BODY SURFING by Anita Shreve

Little, Brown, £14.99 £13.49 (free p&p) Buy the book from Books First £6.64 including free delivery

Sydney is just 29 but she has lost two husbands. She takes a summer job, as tutor to 18-year-old Julie, at an idyllic beach house in New Hampshire — and the plot quickens and thickens with the arrival of Julie’s two big brothers. So here we have two fit alpha males (professor and corporate realtor) and one lovely, mysterious widow, and because it’s Anita Shreve you know there will be emotional upheavals, shifts of loyalty and painful revelations about the past before the book is over, and so it proves — the Shreve hallmarks are all over this warm, satisfying novel.

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THE BOOK OF SAMSON by David Maine

Canongate, £9.99 Buy the book from Books First £9.49 including free delivery

“This is the story of my life and it’s not a happy one,” begins the narrator, and he’s putting it mildly. Eyeless in Gaza, at the mill with slaves, the biblical Samson reviews his turbulent career. He was one of God’s top slayers, killing Philistines and Canaanites, and basically loving every minute. And then along came Nemesis, in the shape of “Dalila” (Maine has taken his spellings from the Douay Bible of 1609), perpetrator of history’s most infamous short back-and-sides. The author of this muscular, vigorous retelling has very long hair, which may be significant. Play it again, Samson.

HURTING DISTANCE by Sophie Hannah

Hodder & Stoughton, £19.99 £17.99 (free p&p) Buy the book from Books First £6.69 including free delivery

Naomi has been through a horrific experience. She finds solace in a passionate affair with Robert. But Robert is married, and strangely anxious to keep his mistress from knowing anything about Juliet, his wife. Robert disappears, and Juliet claims he’s gone to visit friends. Naomi is sure he is in danger, but the police won’t take her seriously, so she tells a huge lie. And then a body is found, barely clinging to life, and Naomi is suddenly face to face with her own past. A superbly creepy, twisty thriller about obsessive love, psychological torture, and the darkest chambers of the human heart.

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