FICTION
Turbulence by Giles Foden (Faber £16.99) From the author of The Last
King of Scotland, an artful tale about the attempts to predict the weather
for D-Day.
A Mercy by Toni Morrison (HarperPerennial £7.99) Beginning in 1682,
with a merchant being beguiled into the sugar trade, Morrison’s magnificent
book explores the contaminating corruption of enslavement.
The Missing by Tim Gautreaux (Sceptre £17.99) A Cajun drifter searches
for a kidnapped child in 1920s America in this rip-roaring adventure.
Wollf Hall by Hilary Mantel (Vintage £18.99) The tumultuous Tudor era,
seen through the eyes of a sympathetically portrayed Thomas Cromwell, in
this bustling, often vibrant historical novel.
Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh (J Murray £7.99) This utterly involving
book, shortlisted for the Man Booker prize last year, is set on a former
slave ship bound for Mauritius from opium-infested Calcutta in 1838.
The Believers by Zoe Heller (Penguin £7.99) From the author of Notes on
a Scandal, a hugely involving story about a family’s implosion after the
father collapses into a coma.
Land of Marvels by Barry Unsworth (Hutchinson £18.99) Brilliant
exploration of the tensions on an archeological dig as the first world war
looms.
2666 by Roberto Bolano (Picador £20) Four literary scholars search for
an elusive author, in a complex and allusive book overflowing with
characters and storylines.
The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga (Atlantic £7.99) India’s failings are
mercilessly exposed in this vibrant, angry and dramatic rags-to-riches tale,
winner of last year’s Man Booker prize.
Strangers by Anita Brookner (Fig Tree £16.99) A retired banker, on
holiday in Venice, has one last opportunity for human connection in this
psychologically acute and surprisingly enjoyable tale.
Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri (Bloomsbury £7.99) From one of the
modern queens of the short story, a wonderfully confident collection
exploring the assimilations and accommodations of Bengali families in
America.
God's Own Country by Ross Raisin (Penguin £7.99) Raisin won this year’s
Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award for this beautifully written and
dramatic account of a young outsider’s obsessional pursuit of a local girl.
Deaf Sentence by David Lodge (Penguin £7.99) A satirical tour de force
about the social disasters that befall a professor afflicted by creeping
deafness.
The Quickening Maze by Adam Foulds (Cape £12.99) Precision of
observation and empathy of imagination are the hallmarks of this affecting
account of country poet John Clare’s incarceration in an asylum.
Life According to Lubka by Laurie Graham (Quercus £11.99) A wizened
music PR finds herself chaperoning an eccentric Bulgarian close-harmony
singing group in this glorious comic novel.
Breath by Tim Winton (Picador £7.99) Two boys are drawn together by
their love of surfing and danger in this intense novel from the
Booker-shortlisted author.
American Adulterer by Jed Mercurio (Cape £12.99) JFK’s complicated sex
life comes under the microscope in a gripping and thoughtful novel.
The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry (Faber £7.99) Runner-up for the
2008 Man Booker prize, the powerful story of an elderly woman consigned to
an Irish mental institute for “social reasons”.
The Vagrants by Yiyun Li (Fourth Estate £12.99) This extraordinarily
powerful and bleak novel, set in China in 1979 and beginning with the
execution of a counter-revolutionary, reads like a modern Nineteen
Eighty-Four.
The Sorrows of an American by Siri Hustvedt (Sceptre £7.99) A New York
psychoanalyst tries to discover what lies behind a cryptic letter sent to
his deceased father in this gripping mix of family saga, comedy of manners
and gothic horror.
Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower (Granta £10.99)
Complex family relationships take centre stage in an outstanding debut
collection of stories from a young writer to watch.
Mr Toppit by Charles Elton (Penguin £7.99) The son of a successful
children’s writer is dogged by his father’s creations, in a remarkable first
novel full of pitch-black, merciless humour.
Netherland by Joseph O’Neill (HarperPerennial £7.99) Barack
Obama’s fiction of choice, a complex novel of cricket, the immigrant
experience and the sense of belonging, set in modern New York.
The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda NGozi Adichie (Fourth Estate
£14.99) A sophisticated collection of short stories, full of vivid scenarios
and the threat of violence, from the Orange prize-winning author.
The Spare Room by Helen Garner (Canongate £7.99) A wonderful economic
story, full of suprising humour as well as incisive psychology, about a
woman’s reluctant care for her cancer-stricken friend.
Rancid Pancies by James Hamilton-Paterson (Faber £7.99) Latest
hilariousmisfortunes of Gerald Samper, ghostwriter, opera buff and foodie
extraordinaire.
Beijing Coma by Ma Jian (Vintage £8.99) Epic in scope but intimate in
feeling, this magnificent novel uses one man’s life to tell the story of
China at the end of the 20th century.
His Illegal Self by Peter Carey (Faber £7.99) The Booker prize-winner
is on fine form in this likable tale about a boy’s misadventures in an
alternative community.
Novel About My Wife by Emily Perkins (Bloomsbury £7.99) A chilling tale
of delusion, as an expectant mother becomes convinced she is being shadowed
by a mysterious man.
It's Beginning to Hurt by James Lasdun (Black Swan £16.99) Fine
collection of stories — sharp, stylish and penetrating — by a master of the
form.
Chicago by Alaa Al Aswani (HarperPerennial £7.99) A warm, witty and
acute picture of Egyptians in America from the author of the acclaimed The
Yacoubian Building.
CRIME AND THRILLERS
When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson (Black Swan £7.99) Third
outing for Edinburgh-based detective Jackson Brodie, in a novel full of
unresolved mysteries and suspense.
The Long Fall by Walter Mosley (Weidenfeld £18.99) Mosley returns to
form with a new series hero — PI Leonid McGill —and his trademark verbal
sparring, in this Chandleresque thriller set in New York.
The Private Patient by PD James (Faber £12.99) Grisly goings-on in a
private clinic confront Adam Dalgleish in this latest crime mystery from the
queen of the genre.
The Coronation by Boris Akunin (Weidenfeld £16.99)A compulsive
thriller, set in tsarist Russia, about the kidnapping of a young Romanov.
Darkness Rising by Frank Tallis (Century £12.99) In Tallis’s latest
thriller featuring a young doctor who is a keen disciple of Freud, bizarre
murders convulse a brilliantly evoked fin-de-siècle Vienna.
The Other Half Lives by Sophie Hannah (Hodder £12.99) A masterclass in
thriller plotting that twists cunningly through the art world.
My Soul To Take by Yrsa Sigurdardottir (Hodder £19.99) An amateursleuth
clears up mysteries in an Icelandic spa hotel in this engaging whodunnit.
The Night of the Mi’raj by Zoë Ferraris (Abacus £6.99) A
crime novel with a difference, about the obstacles put in the way of a man
investigating the murder of a bride-to-be in Saudi Arabia.
Revelation by CJ Sansom (Pan £7.99) A serial killer is using the Book
of Revelation for his murders in this outstanding whodunnit featuring the
bestselling Tudor lawyer Matthew Shardlake.
The Girl of His Dreams by Donna Leon (Arrow £7.99) A body floating in
the Grand Canal leads Brunetti into a dark world behind Venice’s splendour
Bleeding Heart Square by Andrew Taylor (Penguin £6.99) A square with a
reputation for murder may have claimed another victim in this atmospheric
thriller set in London in the 1930s.
Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith (Pocket Books £7.99) A state-security agent
in 1950s USSR, banished to the provinces, finds himself investigating a
mysterious series of child deaths.
A Most Wanted Man by John le Carré (Hodder £7.99) The arrival in
Hamburg of a gaunt, haunted Russian refugee in search of his father’s secret
stash of money is the starting point for this typically tense, suspenseful
novel.
NONFICTION
MEMOIR & BIOGRAPHY
The World Is What It Is: The Authorised biography of VS Naipaul by Patrick
French (Picador £9.99) Startlingly candid life exposes Naipaul as an
egotist, a domestic tyrant and a sadist; a magnificent achievement.
Go Down Together by Jeff Guinn (Simon & Schuster £14.99) The
infamous outlaws Bonnie and Clyde are portrayed as hapless kids fleeing the
misery of the Depression in this taut biography.
Casanova by Ian Kelly (Hodder £8.99) Vivid and vibrant biography of the
serial seducer and libertine.
Stalin's Children by Own Matthews (Bloomsbury £8.99) A Russian Wild
Swans retraces the lives of the author’s mother and grandfather; a superb
chronicle, full of courage, honour and love.
The Three of Us by Julia Blackburn (Vintage £7.99) Novelist’s
jawdropping account of her turbulent relationship with her sex-obsessed
mother.
Dancing to the Precipice by Caroline Moorehead (Chatto £20) Gripping
life of thesharp-eyed memoirist Lucie de la Tour du Pin who lived through
the rise of Napoleon.
The Great Western Beach by Emma Smith (Bloomsbury £7.99) Charming
portrait of a childhood in Cornwall but with a powerful undertow of
unhappiness.
Fishing in Utopia: Sweden and the Future that Disappeared by Andrew Brown
(Bloomsbury £8.99) Winner of the 2009 Orwell prize, a story of modern
rootlessness.
HISTORY
The Austerity Olympics: When the Games Came to London in 1948 by Janie
Hampton (Aurum £8.99) A delightful jog through the trials and
tribulations of putting the 1948 games together on a shoestring in the
post-war austerity years.
Empires of the Sea by Roger Crowley (Faber £9.99) Rousing telling of
the16th-century struggle between Islam and Christianity for mastery of the
Mediterranean.
Stalin's Nemesis by Bertrand M Patenaude (Faber £20) A hybrid of
history and detective story, this account of Trotsky’s final days in exile
in Mexico in the 1940s, hunted down by a Stalinist agent, grips from start
to finish.
The Lost City of Z by David Grann (Simon & Schuster £16.99)
Wonderful story of a lost age of heroic exploration relates how the early
20th-century explorer Col Percy Harrison Fawcett ventured into unexplored
Amazonia.
Lords of Finance by Liaquat Ahamed (Heinemann £20) A compelling
narrative relateshow the world’s most powerful bankers helped turn a
depression into the worst economic crisis of the 20th century.
A Daughter’s Love by John Guy (HarperPerennial £9.99) Convincing
page-turner of a double life, in which Margaret More, the daughter of Sir
Thomas, bursts onto the page as an intellectual figure to be reckoned with.
Henry: Virtuous Prince by David Starkey (HarperPerennial £8.99) Tabloid
verve, original scholarship and pungent wit combine to produce an
outstanding political history of Henry VIII’s early years.
Stonehenge by Rosemary Hill (Profile £8.99) Stylish, thoughtful and
often witty history of the myriad theories that have grown up around
Britain’s most recognisable monument.
The Blackest Streets by Sarah Wise (Vintage £9.99) Scrupulously
researched,eye-opening portrayal of life in a Victorian slum.
Clean: An Unsanitised History of Washing by Katherine Ashenburg
(Profile £8.99) Awash with acute perceptions, Ashenberg’s study splendidly
pulls the plug on our illusions about cleanliness.
LITERATURE/THE ARTS
Jane's Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World by Claire Harman
(Canongate £20) Rich and incisive examination of the sentimental cult of
Jane Austen.
Frankly, My Dear: Gone with the Wind Revisited by Molly Haskell (Yale
£16.99) Enthusiastic study of the biggest blockbusting film of all time,
gleaming with insights into the novel and its eccentric author.
The Rest is Noise: Listening to the 20th Century by Alex Ross
(HarperPerennial £14.99) Warm, joyful and unfailingly adroit in his
evocation of music in words, Ross establishes himself as the supreme
champion of modern music.
A Life of Picasso: Volume III, the Triumphant Years by JOHN Richardson (Pimlico
£20) Third instalment in one of the finest artistic biographies ever written
finds Picasso aged 36 and on the verge of a torrid relationship.
Soul of the Age: The Life, Mind and World of William Shakespeare by
Jonathan Bate (Penguin £9.99) Dazzling, challenging and ingenious; few
books pack so much new thinking about the Bard between their covers.
SCIENCE
Darwin’s Island: The Galapagos in the Garden of England by Steve Jones
(Little, Brown £20) Enthralling life leads us through Darwin’s entire
40-year career after the Beagle’s return from the Galapagos islands.
Bad Science by Ben Goldacre (HarperPerennial £8.99) Brilliantly debunks
faddy scientific “breakthroughs” and exposes the barefaced fraudulence of
fringe medicine; read this book and you won’t get fooled again.
13 Things That Don’t Make Sense: The Most Intriguing Scientific Mysteries
of Our Times by Michael Brooks (Profile £12.99) From alien signals to
sex and death, a fascinating and accessible look at the puzzles that science
can’t explain.
POLITICS & ECONOMICS
The Storm: The World Economic Crisis and What It Means by Vince Cable
(Atlantic £14.99) On-the-money analysis of the causes of the current
economic crisis by Lib Dem Vince Cable.
Pistols at Dawn: Two Hundred Years of Political Rivalry from Pitt & Fox
to Blair & Brown by John Campbell (Cape £20) A stylish history of
eight passionate feuds that have dominated British politics.
Fool's Gold: How Unrestrained Greed Corrupted a Dream, Shattered Global
Markets and Unleashed a Catastrophe by Gillian Tett (Little, Brown
£18.99) Pacily shows how human hubris and not complex financial instruments
undid the world’s money markets.
Thatcher’s Britain by Richard Vinen (Simon & Schuster £20)
Elegant, zippy history eschews the narrow partisanship that has often
disfigured much of the writing about the Iron Lady.
A View from the Foothills: The Diaries of Chris Mullin (Profile £20)
Revealing and entertaining MP’s diaries about new Labour and the war in
Iraq.
What Price Liberty? by Ben Wilson (Faber £14.99) A cool appraisal of
how Britain’s liberties have evolved over the years, and how they are being
undermined.
A Fortunate Life: The Autobiography of Paddy Ashdown (Aurum £20)
Action-packed reminiscences from the former Lib Dem leader; less a political
autobiography than areal-life Dangerous Book for Boys.
CURRENT AFFAIRS
The Junior Officers' Reading Club by Patrick Hennessey (Allen Lane
£16.99) Young British soldier’s robustly powerful record of life on the
front line in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Gamble: General Petraeus and the Untold Story of the American Surge in
Iraq 2006-2008 by Thomas E Ricks (Allen Lane £25) Impressive and
clear-sighted analysis of Petraeus’s remarkable achievements in Iraq.
The Flying Carpet to Baghdad by Hala Jaber (Macmillan £16.99)
Journalist’s affecting memoir of reporting the war in Iraq and her attempt
to adopt two small girls.
GENERAL
Voodoo Histories by David Aaronovitch (Cape £17.99) Forensically
intelligent, entertaining study of conspiracy theories and our fascination
with them.
When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris (Little, Brown £8.99)
Genuinely funny autobiographical musings from this sinuous writer.
Sucking Eggs by Patricia Nicol (Chatto £12.99) Plenty of food for
thought in this satisfying romp through the thrifty practices of the second
world war.
How Not to Write a Novel by Sandra Newman & Howard Mittlemark
(Penguin £9.99) Spot-on guide hilariously hammers home the 200 most common
mistakes made by unpublished fiction writers.
The Secret Life of Words by Henry Hitchings (J Murray £8.99) Patient,
thorough and highly entertaining excavation of the English language, from
pre-Roman Britain to modern-day management speak.
The Survivors Club by Ben Sherwood (M Joseph £15.99) Gutsy, fact-thick
book on luck, accident and improving the odds in the face of extreme danger.
Au Revoir to All That by Michael Steinberger (Bloomsbury £18.99) An
American foodie’s passionate lament for the declining standards of French
cuisine.
Backwards in High Heels: The Impossible Art of Being Female by Tania
Kindersley and Sarah Vine (Fourth Estate £14.99) A bold and informative
guide to being a woman in 2009 that isn’t full of froth about cupcakes and
lipstick.
