A look at the latest releases, plus what's new in paperback.

By Keeley Bolger

Book of the week

The Investigation by Jung-Myung Lee is published in hardback by Mantle, priced £16.99 (ebook £7.47). Available March 27.

A guard has been found dead, hanging from a beam, at Fukuoka Prison, his name is Sugiyama Dozan, and he was feared and despised by the prisoners.

From the start, his death is not considered a suicide but a murder; a steel stake had been stabbed into his heart and his lips sewn shut, and a poem found in his uniform pocket soon intrigues young guard Watanabe Yuichi, who's given the task of finding his murderer.

An inmate soon confesses, but Watanabe isn't quite convinced of his guilt.

As he begins to dig deeper, he uncovers untold conspiracies within the prison, magical friendships and the effects war has on humanity.

This spellbinding novel from Korean author Jung-Myung Lee, translated by Chi-Young Kim, has been inspired by the life of dissident Korean poet Yun Dong-ju and his posthumously published body of work, with several of his poems featured here.

It's impossible not to be moved by this epic story of the struggle to find and remember beauty in the face of cruelty and inhumanity.

9/10

(Review by Shereen Low)

Cat Out Of Hell by Lynne Truss is published in hardback by Hammer, priced £9.99 (ebook £6.99). Available now.

Author and journalist Lynne Truss is perhaps best known for Eats, Shoots And Leaves, her humorous guide to using grammar correctly.

Now, she heads in a very different route for her first novel in 15 years.

Cat Out Of Hell is a comedy horror that follows the story of the dashingly handsome talking cat Roger. Roger is immortal, and has been forever haunted by the evil Captain, the biggest and baddest of talking cats, who can murder with a single hiss.

The story is narrated by a retired librarian, who along with his adorable dog Watson (who in Truss's own words is the hero of the story), have to put a stop to the whole saga before any more blood is spilled.

While being genuinely creepy at times, with an alarming number of human deaths involved for a book about cats, the novella is also hilarious.

Truss's well-educated sense of humour is rife throughout, every page dripping with witty comments.

This is certainly a novel like no other: original, engrossing and very, if darkly, funny.

Just be prepared to view cats with a certain amount of suspicion from now on.

9/10

(Review by Harriet Shephard)

Little Beach Street Bakery by Jenny Colgan is published in paperback (original) by Sphere, priced £7.99 (ebook £2.85). Available now.

Scottish born, bestselling chick-lit author Jenny Colgan's latest offering Little Beach Street Bakery, tells the story of a confused 32-year-old called Polly.She and her boyfriend's business has recently gone under and their relationship is on the rocks, and Polly needs to get away.

But she can't afford to live in Plymouth on her own so she looks for somewhere cheaper and finds a run-down flat in a quiet coastal town.

Against her friends' advice, Polly moves in and soon she's making friends with fishermen, taking care of an injured puffin, but also making enemies with the local baker - also her landlady - when Polly starts offering her neighbours better, fresher bread.

Little Beach Street Bakery is a pleasant, easy read for a Sunday afternoon and for anyone who likes their romantic comedies and their food.

An added treat is the book's set of recipes, including cinnamon rolls and cheese straws, for anyone feeling inspired.

8/10

(Review by Victoria Burt)

Bryant & May And The Bleeding Heart by Christopher Fowler is published in hardback by Bantam Press, priced £16.99 (£6.99). Available March 27.

Fowler has written ten previous mysteries starring London's oldest detectives, dishevelled Arthur Bryant and dapper John May. But, after two loosely-connected sequences, their latest case is a new beginning.

Their chaotic but oddly effective Peculiar Crimes Unit is investigating a mysteriously disinterred body, and the disappearance of the Tower Of London's ravens - incidents which will lead them deep into the capital's uneasy mesh of ambition, history, money and myth.

As the idiosyncratic duo battle bureaucratic interference and baffling crimes, Fowler drops in surprising items of London lore, all of them true (or at least, true legends).The prose is sometimes uneven, and the editing can get a little clunky.

However, the joy in London's strangeness, the intricate plotting and, above all, the fascinating figures of Bryant and May more than make up for these small flaws.

7/10

(Review by Alex Sarll)

Vanishing by Gerard Woodward is published in hardback by Picador, priced £16.99 (ebook £10.21). Available March 27.

Vanishing is the story of Kenneth Brill, an unsuccessful artist who, towards the end of the Second World War, finds himself in a British prison charged with treason.

He's been accused of concealing in his landscape paintings vital information about a new military aerodrome - Heathrow - that will shortly be expanding over the countryside of his childhood.

The rest of the book seeks to explain through his own eyes how he got here, and cleverly poses the question: Is Brill a spy or just a misunderstood artist?

Brill has had the sort of war that can be seen in two very different ways.

As a camouflage officer, was he a hero of El Alamein or a conniving double agent? Was his 'war wound' sustained in combat, or was it the result of an unwanted advance he made on a fellow officer? Was his presence at the rural community run by an eccentric Nazi aristocrat the result of mental breakdown, or was he there as the lover of Italian futurist painter and fascist sympathiser Arturo Somarco?

The mystery is compounded by Brill's hapless, highly impressionable character, and his evident unreliability as a narrator.

He's not 100% unreliable, of course, or the whole story would fall over, and Woodward manages this delicate balancing act with skill.

By the end of this intriguing and very readable novel, you may feel you know Brill less than at the beginning.

But then this is the story of a visionary creative who has trouble seeing what is right in front of him.

7/10

(Review by Dan Brotzel)

Everland by Rebecca Hunt is published in hardback by Penguin, priced £12.99 (ebook £6.02). Available March 27.

Telling the story of two Arctic journeys set nearly 100 years apart, Rebecca Hunt's second novel is poles apart from her debut, Mr Chartwell, but nonetheless intriguing.In 1913, Dinners, Millet-Bass and Napps head out on a thrilling adventure towards the uncharted territory they come to name Everland.

Yet as storms set in and the bleak frost threatens their safety, the three men come to rely on each other in ways they never imagined.

In 2013, to mark the centenary of their predecessors' ill-fated voyage, Brix, Decker and Jess head towards the same barren land in the name of scientific research, yet it seems history is doomed to repeat itself.

Hunt's language is wonderfully descriptive and fully immerses the reader in the harsh, bitter conditions of the Arctic, but her details are often overly explanatory, leaving the reader yearning for a bit less talk and a bit more action.

6/10

(Review by Holly McKenzie)

Power Play by Danielle Steel is published in hardback by Bantam Press, priced £18.99 (ebook £8.55). Available now.

The latest book from Danielle Steel has two main protagonists, both CEOs of successful American corporations.

One, Fiona Carson, a mid-forties, divorced mother-of-two, has sacrificed having a relationship in order to be a success.

The other, Marshall Weston, has three children with his wife Lucy, who effortlessly runs the household, and is conducting an eight-year-plus affair with a young artist, Ashley, who has borne him twins.

Steel is a good storyteller, but Power Play is not a good story, with a rather obvious plot making for a soulless read.

The stereotypes are all-pervading; Lucy giving up her law career to make her husband happy; Ashley knowing that Weston will never leave his wife, but believing the yarns he spins every time.

Steel no doubt has another bestseller on her hands, but for me, Power Play had no power at all.

4/10

(Review by Denise Bailey)

Non-fiction

Love Goes To Buildings On Fire: Five Years In New York That Changed Music Forever by Will Hermes is published in trade paperback by Viking, priced £14.99 (ebook £9.49). Available March 27.

The thing about rock legends is it's easy to believe they were born that way, fully-formed with perfect eye-liner and hordes of adoring fans.

One of the many, brilliant aspects of this dense rock history is how it explores the humble beginnings of hundreds of influential musicians in New York in the early Seventies.

The New York Dolls, for example, originally dreamed of a career in fashion, Bruce Springsteen was hyped as a bearded folk singer, while Richard Hell and Tom Verlaine ran an independent poetry press.

Meanwhile leading lights of the new jazz scene rented space from painter and poet Virginia Admiral, who was the mother of an aspiring actor named Robert de Niro.

But this isn't just an ambitious exploration of how New York became a music-industry nexus.

It's a love letter to old-school New York, when the city was broke and Lou Reed penned 'Walk on the Wild Side' about his friends and neighbours.

A treat for lovers of music and Manhattan alike.

7/10

(Review by Anita Chaudhuri)

Caffeinated: How Our Daily Habit Hooks, Helps And Hurts Us by Murray Carpenter is published in trade paperback by William Collins, priced £12.99 (ebook £8.75). Available now.

Caffeinated tells the story of the human relationship with and dependency on the world's most consumed natural and legal high.

Carpenter writes in a knowledgeable, yet non-judgmental manner, about the way this substance has come to dominate the Western way of life.

His narrative takes the reader from the sidewalks of the United States to the streets of Mexico, Colombia, China, Guatemala and Antigua as he investigates the production, marketing and science of caffeine, as well as chocolate, coffee, cola, energy drinks tea and pain relievers.

As you would imagine, the book explores both the benefits and costs of consuming what many view as an innocuous substance, showing the murkier side of caffeine: from the way athletes abuse it through to the way it has managed to escape regulation (unlike other addictive substances).

Mixing the human story with science, pitched at a level a lay person can understand, this is a thoroughly enjoyable and addictive read, very much like its subject matter.

It makes you think about your own caffeinated existence, and is a definite read for those unable to get through the day without a cup of tea, a shot of espresso or a bite of a chocolate bar.

7/10

(Review by Elaine Adu-Poku)

Children's book of the week

Hattie Peck by Emma Levey is published in paperback by Top That Publishing, priced £6.99. Available now.

As Easter approaches, this delightful children's tale charts the journey of one plucky hen who goes on a hunt to find eggs.

Hattie Peck has only ever laid one egg which didn't hatch and since then, all she's ever wanted is an egg of her own.Fed up with feeling morose, Hattie decides to go on a journey to rescue every abandoned egg she can find.

She plunges to the bottom of the sea, climbs massive mountains and soars over bustling cities to find her eggs.

With all her eggs collected, Hattie goes back home and sits on her loot ready to hatch them all. And when the creatures finally appear from their shells, Hattie becomes mum to all of them.

If you're after an alternative Easter present to chocolate eggs, this cute story, which is told through funny illustrations, would make a lovely gift for a pre-school child.

7/10

(Review by Keeley Bolger)

Bestsellers for the week ending March 22

Hardbacks

1 Minecraft: The Official Construction Handbook

2 Minecraft: the Official Combat Handbook

3 Mary Berry Cooks, Mary Berry

4 Be Careful What You Wish for:The Clifton Chronicles, Jeffrey Archer

5 Minecraft: The Official Beginner's Handbook

6 Minecraft: The Official Redstone Handbook

7 A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal, Ben Macintyre

8 The Little Book of Mindfulness, Tiddy Rowan

9 Allegiant: Divergent, Veronica Roth

10 Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Hard Luck, Jeff Kinney

(Compiled by Waterstones)

Paperbacks

1 Jack Pepper, Sarah Lean

2 Middle School: How I Got Lost in London, James Patterson

3 Hello Hugless Douglas World Book Day: 2014, David Melling

4 Terrible Trenches: Horrible Histories, Terry Deary

5 I am Nit a Loser, Jim Smith

6 The Midnight Picnic: A Laura Marlin Mystery, Lauren St John

7 Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman

8 Fun with the Worst Witch, Jill Murphy

9 Life After Life, Kate Atkinson

10 Emily Gravett's Little Book Day Parade, Emily Gravett

(Compiled by Waterstones)

Ebooks

1 The Fixed Trilogy, Laurelin Paige

2 Twelve Years a Slave, Solomon Northup

3 Broken Dolls, James Carol

4 Fractured, Dani Atkins

5 The Book Thief, Markus Zusak

6 Divergent, Veronica Roth

7 Sleep Tight, Rachel Abbott

8 Take Me Home, Daniela Sacerdoti

9 Taunting the Dead, Mel Sherratt

10 The One Plus One, Jojo Moyes

(Compiled by amazon.co.uk)