The story begins as Astrid, now 82, sets off to stop him raking everything up again. Now Magnus is writing a tell-all memoir from his deathbed in Scotland. Astrid’s glittering stage career was wrecked by scandal when she was framed by her actor husband, Magnus. Windmill Hill (Quercus) by Lucy Atkins has it all: evocative setting, fabulous characters, precision plotting, poignancy, laughs, dogs and surprises. McKenzie is brilliant at spotlighting moments of love, romance and charming detail, in even the strangest, most difficult life. Soon there’s a trip to Australia to search one last time for her mother and stepfather, who disappeared presumed dead five years previously. She is picked up at the station by her grandmother’s accountant, Burt, who drives a battered Econoline (called the Dog of the North), shares a toupee with his brother, and has a pomeranian known as Kweecoats though his collar tag says “QUIXOTE”. The Dog of the North (HarperCollins) by Elizabeth McKenzie is a darkly comic novel that opens just as Penny Rush has quit her job and her marriage after confronting her husband, Sherman, thus: “I know all about Bebe Sinatra and the cocaine.” Then, hearing her grandmother has pulled a gun on the Meals on Wheels, she boards a train to Santa Barbara to investigate. Her latest book, Went to London, Took the Dog (Pan Macmillan), is out this autumn A medieval Franciscan monk and his young Benedictine sidekick investigate a murder at a monastery – a must-read for fans of Sherlock Holmes, the video game Pentiment and the theoretical controversy over the absolute poverty of Christ of 1322.Īuthor of Love, Nina (Penguin), which was adapted for the BBC by Nick Hornby, and three novels, including Reasons to Be Cheerful (Penguin). While The Name of the Rose (Everyman) by Umberto Eco may seem like an intimidating read, this historical murder mystery is often as charming and slapstick as it is thrilling and genuinely educational.
Sticky, violent and exhilarating – Pollock’s southern gothic tale of thrill killers, pervy preachers and vengeance is best read on a long road trip or at a seedy motel poolside. The Devil All the Time (Vintage Publishing) by Donald Ray Pollock should not be eclipsed by its mediocre Netflix adaptation. A literary plagiarism caper with sharp insight into the power dynamics of the publishing world, Yellowface is an extremely entertaining satire which I read in about two days. Yellowface (Harper Collins) by Rebecca F Kuang is already a lot of people’s book of the year, and rightly so. Named on Granta’s 2023 Best of Young British Novelists list Author of Penance (Faber) and Boy Parts (Faber), Blackwell’s Fiction Book of the Year in 2020.
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