Our pick of the best new books to read in March

Our pick

The Impossible Thing – Belinda Bauer

RRP £9.99 (Penguin)

A century after a scrap of a girl risked her life off a Yorkshire cliff to grab the makings of an omelette, illegally traded wild birds’ eggs change hands for fortunes. So, when Weird Nick and his mum are trussed up by masked men who ransack their cottage, sure as eggs it’s not the telly they’re after.

Now Nick and his pal Patrick (hypochondriac with a teaspoon fetish) must throw themselves into amateur detection with the same reckless abandon as guillemot chicks – each hatched from a uniquely patterned egg – launch themselves seaward from rocky ledges. What a lark!

This is both a mystery and work of pure imagination.

Hope Street – Mike Gayle

RRP £20 (Hodder & Stoughton)

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A Derby street is scheduled for redevelopment, the neighbours have gone, but vulnerable young man Connor won’t leave. Three years after his mum, Bernie, went out and failed to return, he’s still waiting for her to come home.

Can junior journalist Lila from The Echo, with Connor’s handsome friend Marcus, help him to find the missing Bernie before the council evicts him?

Gayle at his tender-hearted best.

Madame Sosostris & The Festival for the Broken-Hearted – Ben Okri

RRP £14.99 (Bloomsbury)

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What a brilliant idea! A fancy-dress ball for the lovelorn in the enchanted grounds of a château in the sunny South of France, with the famed clairvoyant Madame Sosostris to read the tarot. What could possibly go wrong?

A whimsical tribute to T S Eliot’s masterpiece The Waste Land, with sparkling dialogue, mystery, magic and some rocky marriages.

Looking for You – Alexander McCall Smith

RRP £16.99 (Penguin Random House)

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Charged with running her cousin Ness’s introduction agency, Katie discovers a talent for matchmaking, however the match she most desires is for herself with handsome Australian knitwear designer William.

This ‘loose sequel’ to The Perfect Passion Company has a few dropped stitches, but I loved the Edinburgh setting, the characters, an old-fashioned love story, warm and comforting as porridge with a dram.

Dickens The Enchanter – Peter Conrad

RRP £22 (Bloomsbury)

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For cultural critic Conrad, lockdown meant a fruitful sojourn on ‘Planet Dick’.

Here he hails the boy from the blacking factory, the prolific genius who, during his brief 58 years, bequeathed us millions of words, breathing life into Pickwick and Pecksmith, Sarah Gamp and Sam Weller, Martin Chuzzlewit and Mark Tapley, sending them to live among us and enrich our reading pleasure.