THE RAIN BEFORE IT FALLS by Jonathan Coe
Viking, £17.99

Rosamund is dying, and uses her last breaths to record the family history of Imogen, a blind girl. Imogen is the granddaughter of Beatrix, Rosamund’s cousin and friend. She needs to know the chain of relationships that culminated in a tragedy, and that she owes her existence to an absence of love. In the war, Rosamund was sent to her aunt’s farm in Shropshire, where she saw her aunt’s lack of love for Beatrix, which blighted Beatrix’s ability to love her own daughter, Imogen's mother. A brilliant, moving exploration of the making – and unmaking – of a child.

THE CAREFUL USE OF COMPLIMENTS by Alexander McCall Smith
Little, Brown, £16.99

This is Complan literature – easily digestible, yet wonderfully sustaining and ideal for convalescents. Isabel Dalhousie is Smith’s other detective, a posh bird from Edinburgh. There are family tensions, professional skulduggery – and a painting that she cannot get out of her mind. The artist is dead, and there is something odd about this recently discovered work. Is a forger at work? Smith has such a gift for describing the beauties of Scotland that the Tourist Board should pay him.

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