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RRP: £16.99 (Bloomsbury)
It’s VE Day, 1945, and in smalltown Bonhomie, Ohio, hardware storekeeper Cal Jenkins and beautiful Margaret Salt steal a moment of illicit passion, one thing leading to another.
Cal’s wife, Becky, uses her psychic gifts to comfort the bereaved. For Margaret’s husband, Felix, away on a cargo ship in the Far East, the war isn’t over – and he has illicit passions of his own.
The fateful consequences of their liaisons play out over decades and cause emotional havoc with their sons, as another war erupts in a far country.
Tender, funny, forgiving and so cleverly wrought, Ryan’s debut adult novel has garnered high praise from the likes of Tom Hanks and Ann Patchett.
RRP: £20 (Orion)
New York, New York! When nonagenarian Alma Aldershoff inadvertently unleashes a malevolent spirit in the luxury Manhattan hotel that was her childhood home, it’s a job for pink-haired psychic Pixie Tate – and it’s a tricky one.
She has to ‘timeslide’ and – yikes! – she’s back in 1912 aboard an ocean going liner where the past yields its secrets. An easy read, wildly improbable and great fun.
RRP: £18.99 (Transworld)
Aged just five, Nina Drayton witnessed her sister, Tamara, being drowned in the pool of the family’s villa on the Côte d’Azur – or so it is said.
The babysitter, Josie, has served time for murder, but 20 years on, Nina can recall nothing of the events to which she testified.
And if Josie isn’t guilty, is the real killer still at large? A highly accomplished psychological thriller; deeply impressive.
RRP: £20 (Penguin)
Oh, for a quiet, blameless life! Boyd’s reluctant double agent and travel writer Gabriel Dax, besotted with his alluring MI6 handler, is drawn into intrigues that will take him to Guatemala and to Cold War Berlin, where John F Kennedy is scheduled to visit.
A faultless evocation of 1960s England, masterful, old-fashioned storytelling. The second novel in a trilogy that’ll leave you wanting more.
RRP: £16.99 (John Murray Press)
Our columnist and Countdown’s self-confessed ‘linguistic magpie’ returns with another selection of loan words, lost words, neologisms, colloquialisms, curse words, slang, puns, mondegreens and bafflegab – a gem for each day of the year.
Dankeschön for Teletubbyzurück (one who waves back at the Teletubbies, so not very bright). A delight. But don’t lend it to a librocubicularist – you won’t get it back! Read Susie’s latest column here.
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