Holiday reading list!!
Just a few days to go until we set off for two weeks on the Ile de Ré, a paradise on the west coast of France boasting brilliant beaches, lots of sun and miles of safe cycling paths.
One of my favourite holiday rituals is choosing the books to take with me - and this has become an important and exciting anticipatory event in recent years, because with three children under 10 choosing the books might be as far as I get.
This year I have been blessed by a number of review copies of new books from favourite authors dropping on to the door mat at the ideal moment.
The new RJ Ellory - author of A Simple Act of Violence and A Quiet Belief in Angels - is always a high point of the year, and I have high hopes for Saints of New York, a novel of the NYPD.
Another annual cause for celebration is the arrival of the next installment of CJ Sansom's marvellous Tudor thriller series featuring lawyer Matthew Shardlake. Sansom has set a high standard for historical crime fiction with four previous novels including Revelation and Sovereign. In Heartstone, published in early September, Henry VIII is in a disastrous war with France while Shardlake is asked to investigate wrongdoings at his court.
One of the highlights of 2009 - perhaps the best book I read that year - was Andrew Taylor's Bleeding Heart Square, a quite brilliant novel of poverty, politics and power set in 1930s London. The follow up - The Anatomy of Ghosts - is billed as an "outstanding Gothic novel" and it has all the makings of a book that will keep me awake until long into the night, the very best sort.
Last but not least of the "new" books is Laura Lippman's I'd Know You Anywhere. I first came across Lippman through her Baltimore-based Tess Monaghan PI series, but in recent years it is her standalone novels that have really soared, including What the Dead Know and Every Secret Thing, a disturbing and moving novel which I regard as one of the best thrillers I have read. I'd Know You Anywhere, which features a death row killer pyschologically manipulating a former victim, sounds like classic Lippman, which is great news for her fans.
(To mark its publication date of August 17, Material Witness has four copies of I'd Know You Anywhere to give away. Competition details soon.)
Thanks to Orion, Pan Macmillan, Penguin and Harper Collins (US), respectively for the review copies of these books.
On top of the new books I have three others in the bag, two of which I have read before. Troubles by the late JG Farrell this year won the Lost Booker prize for 1970 and is one of the most charming and poignant novels I have ever read. Having not read it since I was 17 - A Level set text in 1989! - I decided to follow my own advice, having recommended it in Five For the Beach last month.
As regular readers will know, I have been on something of a Stephen King bender for the last six months - mainly on audio - and have finally gone back to the book I most enjoyed The Stand, which I probably read even longer ago than Troubles. Given that this is a 1,300 pager, however, I may just leave it until the next very long flight comes along.
Finally, I know little about Andrea Camilleri and his Inspector Montalbano novels set on Sicily, except that good judges regard him highly, and so I picked up a copy of the first The Shape of Water on a 3 for 2.
In days gone by I have had holidays where I have managed a book a day. This year I'd be content to get through give of these. That would be a happy holiday!
