Bookcase

By Keeley Bolger

Book of the week

Eat My Heart Out by Zoe Pilger is published in paperback by Serpent's Tail, priced £11.99 (ebook £6.47). Available January 30.

It's rare that a debut novel has the power to both make the reader laugh out loud and sigh with admiration, but Zoe Pilger's does just that.

At not yet 30, Pilger is somewhat of a wunderkind - art critic at The Independent, on track for a PhD in love and sadomasochism at Goldsmiths College, University of London, all alongside penning this cheeky literary debut.

Her semi-autographical anti-heroine, Anne-Marie, is a 23-year-old Londoner, confused about life, love and what it means to be a woman. So far, so Lena Denham, you might think. But while Pilger has captured the realities of life for young women of the millennial generation - hapless, contradictory, imbued with a grandiose sense of entitlement - her whip-smart book also has a clear legacy of absurdism, harking back to Flynn O'Brien's The Third Policeman or John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces.

It's clever, delightful stuff, and you can be sure we're going to see a lot more of young Ms Pilger.

9/10

(Review by Sarah Warwick)

Fiction

The Unpredictable Consequences Of Love by Jill Mansell is published in hardback by Headline, priced £14.99 (ebook £4.62). Available January 30.

Jill Mansell is the queen of chick lit, her latest work bringing her bestselling novel count to a very impressive 25.

Titled The Unpredictable Consequences of Love, it's somewhat ironic that the plot is extremely predictable. But then again, that's generally what you want from an easy-read.

Following four impossibly good-looking characters, Josh, Riley, Sophie and Tula, the plot charts the ups and downs they go through before they inevitably end up paired off in impossibly perfect relationships.

Serious issues such as depression and suicide are handled sensitively, and while the fact every character ends up blissfully happy by the end is a little unbelievable, the book still leaves you with a warm and uplifting feeling. It's also set in Cornwall, and the descriptions of the tranquil beaches and quaint seaside towns will have you longing for a summer break.

Mansell has a gift for creating likeable and engaging characters, and although you may recognise this is an overly fluffy and romantic tale, it won't prevent you from not being able to put it down.

8/10

(Review by Harriet Shephard)

Just A Girl, Standing In Front Of A Boy by Lucy-Anne Holmes is published in paperback by Sphere, priced £6.99 (ebook £2.62). Available January 30.

50 Ways To Find A Lover author Lucy-Anne Holmes returns with a tale about love and friendship.

Twenty-seven-year-old Jenny Taylor, aka Fanny, is happy with life, despite a childhood of never being 'good enough' for her parents and a crushing first love experience. With the help of her best friends and her 'Smiling Fanny Manifesto', her days are never the same.

But, Fanny's life takes an unexpected turn. Firstly, her estranged mum announces she has left her dad to come and live with her. As her mum tries to rebuild their relationship, Fanny is confused about her mum's motives. Secondly, she agrees to marry workaholic Matt, much to the disapproval of everyone.

And thirdly, she meets Joe King. Fanny believes it is 'love at first sight' but she is engaged to Matt and surely loves him... doesn't she?

Funny and entertaining, this novel will have you laughing, and crying, from start to finish.

8/10

(Review by Julie Cheng)

Completion by Tim Walker is published in hardback by Heinemann, priced £14.99 (ebook £6.02). Available January 30.

With house prices rising again and experts warning of another property boom, Tim Walker's deliciously funny novel is bang on the money.

It tells the story of the Manville family, viewed through the prism of their beautiful, rambling North London house which was once held in awe by their middle-class circle of friends.

But by the time we are introduced to them, successful children's book author Pen and advertising whizz Jerry are divorced and about to sell their home, until something happens to put a spanner in the works.

Walker's clever observations on materialism, parenting, love, friendship and even internet dating are piercingly accurate, but served up with a generous dollop of humour. Better still, he manages to make the main characters so likeable, we actually care what happens to them.

Fluidly written, with plenty of laugh-out-loud moments, this debut from Walker is guaranteed to leave readers wanting more.

8/10

(Review by Gill Oliver)

The Days of Anna Madrigal by Amistead Maupin is published in hardback by Doubleday, priced £18.99 (ebook £6.99). Available January 30.

Fans of the Tales Of The City series will welcome this new addition that both moves the story forward but also reveals more about the past.

The Days of Anna Madrigal starts with the title character, a transgender landlady, now living with her young carer near the Castro district in San Francisco. Now 92, Anna is thinking about her past - starting as Andy in a whorehouse trailer park and detailing her transformation, her loves and her secrets.

There is a sense of melancholy and foreboding lingering across the story, and the metaphor of the Monarch - migrating butterflies where younger generations finish the migration - represents Anna's glorious existence being handed on to those generations who follow.

If you haven't read any of the books in the series don't start here, go back to the beginning with Tales Of The City. If you're an avid reader, you'll be delighted to catch up on the character's latest exploits - though you may miss San Francisco being replaced by the new agey Burning Man festival for various parts of the book. Also, while we aren't talking 50 Shades Of Grey, there are parts of the book not for the easily offended.

7/10

(Review by Bridie Pritchard)

A Bit Of Difference by Sefi Atta is published in hardback by Fourth Estate, priced £14.99 (ebook £9.99). Available January 30.

A Bit of Difference is the second novel from Nigerian-born author Sefi Atta, recipient of the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa.

Deola is 39 years old, single, and living a successful but uninspiring existence in London. When she returns to her native Nigeria for her father's memorial, it prompts her to re-think her life and wonder whether contentment lies in returning to her homeland. A brief encounter with a handsome hotel owner serves to complicate matters even further.

Atta's book flips the conventional immigrant story and eschews the usual stereotypes about the developing world. It's refreshing to have an account of a very modern Africa, and a narrative that has at its core an affluent middle class Nigerian community with problems and hopes could be transposed to almost any Western counterpart. However, a plot that sometimes drags and lacks drama is to the detriment of this very contemporary novel.

6/10

(Review by Zahra Saeed)

Non-Fiction

White Beech by Germaine Greer is published in hardback by Bloomsbury, priced £25 (ebook £15.08). Available January 30.

In 2001, at the age of 62, Germaine Greer decided to acquire a rainforest - 60 acres of abandoned dairy farm in south-east Queensland that had been ruined by decades of wasteful timber felling, unwisely introduced species and commercially motivated despoliation of all kinds.

White Beech is her account of her decade-long attempt to 'rehabilitate' (her preferred word) this 'steep rocky country', to allow the complexities of the ancient ecosystem to reassert itself. The work is complex and painstaking, but by the end of the decade she has seen a wealth of traditional fauna and flora return to Cave Creek.

As you'd expect from Germaine Greer, however, this is no mere anecdotal chronology. It's a dense, angry and scintillating exploration of Australian history, botany, zoology and politics, an extraordinary blend of exhaustive nature notes, assiduous scholarship and biting polemic.

The structure is forest-like itself, a series of rich outgrowths that combine and accumulate to add on layer after layer of context, from the history of dairy farming to the near-suicidal dangers of logging.

There is far more detail than the average reader could possibly need, but Greer's almost mystical sense of mission is utterly infectious, as is her ability to match huge passion with steely argument.

Overall, one is left breathless with admiration for this extraordinary thinker, writer and doer trying to change the world.

9/10

(Review by Dan Brotzel)

Farmageddon by Philip Lymbery with Isabel Oakeshott, is published in trade paperback by Bloomsbury, priced £12.99 (ebook £7.49). Available January 30.

Producing enough cheap food to feed the world is one of the biggest dilemmas facing politicians today. But doing that without destroying the plant and the animals which inhabit it is equally as big a question to answer.

The two should go hand-in-hand, producing food and not wearing out the planet. But somewhere along the way those in charge of producing our food have abandoned the search for food to feed the masses in favour of food at the best financial return.

And, in the process, the planet is hurting. Philip Lymbery, through his work for Compassion In World Farming, knows this better in most.

In Farmageddon he tells the true story of how the world is being mortgaged for profit in shocking details and with startling consequences. Factory-farmed food clearly does not mean better food and the world's health is paying the price.

8/10

(Review by Roddy Brooks)

Those Wild Wyndhams: Three Sisters At The Heartland Of Power by Claudia Renton is published by William Collins in hardback, priced £25 (ebook £12.15). Available January 30.

Claudia Renton's biography charts the incredible lives of three sisters who were at the heart of the Victorian political and cultural landscape. Mary, Madeline and Pamela Wyndham, forever captured in John Singer Sargent's famous 1899 painting, were beautiful and intelligent aristocratic women. Enjoying a liberal and artistic upbringing, in adulthood they found themselves surrounded by an influential circle of friends including the likes of Oscar Wilde and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, as well as prominent politicians such as Prime Minister Arthur Balfour.

But their lives, while charmed, were not without tragedy and heartbreak.

Through numerous letters and first-hand accounts, Renton paints a rich and compelling memoir that is very difficult to put down. It is not just the power these sisters wielded, but also their humanity that makes them so attractive and relevant to the contemporary reader. One wonders why it has taken so long to bring these women to light. A stunning read.

8/10

(Review by Zahra Saeed)

The Ark Before Noah: Decoding The Story Of The Flood by Irving Finkel, is published in hardback by Hodder and Stoughton, priced £20 (ebook £8.96). Available January 30.

The Ark Before Noah is an educational ride across the ages looking at the origins of the ark story through the eyes of author Dr Irving Finkel, a British Museum curator.

The subject is a complicated one and Dr Finkel starts with a basic lesson in cuneiform, which is a type of ancient writing written on clay. These tablets help to unlock the secrets of the flood story and show what people across the Middle East grew up believing.

Dr Finkel makes the daily life of residents in the ancient Middle East come alive using jargon-free language. He explains how he thinks the flood story worked its way into the Christian, Jewish and Muslim faiths and backs his arguments using wonderful illustrations and pictures of artefacts.

This book is fascinating and, although it is tough to read in parts, will appeal to anyone interested in history or religion.

7/10

(Review by Catherine Firth)

Breach Of Promise To Marry: A History Of How Jilted Brides Settled Scores by Denise Bates is published in hardback by Pen & Sword History, priced £12.99. Available now.

These days weddings might be big business for venues, caterers and dress shops, but from the late 18th century up to 1970, jilted brides could be the ones raking in the cash thanks to a now-defunct law.

Breach of promise to marry allowed women whose engagements were broken off to go to court to claim back compensation for anything from damage to reputation, to being less likely to find another husband, to even good old-fashioned heartbreak.

In times when a woman's ability to marry was key to securing her future, breach of promise was an important tool in giving her the money she might need to survive after being left alone.

But there were, inevitably, also a fair number of bridezillas who used the law for ill-gotten gains from unsuspecting men who'd never proposed.

Stories of either the man or woman being wronged are fascinating, but unfortunately Bates is hindered by the lack of detail available from court reports of the time, meaning many of the snippets of love turned sour leave the reader frustrated at not knowing more.

However, there's an incredibly detailed amount of information on the law that can't fail to interest history buffs and legal eagles alike.

7/10

(Review by Katie Archer)

Children's book of the week

I Love Mum by Joanna Walsh and Judie Abbot is published by Simon and Schuster, priced £6.99. Available now.

If you're after a warm and fuzzy feeling, you could do much worse than read I Love Mum by Joanna Walsh, who previously wrote The Biggest Kiss.

Told from the perspective of two tiny tiger cubs, the prettily illustrated tale takes you through a day spent with their adored mum. Their mum can swing them the highest at the park, make up the best games and tuck them in so that they're cosy all night long.

And even if the cubs have fallen out with each other, it's not long before their dear old mum has encouraged them to kiss and make up.

It's a charming tale told with rhymes and lively language, making it a joy to read aloud. However, sweet as the message is, the book could grate if you've had a trying day with your little one...

7/10

(Review by Keeley Bolger)

Bestsellers for the week ending January 25

Hardbacks

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

2 Minecraft: The Official Beginner's Handbook

3 Demon Dentist, David Walliams

4 The Little Book of Mindfulness, Tiddy Rowan

5 Goth Girl: and the Ghost of a Mouse, Chris Riddell

6 Allegiant: Divergent, Veronica Roth

7 A Song for the Dying, Stuart MacBride

8 Peep Inside The Zoo: Peep Inside, Anna Milbourne

9 Extra Special Treats ( ... Not): Tom Gates, Liz Pichon

10 Alex Ferguson: My Autobiography, Alex Ferguson

(Compiled by Waterstones)

Paperbacks

1 The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves, Stephen Grosz

2 Stoner: A Novel, John Williams

3 The Railway Man, Eric Lomax

4 Twelve Years A Slave, Solomon Northup

5 The Fault In Our Stars. John Green

6 Wreck This Journal: To Create is to Destroy, Now with Even More Ways to, Keri Smith

7 And the Mountains Echoed, Khaled Hosseini

8 Longbourn, Jo Baker

9 The Little Coffee Book of Kabul, Deborah Rodriguez

10 The Wolf of Wall Street, Jordan Belfort

(Compiled by Waterstones)

Ebooks

1 Twelve Years A Slave, Solomon Northup

2 Take Me Home, Daniela Sacerdoti

3 The Husband's Secret, Liane Moriarty

4 The Railway Man, Eric Lomax

5 The Tailor of Inverness, Matthew Zajacs

6 When You Walked Back Into My Life, Hilary Boyd

7 The Storyteller, Jodi Picoult

8 Redemption Blues, T.D.Griggs

9 Bone River, Megan Chance

10 The Final Piece, Maggi Myers

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