveness.