Bookcase

By Kate Whiting

New fiction

Big Brother by Lionel Shriver is published in hardback by HarperCollins, priced £16.99 (ebook £10.99). Available now.

Pandora, the main character and our narrator in Big Brother, is described by her husband Fletcher as "stealth attractive".

Stealth is a perfect word to describe author Lionel Shriver's novel, which after a rather slow first chapter steadily builds into a powerful and thought-provoking work.

Horrified to discover her once handsome and slim older brother is addicted to junk food and has piled on hundreds of pounds in weight, Pandora attempts to help.

The subsequent tale is all the more poignant, given that the author's real older brother Greg died of complications arising from obesity.

As she proved in We Need To Talk About Kevin, Shriver is fearless when it comes to tackling subjects many authors might be too squeamish to attempt.

Here, she focuses her dry observations on our obsession with food and asks why we seem to have "mislaid the most animal of masteries".

Near the end, a clever sleight of hand adds another dimension but the real skill lies in the way our complicated relationship with food and fat is dissected with surgical-like precision.

9/10

(Review by Gill Oliver)

This House Is Haunted by John Boyne is published in hardback by Doubleday, priced £14.99 (ebook £8.54). Available now.

Many people will be familiar with Irish novelist John Boyne for his international best-seller The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas, which went on to be made into a successful feature film.

This offering from Boyne is set in the late 1860s and is a chilling ghost story telling the tale of Eliza Caine, who following the death of her father takes a position as governess at Gaudlin Hall in Norfolk.

Right from the outset, the reader is drawn in to the mystery surrounding the house and Eliza's two charges, Isabella and Eustace.

With no other adults present at the house, Eliza has to turn to the local villagers and the family solicitor to find answers to her questions. It is clear from the start that there is a malign presence in the house, but who is it and what does it want?

The story is both unsettling and absorbing, with the writing doing a fantastic job of evoking the period in which the novel is set. Both dark and mysterious, it will have you gripped until the last page.

8/10

(Review by Rachael Dunn)

Constance by Patrick McGrath is published in paperback by Bloomsbury, priced £12.99 (ebook £8.51). Available now.

Award-winning British novelist Patrick McGrath, author of The Grotesque, Spider, Asylum (all of which have been subsequently made into films), returns with the psychologically scarring Constance.

Constance Schuyler is a damaged young woman - ignored by her father since birth, abandoned by her mother who died young, and living in the shadow of her outspoken younger sister. She meets and marries professor Sidney Klein - a man 20 years her senior - and almost immediately regrets her decision to marry a man who is so much like her father.

As Constance's life progresses, her mental health suffers enormously. She discovers a shattering secret from her dementia-suffering father, and becomes paranoid, dangerous and delusional.

Her husband, the man she married "to punish him for loving her", pleads with her to get help, but she refuses. What follows is a chilling, yet hopelessly sad, chain of events that lead to death, suicide and a near mental breakdown.

Constance is a challenging book - there are glimmers of hope, but ultimately you get swept into the main protagonist's psyche, and that's a very troubling place.

We flit between Constance and Sidney's version of events, and in no way does that affect the telling of the story - it makes it more realistic, as you never really can tell who is telling the truth. A fantastic read.

8/10

(Review by Emma Wilson)

Sidney Chambers And The Perils Of The Night by James Runcie is published in hardback by Bloomsbury, priced £14.99 (ebook £9.40). Available now.

After the debut of James Runcie's eccentric ecclesiastical sleuth Sidney Chambers last year, we are treated to a collection of his latest shadowy adventures in this, the second book of Grantchester Mysteries.

This time Sidney has to bring his incisive intellect to bear on affairs of the heart as well as unscrupulous criminal activities.

It is 1955, and Sidney is plunged into a new diverse collection of dilemmas in his native Grantchester and beyond.

Fatal falls, poisonings and arson are all par for the course as our clerical detective solves illicit puzzles involving a Cambridge don, the local cricket ace and a glamour photographer.

Alongside his faithful Labrador Dickens and dodgy police inspector Geordie Keating, Sidney picks his way methodically through more interlocking investigations.

With events that bring him to cut a swathe through a fog of international espionage, Sidney must also decide between two charming lady companions. A worthy follow-up to last year's Shadow Of Death.

8/10

(Review by James Fry)

The Wedding Gift by Marlen Suyapa Bodden is published in hardback by Century, priced £12.99 (ebook £8.51). Available now.

New York lawyer Marlen Suyapa Bodden has drawn on her legal expertise and knowledge of the history of slavery to pen her debut novel, The Wedding Gift.

Sarah Campbell is a slave on a 19th century cotton plantation in deepest Alabama. Fathered by the owner of the plantation, Sarah grows up alongside her white half-sister Clarissa, although as slave and mistress, their lives are worlds apart.

The story is written alternately through the eyes of Sarah and Clarissa's mother, Theodora, and through the two viewpoints, we realise that slavery is only one form of bondage; the seemingly free white women are also fighting their own battles for freedom.

While the multi-layered plot offers an interesting insight into the complicated life of a slave plantation, it often lacks tension and vibrancy, and the dialogue is unnatural and stiff.

Particularly in the second half of the novel, a lot of legal jargon and plain statement of the facts takes over the narrative, resulting in a somewhat tedious trudge to the final twist in the tale.

5/10

(Review by Zahra Saeed)

Eleven Days by Stav Sherez is published in paperback by Faber and Faber, priced £12.99 (ebook £4.79). Available now.

London-based writer Stav Sherez's fourth novel - and second in his Carrigan and Miller detective series - is a bleak and chilling affair more suited to long, wintry nights, but it's nonetheless a compelling read that will keep the pulse racing to the very last page.

The 'Eleven Days' in question are those in the run-up to Christmas, in which a solution is needed to the mystery surrounding 11 women - 10 of them nuns - found dead in a convent in west London. As with any good crime thriller, questions need answering, including, of course, who that eleventh body is.

DI Carrigan and DS Miller are on hand to investigate, and barely a chapter goes by without a shocking revelation or a life-threatening scrape with a variety of villains.

Sherez skilfully handles the various complex strands that take us from cult religious sects in 1970s Peru to Albanian organised crime, but at the heart of the novel is London, its seedy, shadier side vividly and brilliantly depicted.

With a plot that rattles along at pace, and with as many twists and turns as The Thames, any fan of the crime genre will be more than satisfied.

8/10

(Review by Oliver Jones)

Children's book of the week:

The Wheels On The Bus by Jan Ormerod, illustrated by Lindsey Gardiner, is published in hardback by Oxford University Press, priced £11.99. Available now.

This picture book for toddlers grabs you from its colourful front cover, showing a safari bus of smiling faces and a monkey and a lemur trying to climb aboard.

Jan Omerod has carefully reworked the classic nursery rhyme into a bouncy romp through a safari park, where the children on the zebra-striped bus see the wolfy cubs, otters, baboons, antelopes, llamas, sloths and more all leaping, splashing and howling in their natural environments.

It's fun and beautifully illustrated and will keep little ones captivated for hours.

8/10

(Review by Kate Whiting)

Non-fiction

Britty Britty Bang Bang: One Man's Attempt To Understand His Country by Hugh Dennis is published in paperback by headline, priced £12.99 (ebook £6.99). Available May 23.

Mock The Week's most genial panellist enters into Bill Bryson territory with this upbeat and amusing investigation into what defines the British character.

In chapters devoted to subjects such as manners, gardening and the weather, the comedian unearths hundreds of unusual facts guaranteed to be of use in pub quizzes across the country.

Unlike Bill Bryson, however, he hasn't done much in the way of original research, or indeed left his desk.

Much of the book is concerned with idle web-searches, stats according to Wikipedia and frequent admissions that he 'might have got this wrong'.

Dennis makes for an agreeable narrator, never shy of including even the most groan-worthy gags, but overall it's a touch too throwaway.

6/10

(Review by James Robinson)

It's Only Rock 'N' Roll: My Unconventional Life by Douglas Villiers is published in hardback by Book Guild, priced £17.99. Available now.

Entrepreneur Douglas Villiers's story is the classic 'living every moment like it's your last' template.

Having suffered family heartache during his childhood, Villiers's refreshingly carefree attitude and love of travel co-exists with his thirst for business and making money.

Being in the right place at the right time - allayed to his grabbing life with both hands attitude - investment in property and nightclubs soon sees him living the high life. He branches out into other areas, including the film industry, while retaining a thirst for adventure.

There are 'nearly' moments, failures as well as the successes, but the story is about much more than economic gain; the characters he meets, the social and political changes he experiences from the dour 1940s existence in rural Wales and, in his late teens, a London pre-rock and roll.

Engaging, conversational and matter-of-fact, the narrative is interspersed with personal pictures and the characters, famous and notorious, he met and worked with. Aspirational as well as inspirational, Villiers is the man who has lived our dreams.

8/10

(Review by James Cleary)

Here I Am: The Story Of Tim Hetherington, War Photographer by Alan Huffman is published in hardback by Grove Press, priced £17.99 (ebook £7.43). Available now.

Award-winning war photographer Tim Hetherington became well known and loved for his dedication, passion and skill. This biography, penned by friend and journalist Alan Huffman, perfectly captures his qualities.

Starting with Hetherington's tragic death in April 2011 while he was covering the Libyan revolution, it charts his career on the front lines of chaos among dissidents and soldiers, shooting scenes of political turmoil from across Africa to the war in Afghanistan.

Huffman poignantly combines the accounts of friends and colleagues to create a moving story revealing Hetherington's fascination with conflict zones and his tenacity to capture true emotion in his images.

The result is an awe-inspiring book, not just for the way it describes Hetherington's life's work, but also for its gripping portrayal of the gruelling and bloody realities of warfare.

It's a testament to Huffman that, by the end, I found myself mourning for a creative genius whom I was only vaguely aware of previously. A captivating and thoughtful biography.

8/10

(Review by Mary Ann Pickford)

Tiny Islands: 60 Remarkable Little Worlds Around Britain by Dixe Wills is published in paperback by AA Publishing, priced £14.99 (ebook £6.71). Available now.

Sixty islands no larger than 300 acres are explored by Dixe Wills as he uncovers the hidden mysteries of these manmade and natural islands of Britain.

Accessed by causeway, bridge, or a ferryman called George, these tiny islands can be found in rivers, lochs, lakes and along the coast, often inhabited by magnificent seabirds rather than the usual human beings.

With quirky and informative historical facts, geographical and literary references, as well as tall tales and legends, even the smallest rocky outcrop has a story to tell.

Not just an enjoyable read, Tiny Islands fulfils the requirements of a guidebook providing information on how to get there, accommodation, facilities and local amenities.

And the beautiful photography that accompanies this book helps to transport the reader to these mystical isles.

7/10

(Review by Liz Ellis)

Best-sellers for the week ending May 18

Paperbacks

1 Bring Up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel

2 Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn

3 Sweet Tooth, Ian McEwan

4 The Red House, Mark Haddon

5 The Secret Keeper, Kate Morton

6 The Great Gatsby (Penguin Modern Classics), F Scott Fitzgerald

7 The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out Of The Window And Disappeared, Jonas Jonasson

8 The Fast Diet, Mimi Spencer and Michael Mosley

9 The Great Gatsby (Alma Classics), F Scott Fitzgerald

10 The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Rachel Joyce

(Compiled by Waterstone's)

Hardbacks

1 Inferno, Dan Brown

2 A Delicate Truth, John le Carre

3 Dead Ever After: A True Blood Novel, Charlaine Harris

4 Magician's End, Raymond E Feist

5 This Boy: A Memoir of a Childhood, Alan Johnson

6 Gwynne's Grammar: The Ultimate Introduction To Grammar And The Writing Of Good English, NM Gwynne

7 Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography, Volume One: Not for Turning, Charles Moore

8 Tales from Acorn Wood: Fox's Socks, Julia Donaldson

9 The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald

10 Light, Michael Grant

(Compiled by Waterstone's)

EBooks

1 Inferno, Dan Brown

2 Watch Over Me, Daniela Sacerdoti

3 The Beach, Alex Garland

4 The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald

5 The Magpies, Mark Edwards

6 The Back Road, Rachel Abbott

7 Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn

8 Only the Innocent, Rachel Abbott

9 My Secret Sister, Helen Edwards

10 The French House, Nick Alexander

(Compiled by the Kindle store at Amazon.co.uk)

:: Note to editors: This is a re-send of the book column, including the latest charts from Waterstone's. Please note amendment to the author of Inferno in the ebook chart