Unmissable Summer Reads
BEST FOR THE BEACH
Rebecca Maxted picks the liveliest summer page-turners
WICKED AMBITION by Victoria Fox (Harlequin Mira Books, £7.99; offer price, £7.59)
Robin, Turquoise and Kristin are three LA girls who have found fame despite problems including being abandoned at birth, an over-powering mother and some unsavoury employment. They each come a cropper but are rescued by their heroic love interests. An addictive, dark tale, with surprising twists.
VIVIEN’S HEAVENLY ICE CREAM SHOP by Abby Clements (Quercus, £7.99; offer price, £7.59)
Imogen and Anna inherit their grandmother’s ailing ice-cream shop in Brighton. After giving some customers food poisoning and running out of money, Anna heads to Italy to learn how to make ice cream and meets the man of her dreams, leaving Imogen to do the festival circuit in their van. Entertaining and fast-paced, the characters are endearing. Features ice-cream recipes to be tried at home.
SEATING ARRANGEMENTS by Maggie Shipstead (Blue Door, £7.99; offer price, £7.59)
Winn Van Meter’s daughter is getting married on the New England island of Waskeke. Guests gather at the family’s home, forcing Winn to reconsider his life and relationships. Told over three days, but you’re given a real snapshot into Winn’s psyche: he plays both hero and villain; someone you can pity but also admire. Witty dialogue and evocative descriptions of the island pull you into the heart of the Van Meter family.
Ras has stolen a painting and is being questioned about his life by his lawyer Elizabeth. He tells her about his upbringing in war-torn Sri Lanka and how he was trying to raise awareness of his country’s plight by stealing the Piero. Told through the eyes of three very diff erent men, this is a captivating tale about the power of war to destroy lives. The beautiful accounts of Piero’s paintings provide a stark contrast to the emotional pain felt by each character.
THE OTHER TYPIST by Suzanne Rindell (Fig Tree, £12.99; offer price, £11.69)
Rose Baker is working as a typist in a police precinct in 1920s New York. A fashionable and enigmatic woman called Odalie begins working there and Rose quickly fi nds herself falling under Odalie’s spell. Their lives intertwine and Rose begins to learn about Odalie’s secret past. As the narrator, Rose paints a picture of gaiety and frivolity during the height of the Prohibition, but darkness lurks at every corner. With an air of The Great Gatsby, this tale is full of scandal, high society and dangerous obsession.
TWO FOR JOY by Helen Chandler (Hodder Paperbacks, £7.99; offer price, £7.59)
Julia’s best friend Toby announces he is going to propose to his girlfriend, but after they break up instead, Julia and Toby realise they are in love with each other. Toby’s ex then announces she is pregnant and it all gets rather complicated. A light-hearted look at the problems that come with getting two women pregnant at once. Full of stereotypes – Julia is not as beautiful as Toby’s ballerina ex but he loves her anyway – and predictable dialogue. But a satisfying read.
Set in Liverpool in 1936. After her mother’s disappearance, Miranda moves in with her horrible aunt, meets lifelong friend Steve and begins working as a driver during the Second World War. The slave trade is examined beautifully through the character of Missie, who Miranda and Steve help to return home to the West Indies. The passage of time allows the characters to become fully formed and gives an insight into what it was like to work as a woman during the war.
THE HOLIDAY HOME by Fern Britton (HarperCollins, £12.99; offer price, £11.69)
The Carew family own Atlantic House in Cornwall and spend their summer holidays there. Sisters Prudence and Constance do not get on and during one particular trip, tensions come to a boil, with tragic consequences. This tale has everything: family feuds, philandering husbands and a gorgeous setting. Fast-paced dialogue, and an unexpected twist that will leave you reeling, given that the rest of the tale is very light-hearted.
LITTLE BONES by Janette Jenkins (Vintage, £8.99; offer price, £8.54)
Set in London in 1899, Jane Stretch, an intelligent but crippled girl, has been abandoned by her family. She begins working for a doctor called Mr Swift. He helps women who have become inconvenienced, administering medicine to rid them of their problem. Then they meet Johnny Treble and their work is discovered. This is a vivid tale of what it would be like to be a crippled child working in London in 1899 – the city is depicted in great detail and your sympathy for Jane will know no bounds.
A CORNISH AFFAIR by Liz Fenwick (Orion, £12.99; offer price, £11.69)
Jude leaves her fi ancé at the altar and runs away to Pengarrock, a dilapidated mansion in Cornwall. There she begins to organise the work of brilliant horticultural scholar Petroc Trevillion. Through his journals she learns about a Trevillion family hidden treasure, and with the help of love interest Tristan, begins searching for it. An escapist read that throws you into a crumbling old house full of hidden history. Jude is a well-formed character who, while fi nding herself, fi nds exciting, other things as well. Romantic and bewitching.
Connie and Eva meet on VE day and become friends but soon realise that they are from feuding families. While trying to discover why their families hate each other, a dark secret from Connie’s past emerges. This is a tale of friendship, female empowerment and some very badly behaved men. Slow to start, but it has a whirlwind ending.
IN HER SHADOW by Louise Douglas (Black Swan, £7.99; offer price, £7.59)
Hannah grew up in Cornwall and was friends with an enigmatic girl named Ellen. Switching between childhood memories and her present-day life, Hannah attempts to make sense of what happened to Ellen, who supposedly drowned when she was a teenager. Hannah keeps seeing Ellen in the real world and begins to question whether she really is dead. An edge-of-yourseat read, which will have you tantalisingly close to the psychosis Hannah seems to be experiencing. Dark and brooding.
SOMEONE ELSE’S WEDDING by Tamar Cohen (Doubleday, £14.99; offer price, £12.99)
Fran, her husband and daughters are attending a wedding. Over the course of two days, Fran’s past begins to unravel and she is forced to admit a secret she has kept hidden since childhood. A sharp, intimate look at a woman’s past colliding head-on with her present. With two astonishing twists the plot is fi lled out by journeys into Fran’s memory and characters seen through her eyes only. A gripping undercurrent of forbidden love throughout: the book is scandalous and entertaining.
Persephone moves from the Scottish Highlands to university in London, leaving behind her widowed father. She becomes obsessed with a famous author and begins a complicated relationship with him. London is a character in its own right, brought to life by expressive prose detailing its weather, people and architecture. Persephone is a frustrating and frustrated heroine who seems to blindly lead herself into an impossible relationship and is constantly haunted by the memory of her dead mother. Moody and a little anticlimactic.
CALL NURSE MILLIE by Jean Fullerton (Orion, £6.99; offer price, £6.64)
Millie is a district nurse working in post-war east London. After a death in the family, she tries to juggle looking after her mother with caring for her patients, while being pursued by various male suitors. Charming and full of detail about the work of a nurse in 1940s London, you will ride emotional highs and lows with each new birth and death. Beautifully written with some sharp dialogue, although perhaps not the desired ending.
SHADOWS ON THE NILE by Kate Furnivall (Sphere, £7.99; offer price, £7.59)
Jessica lives in London in 1932. Her brother Tim goes missing so she decides to go and fi nd him with the help of the brilliantly named Sir Montague Chamford. Their search takes them to Egypt and all the dangers that it holds. If the country is your holiday destination, this tale would be an excellent accompaniment. One character is particularly beautiful – Jessica’s (other) lost brother Georgie, who, it is suggested, has autism. His view on the world is very sensitively shown and he turns out to be the hero of the piece.
COFFEE TABLE BOOK
PARIS HAUTE COUTURE by Olivier Saillard and Anne Zazzo (Flammarion, £45; offer price, £40)An engaging, well-planned history of Parisian high fashion from its inception in the late 19th century, when several key designers first suggested that luxury clothing was something more akin to the fine arts, rather than the simple ephemera of rich women’s daily attire.
As this well-illustrated book shows, high fashion could adapt, for instance, to the austere realities of the Second World War; while the authors’ desire to include the unsung artisans who turn dreams into reality deserves praise.
But in the last analysis, couture has become wedded to the image of Paris as the story of grand fashion houses and visionary designers, whose clothes reign on the world stage.
Steve Barfield
BEST FOR COWGIRLS
THE YONAHLOSSEE RIDING CAMP FOR GIRLS by Anton Disclafani (Tinder Press, £16.99; offer price, £13.99) Set in 1920s America, where 15-year-old Thea arrives at the boarding school of the title harbouring a secret. As she recalls the lost world of her childhood – her parents’ Florida estate, her beloved twin brother and pony – the story unfolds of the single misdemeanour that caused her fall from grace.
Grappling with guilt and loss, and thrust into a new world of rivalries, friendships and forbidden pleasures, Thea’s abiding passion for horses remains the only constant in her life. Closely observed and evocatively written, this coming-ofage story explores what happens when female desire – not just for a man, but for a way of life and a sense of self – breaks the bounds of convention.
Juanita Coulson
BEST FOR ROMANTICS
LETTERS FROM SKYE by Jessica Brockmole (Hutchinson, £12.99; offer price, £11.69)Elspeth is a young poet living on the remote Isle of Skye. Her life is interrupted by a letter from a young American. They start up a correspondence, which turns them from strangers, to friends, to lovers.
Two decades later, the Second World War is raging, and Elspeth goes missing. Her daughter, Margaret, having found her mother’s secret stash of letters, returns to the Isle of Skye to try to find out the truth about what happened all those years ago.
The plot progresses neatly among the emotive outpourings, without ever feeling contrived.
Fiona Hicks
NEW NONFICTION
HOW TO BE A VICTORIAN by Ruth Goodman (Viking, £20; offer price, £15.50)If you liked BBC TV programmes such as Victorian Farm, you will enjoy Goodman’s approach to what she sees as lived history. She thinks through the nitty-gritty of what it was like to live in Victorian England – how to wash with tea leaves and brush your teeth with cuttle sh – or use laudanum for everyday medical miseries.
There’s a nostalgic fascination over all of this, though sometimes it reads as slightly more comfortable than life in many a developing world shanty town. While she hopes to make us reconsider the di erent worlds of health, sex, fashion, food, work and play through her approach, she never really gets to grips with how differently the Victorians thought from us. SB
GIRL TROUBLE: PANIC AND PROGRESS IN THE HISTORY OF YOUNG WOMEN by Carol Dyhouse (Zed books, £14.99; offer price, £13.49)
Dyhouse is a di erent kind of social historian, an academic with a powerful thesis to explore and a true wealth of case-study material to choose from in her superlative account of young British women in the 20th century.
What anchors her account is the idea that young women’s behaviour has frequently been the source of moral panics about the deterioration of society – from the suffragettes, the genderbending appers, the good-time girls, the hippies, the punks to today’s drunken ladettes. Patriarchy feels threatened by women who are refusing to be good girls eager to be the repository of traditional ‘femininity’, to maintain British values and to feel imperilled, so that they can be rescued by men.
SB
THE GREAT RIVALRY: DISRAELI AND GLADSTONE by Dick Leonard (IB Tauris, £22.50; offer price, £20.25)
This book takes us back to classic A level history, but in incalculably greater depth – comparing the two great icons of Victorian elections, Benjamin Disraeli and William Ewart Gladstone. Their rivalry extended for 28 long years and was just as much the product of their contrasting personalities as their radically di erent policies.
This is a kind of double biography and it usefully explores their childhoods, relationships with family and friends and contrasting oratory styles. There are also new thoughts on Gladstone’s guilty obsession with ‘reforming’ fallen women, and how Disraeli managed to hide his two illegitimate children.
SB
AUDIO BOOKS
GRACIOUS LIES by Hilda Lolly, read by Anne Reid and Joanna David (Creative Content, £18.55; offer price not available) An intriguing collection of stories that take disconcerting looks behind the curtains of everyday domestic situations.SECOND HONEYMOON by James Patterson, read by Jay Snyder and Ellen Archer (Audiobooks, £10.99; offer price, £9.89)
In this frightening thriller, the maverick, suspended FBI agent John O’Hara, investigated a murderer who specialises in couples on honeymoon.
LIVES LESS ORDINARY
Our pick of the best new biographiesTHE OWL AND THE PUSSY CATS by Michael Montgomery (Pen Press, £20; offer price, £18)
This scholarly, but very readable biography, draws heavily on Edward Lear’s diaries to create a portrait of a sad, frequently disappointed man, despite his great success in Victorian England.
Lear’s family were plunged into poverty after the stock market crash of 1815 and like many eminent Victorians, he pulled himself up by sheer force of will and prodigious talent.
SB
WHAT FRESH LUNACY IS THIS? The Authorised Biography Of Oliver Reed by Robert Sellers (Constable, £20; offer price, £16)
Who was the real Oliver Reed? Was he a brilliant actor and deeply intelligent man, who never achieved his full potential – think of his electric performance in Ken Russell’s Women In Love? Or was he just an alcoholic, hell-raising misogynist, who loved to play the clown for audiences but turned into a bully after one too many?
Although it isn’t nearly critical enough, the virtue of this biography is that Sellers has drawn on unpublished material, including interviews with family and friends. He also recognises that the various personae of Reed all stem from a sense of vulnerability, wounded mortally by lack of parental love.
SB
AVA GARDNER: The Secret Conversations by Peter Evans and Ava Gardner (Simon & Schuster, £20; offer price, £16)
In her 60s and living a modest existence in London, Gardner was in desperate need of cash and wanted the book finished as quickly as possible. Peter Evans, patient and diligent, had other ideas.
Gardner was tough, cynical, smart, funny, vulgar and endearing: she was a biographer’s dream and nightmare. This is a frank insight into not only Gardner’s life, but also the biographer’s art itself. Capturing the spirit and melancholy of a star nearing the end of her life, the book gains added poignancy in light of Evans’s death last year, just as he was completing it.
Paul Whitelaw
THE LADY BOOKSHOP
How to order By phone 0843-060 0035 Online www.theladybookshop.comBy post Send your cheque, payable to The Lady Bookshop, to: The Lady Bookshop, PO Box 69, Helston TR13 0TP.