The Beasts of Paris by Stef Penney
It’s been a while since Under a Pole Star, which was shortlisted for a Costa Book Award in 2017, so it’s good to see a new book at last from Penney, who is always on my must-read list. The new book (the paperback’s out on 11 July) is set in Paris 1870 and follows three characters with problematic backgrounds who converge there. “Each keeps company with the restless beasts of Paris’ Menagerie, where they meet, fight their demons, lose their hearts, and rebel in a city under siege.” (Blurb) Sounds like there’s plenty to keep the plot simmering.

Tom Lake by Ann Patchett
A new book by Patchett is always cause for celebration. Out at the beginning of August, here we’ve got three daughters who beg their mother to tell the story of the famous actor she once fell in love with. With Patchett we often get some really interesting family dynamics and it looks like this might be the case here. Most of all I love her characters and her writing. “Tom Lake is a meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents lead before their children are born. Both hopeful and elegiac, it explores what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart.” (Blurb)

The Three Graces by Amanda Craig
The three graces in the title are not youthful Botticelli beauties, but elderly Marta, Ruth and Diana, retirees living in Tuscany. The story opens with the shooting of a refugee, and includes plans for a wedding and a music recital, a problematic younger generation and a couple living with dementia. “Brilliant, enthralling, funny and generous, this is an exploration of the indomitable human heart.” (Blurb) I’ve been meaning to read Amanda Craig for a while now, and this one looks too good to resist. And a Tuscany setting adds icing to the cake.

The Mistress of Bhatia House by Sujata Massey
Turning to mysteries, I love the Perveen Mistry series by Sujata Massey. There’s India under the Raj for a start and the bustling setting of 1920s Bombay. Here Perveen is the only practising female lawyer, as well as dealing with the issues of living in a colonised nation, sexism and a complicated class structure. She has also recently embarked on a taboo relationship. Throw in a murder or two and there’s lots to keep you turning the pages. In The Mistress of Bhatia House we’ve a story that begins with an accident at the opening of a new women’s hospital, but you know things are going to be a lot more complicated than that.

Alchemy by S J Parris
The Giordano Bruno crime novels by S J Parris has been on my recommended list for some years. If you remember, Bruno is a Renaissance era monk, and a staunch believer in freedom of thought, who has escaped the Roman Inquisition and turns up in England. He becomes a great friend of Sir Philip Sydney and helps out the Elizabethan spymaster, Sir Francis Walsingham, with a bunch of tricky situations that threaten the realm. The new book takes Bruno to Prague to contact another of Walsingham’s spies, John Dee, but there’s a murder and Dee disappears. There’s sure to be a ton of intrigue, and more than likely, a few action sequences – Bruno really knows how to use a knife. Magic.

Three Short Story Collections
Even if you don’t usually read short stories, it’s hard not to be a little excited by these. Some authors can make a laundry list sound interesting, so we’re not going to be slumming it with a collection from Kate Atkinson, whose writing just crackles on the page. Normal Rules Don’t Apply is a series of interconnected stories due out next month.

The stories in Tessa Haddley’s about-to-be-released collection, After the Funeral show how small events can have huge consequences. I have been meaning to read more Hadley since being greatly impressed by her novel The Past, so I’m definitely tempted to give these a go.

I’m sure we’re all desperately waiting for the next novel by Amor Towles, following the huge success of A Gentleman in Moscow and The Lincoln Highway. Until that appears, there’s a collection of his stories, Table for Two, in the pipeline – even if we do have to wait until next year. Oh, well.

New authors as well as some old favourites make the list of newly released books I’m eager to get my hands on.

Willowman by Inga Simpson takes you to the world of cricket and the art of the batmaker. I don’t read a lot of books about sport – in fact I’m not sure I can name a single one – but this one caught my eye. We’ve got a gifted young batter, Todd Harrow, and the special bat made for him by traditional batmaker, Alan Reader. The story seems to be about more than just cricket, though, with some interesting personal journeys, and there’s loads of high praise from the critics, the Sydney Morning Herald scoring it a six.

Prettier if She Smiled More is the new book by Toni Jordan. I loved her last book, Dinner with the Schnabels, and made a note to myself to read Jordan’s backlist. But here she is with a new book before I got started. This is another Australian novel, and follows the fortunes of Kylie, who thinks she has the perfect life, until she has to move home to care for her mother following an accident. Returning to her childhood home gives her pause for thought. I love a book that makes you laugh and cry, and this one’s sure to fit the bill.

One of Those Mothers by Megan Nicol Reed brings me a little closer to home with a novel set in my old Auckland stamping ground. It’s a look at middle class angst and the effects of a terrible secret on a small group of families in the same neighbourhood. The author has used this fodder in her popular newspaper columns over the years, so I can see she’s become a bit of an expert on parental anxiety, guilt and how friendships are impacted by rumour and unease. The book’s already harnessing some great reviews so it’s definitely one for the list.

I am drawn by the premise of The Wakes by Dianne Yarwood, and possibly also the cover. It’s about relationships with two of its main characters recently breaking up with their partners. When Louisa persuades her new neighbour Clare to join her funeral catering business, they meet Chris who is an emergency doctor attending the funerals of both patients and friends. There’s pathos but also humour, as well as reflections on the things that really matter in life. The Wakes is a debut novel from another Australian author and has sparked a lot of interest. I am fairly sure I will love this.

The War Pianist by Mandy Robotham
Moving to the Northern Hemisphere, I spotted Mandy Robotham has a new wartime novel out. I thoroughly enjoyed The Resistance Girl, which I listened to as an audiobook. It had just the right blend of action, tension and light relief and taught me a lot about World War II in Norway. With The War Pianist one main character is Marnie Fern, who gets involved in resistance work when her grandfather is killed in the London blitz. He was helping the Dutch resistance as a war pianist, which was a kind of code for radio operator. Things get tense as the Nazis close in on Marnie and her fellow ‘pianist’ in Amsterdam, Corrie Bakker, on the other end of the wire. This one’s sure to be a page-turner.

The Shadows of London by Andrew Taylor
Time to catch up with one of my favourite mystery series, with the release of the latest of the Fires of London novels by acclaimed historical fiction author, Andrew Taylor. We’ve another rollicking read featuring James Marlow, a civil servant who has become a kind of ‘useful pair of hands’ for the court of Charles II. He always seems to find himself struggling between factions at court and finding unpalatable truths about the murders he investigates. Never far away is Cat Hakesby, the architect who in this book is on the spot when a body is found in one of the almshouses she is restoring. I love the glimpses of the King Taylor slips in, the thrills and tension, as well as James’s relationship problems with spiky Cat, a woman ahead of her time.

The Last Remains by Elly Griffiths
This is book number 15 in Griffiths’s series featuring DI Harry Nelson and forensic archaeologist Dr Ruth Galloway. I love the characters who almost feel like friends, and in this book their pal Cathbad, a Druid and former tutor at Ruth’s university, is implicated in a murder when bones are unearthed by builders renovating a café. Cathbad disappears – is he on the run or is he in danger? Neolithic flint mines add a touch of archaeological interest and the ongoing issues around Nelson and Ruth’s relationship are sure to keep the plot bubbling along.

I love a trawl through Fantastic Fiction to see what’s new and what’s coming soon. It’s also a good place to check in on favourite authors to see what they’re up to or find out when the next book in a series is set to hit the shops. Here’s a few of the promising new books I discovered on a recent visit, all either just published or coming soon.

This Is the Night They Come for You by Robert Goddard
Goddard has made a name for writing ripping reads over the last decade or three, but hasn’t rested on his laurels, churning out the same old thing. He has diversified into historical thrillers – I heartily recommend the James Maxted trilogy set around the time of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles – while his last book, The Fine Art of Invisible Detection was brilliantly twisty and inventive with a quirky sleuth on the job. The new book is set in Algiers with a troubled policeman working with a secret service agent to uncover a crime hidden in the dark events of Algieria’s struggle for independence. I know I’ll get a brilliant page-turner with some well researched historical background. Can’t wait.

Villager by Tom Cox
Another writer who has diversified hugely is Tom Cox, who tends to find a new genre from time to time and make it his own. You may remember his books about his cats: The Good, the Bad and the Furry, Talk to the Tail and Close Encounters of the Furred Kind. Sure, they are books about cats, but they are also a lot about the owner and well, anything Cox writes is hilarious. Recently he has branched into writing about the English countryside, particularly the folklore and half-forgotten corners, a kind of modern day Thomas Hardy, but with more jokes. The latest book, his first novel, probably won’t be like anything you’ve read before, but features a folk musician from the sixties, teenagers finding a body on a golf course, as well as property developers threatening to despoil the landscape. Well worth a try.

The Perfect Golden Circle by Benjamin Myers
Here’s another author who makes a natural landscape come to life magically in his writing. I reviewed The Offing a year or so ago and loved the story of an unlikely friendship in post-war Yorkshire, the atmospheric setting and gorgeous writing. So Myers’ new book definitely makes this list. The Perfect Golden Circle is about a couple of guys who under the cover of darkness make crop circles in the hot summer of 1989. We’ve another unlikely friendship burgeoning as their handiwork unexpectedly acquires a cult-like following. Some similar themes look set to appear, including the futility of war and the fragility of the English countryside which also has the power to heal.

Amy and Lan by Sadie Jones
Jones’s first book The Outcast won a bunch of book prize nominations, and her second book Small Wars, a story about the family of a British officer on Cyprus in the 1950s, is a moving story I sometimes still think about. She writes intense, character driven dramas and the new book will be well worth picking up I’m sure. Another book set in a rural landscape, Amy and Lan is about two children, dear friends, whose families join another family to try their hand at farming and the ‘good life’. It should be a bucolic dream, with chickens and goats and lots of fresh air, but something is set to shatter the children’s innocence. This one’s out in July.

Twelve Months and a Day by Louisa Young
The blurb says this is Truly Madly Deeply for our times, so yes it’s a story about love cut short by death. We’ve got two couples: Rasmus and Jay; Roisin and Nico, until Rasmus and Roisin are widowed, missing their other halves and trying to get by. But Jay and Nico are somehow still there, powerless to help the newly bereaved. This is quite a different sort of story, playful and contemporary, from Young’s war-themed trio (My Dear I Wanted to Tell You, The Hero’s Welcome and Devotion), which delves into the ongoing effects of World War I on a group of characters, the soldiers and the women left at home to wait. I heartily recommend the earlier books, but Twelve Months and a Day looks a great read too, and it’s newly released, which is even better.

The Half Life of Valery K by Natasha Pulley
Pulley is an inventive, original writer and definitely somebody to watch. The Watchmaker of Filigree Street combined mystery with love in Victorian London with a little magical clockwork. I enjoyed the characters as much as the twisty storyline. Her latest book is set in 1963, when a nuclear scientist is taken from merely surviving in a Siberian prison to serve out his sentence in City 40. He’s to study the effects of nuclear radiation on wildlife, and will one day be a free man if the radiation doesn’t get to him first. Based on real events, the blurb touts this as a sweeping adventure, the ebook out later this month, the paperback in July. Definitely one for my list.

There’s been quite a bumper harvest of terrific books recently – perhaps they were delayed because of lockdowns and now we’re catching up. Anyway, here are some new titles by authors I’ve enjoyed immensely in the past and so naturally I’ve added them to my Must Read List. It’s a pretty varied list, but that’s books for you.

First up is The Narrowboat Summer by Anne Youngson. You might remember this author’s debut, the feel-good novel told in letters, Meet Me at the Museum (click on the link for my review). With a title like this, The Narrowboat Summer sounds instantly appealing, echoing Jerome K Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat, with it’s a story of three women and a dog on a canal boat. Eve’s escaping her career of thirty years to become a free spirit; Sally is taking a break from an indifferent husband and the two are rescuing Anastasia, who needs a life-saving operation. I don’t know what the dog’s problem is. It’s a novel of second chances and the power of friendship. Another feel-good read promised.

In Snow Country Sebastian Faulks returns to themes relating to the First World War and its aftermath – good news for all of us who fondly recall Birdsong – with a novel set in a sanatorium surrounded by snow and on the banks of a silvery lake. Journalist Anton Heideck is commissioned to write a story about the mysterious Schoss Seeblick where Lena had escaped Vienna to take a menial job. ‘A landmark novel of exquisite yearnings, dreams of youth and the sanctity of hope‘ promises the blurb. The setting and the rumblings of another war will be sure to add to the atmosphere. Snow Country is out in September.

The Heron’s Cry by Anne Cleeves is the second in the author’s Two Rivers series set in North Devon. Detective Matthew Venn is called to investigate a very staged looking murder – a woman stabbed with a shard from one of her glassblower daughter’s vases. Another similar murder and complications involving Matthew’s partner, Jonathan – well, it’s a small town after all – and you can tell it’s going to be another page turner. I can’t wait to get my hands on this book. I loved The Long Call (catch up with my review here), but as Cleeves has her Vera Stanhope series on the go as well, it’s been a long wait. Cleeves writes engaging character-driven crime novels with plenty of twists and secret motives. Throw in some interesting detectives and colourful English settings and what more could you want?

Mrs England by Stacey Halls is the latest from the author who brought us the historical novel about witch hunts, The Familiars. In her third book, this time with an Edwardian timeframe, Ruby takes a job caring for the children of a well-to-do Yorkshire family when strange things start to happen. What begins as a fresh start for our protagonist soon looks like history repeating itself and Ruby finds herself ostracised and alone. Big houses and chilling settings, women battling the powerlessness of their station in life – these seem to be recurring themes for Halls who could be following in the footsteps of Susan Hill, Daphne du Maurier and Wilkie Collins. ‘Simmering with slow-burning menace,’ says the blurb for the new book.

Trio by William Boyd is a novel some pundits are picking for the Man Booker Longlist and it nearly slipped under my radar. Definitely time to put it on the list then. Set during the turbulent year of 1968 – a time of student protests, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobbie Kennedy, the Vietnam War – it follows characters caught up in a movie being shot in Brighton. Efrida is struggling with writer’s block and drinking too much; glamorous Anni can’t figure out why the CIA should have her on their watch list; while Talbot has a secret. It looks like classic William Boyd territory – the lives of everyday people made extraordinary by circumstances and the politics of the day. Might have to bump this one to the top of the pile.