BOOKS


Alex Cross investigates when a glamorous socialite and high-school principal are found murdered. Amazon has announced that it is team- ing up with Paramount Television Studios and Skydance Television for a drama based on the Alex Cross novels.


Wilbur Smith Legacy of War Zaffre, 8th, £8.99, 9781838772802 The latest in the Courtney series sees the war over and Hitler dead, but his evil legacy continuing.


Danielle Steel Royal Pan, 22nd, £8.99, 9781509878192 Princess Charlotte is sent by her parents to live in the Yorkshire countryside in 1943. Pan says that in hardback Royal hit number eight in the charts and had Steel’s highest single-week hardback volume sale of 2020.


Tim Weaver Missing Pieces Michael Joseph, 8th, £8.99, 9781405943765 Rebekah and her brother head to Crow Island to reconnect. But they are attacked, and when she wakes, Jonny has vanished, and the island is deserted with no way off. The author of the David Raker series’ first stand- alone thriller, Weaver is a “Michael Joseph break- out priority” of 2021, says the publisher.


Literary Ayad Akhtar


Homeland Elegies Reissues


Sara Gran Come Closer Faber & Faber, 1st, £8.99, 9780571355556


Previews Paperback Preview


Tinder Press, 8th, £8.99, 9781472276896 An American son and his immigrant father search for belonging in post-Trump America. “Outstanding... it is hard to convey the breadth and brilliance of this work,” said the Observer.


Rosanna Amaka The Book Of Echoes Black Swan, 1st, £8.99, 9781784164836


Début In 1981 Brixton, Michael, 16, is on


the wrong side of the law, falls for Ngozi, a young immigrant from the Nigerian village of Obowi. The spirit of an African woman who lost her life on a slave ship two centu- ries earlier reveals how their struggle for happi- ness began many lifetimes ago. “Lyrical and affect- ing,” said the Guardian.


Childhood sweethearts meet again in later life, and take a caravan trip to Wales, in this novel called “utterly charming and utterly hilarious” by Emma Jane Unsworth.


Lucie Britsch Sad Janet


W&N, 8th, £8.99, 9781409198666


Début Janet just wants to get on with


being sad, until her family hears about a new pill that promises users one day off from being unhappy. “Be prepared for edginess, dark humour and profanity,” said the New York Times.


David Coventry Dance Prone Picador, 8th, £9.99, 9781509839452 The lives of the four members of the band Neues Bauen are changed by two events of hatred and stupidity during their 1985 tour.


dark secret. “A captivating coming-of-age story with memorable characters, beautifully brought to life in a setting dripping with atmosphere,” said the Mail.


Sarah Crossan Here is the Beehive Bloomsbury Publishing, 8th, £8.99, 9781526619525 The Carnegie-winning children’s author’s first novel for adults follows Ana, who has had a secret affair with Connor for the past three years. When he dies, her grief has nowhere to go, and she finds herself seeking out his wife.


Amity Gaige Sea Wife Fleet, 1st, £8.99, 9780349726526 A young family escapes suburbia for a year-long sailing trip which changes all of their lives.


Nicola Maye Goldberg Nothing Can Hurt You Raven Books, 1st, £8.99, 9781526619471


Début A student is killed in the woods in


Aimee Bender The Butterfly Lampshade Windmill Books, 29th, £8.99, 9780099559269 The author of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake tells of Francie, who, aged eight, became mesmerised by a lamp adorned with butter- flies when her mother was taken to an asylum after a psychotic episode.


Lisa Blower Pondweed Myriad Editions, 1st, £8.99, 9781912408726


upstate New York, and suspicion falls on her boyfriend. “A gothic Olive Kitteridge mixed with Gillian Flynn,” said Vogue.


Polly Crosby The Illustrated Child HQ, 8th, £8.99, 9780008358440


Début Romilly lives in a ramshackle


house with her artist father. When he writes a popular series of children’s books with her as the main character, he begins to shrink away from the world, and she realises the illustrated books contain a


Jonas Hassen Khemiri The Family Clause Vintage, 15th, £8.99, 9781784709563


Début A grandfather returns home


from abroad to visit his adult children, in this look at what it means to be a good parent. “What Khemiri achieves is not just an engrossing narra- tive but the complex


One to Watch


I love this reissue cover from Faber for Sara Gran’s excellent short horror novel about a woman slowly being possessed by a demon—it’s understatedly terrify- ing. Recently optioned for film, to be directed by David Slade, this has been


out of print in the UK for some time, although it has cult status in the US. “‘What begins as a sly fable about frustrated desire evolves into a genuinely scary novel about possession and insanity,” said Bret Easton Ellis.


Nature writing Kathleen Jamie


Antlers of Water Canongate, 8th, £10.99, 9781786899811


portrait of a family that is both identifiable and distinctive, normal and strange,” said the TLS.


with insanely creative gags,” said the Guardian.


Tara June Winch The Yield 4th Estate, 8th, £8.99, 9780008437114 Winner of Australia’s Miles Franklin award, this entwines the stories of Albert “Poppy”


Gondiwindi, a member of the indigenous Wiradjuri tribe who is determined to pass on the culture of his people before he dies, and his granddaughter Poppy, who returns home from Europe after his death and vows to save her family’s land. “Winch offers a stark account of how Aboriginal peoples are ignored, abused and their cultural beliefs stomped on, [but] The Yield’s final message is one of hope,” found Buzzfeed.


Charlie Kaufman Antkind 4th Estate, 8th, £9.99, 9780008319502


Début The début novel from the screen-


writer of films including “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” tells of a neurotic film critic who stumbles upon a three- month-long stop-motion masterpiece, which he believes will rock the world of cinema, but the film has been destroyed. “Magnificent... crammed


Benjamín Labatut When We Cease to Understand the World Pushkin Press, 1st, £9.99, 9781782276142 A Guardian and New Statesman book of the year pick, this uses fiction to look into the lives of the scientists and mathematicians who expanded our notions of the possible. “We may be familiar with such things as Schrödinger’s cat and Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle... but the sheer audacity, the utter insan- ity of the ideas and the thinkers who discovered these ideas has never, in my experience, been so vividly and terrifyingly conveyed as in this short, monstrous and brilliant book,” said Philip Pullman.


Nikita Lalwani You People Viking, 8th, £8.99, 9780241987070 Set in the world of a London high-street pizze- ria, this follows the stories of proprietor Tuli, who will help anyone in need; Nia, running from her family; and Shan, who has fled the civil war in Sri Lanka. “A moving, authentic, humane novel which raises fundamental ques- tions about what it means to be kind in an unkind world,” said the Guardian. Slipped from March.


S E Lister City of Ruins Old Street, 6th, £8.99, 9781913083052 Old Street puts this in the Madeline Miller/Natasha Pulley mould; it’s set in a


One to Watch


The first modern anthology of Scottish nature writing, a mix of essays, poems and visual art which includes work by authors from Amy Liptrot to Chitra Ramaswamy, edited by the award-winning author of Findings.


“Splendid... Read, and treasure what we have while we have it,” said the Times, which described the writing collected here as “luminous”. Picked as a Waterstones Best Book of the Year.


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30th April 2021


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