Someone Else’s Son by Sam Hayes, Headline, $32.99

Carrie Kent creates sensational television by manipulating grieving victims of crime, and luring explosive confessions from the perpetrators.

She’s rich, famous, and demands perfection in every part of her life, except for her own performance as a mother.

It’s not until her own son, Max, is stabbed to death that she realises she knows nothing about his life, prompting her to hunt down his friends and enemies, and expose the truth about his murder.

The only witness is his girlfriend, Dayna, she’s not talking, but is she a match for his determined mother?

The strength of Someone Else’s Son, is the way the author plays with the chronology. Max’s last days, are intertwined with Carrie’s investigation into his death, and with her own past.

It builds to a tense climax on the set of Carrie’s show. Can she be saved from the heartbreaking truth about Max’s death? And is there a future for Carrie or Dayna without him?

Now to Love

Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny, Sphere, $29.99

Three mysteries unfold together in this latest Armand Gamache novel, keeping even the sharpest of readers in suspense from page one. He’s one of the truest and bravest Chief Inspectors, but what went so badly wrong that it drove an anguished Gamache to seek solace with an old friend in snowy Quebec City?

Will he find comfort in investigating the murder of a fanatical archaeologist, who died while trying to solve a centuries-old mystery? And has he jailed an innocent man over the murder of a hermit in the picturesque hamlet of Three Pines?

Louise Penny delivers the complete package needed for a brilliant suspense novel: believable and complex plotting, characters with depth, atmosphere and location that takes you to a different world.

If you haven’t read Penny’s Armand Gamache novels start now, Bury Your Dead stands alone, but I’d recommend reading The Brutal Telling first.

Now to Love

Daniel by Henning Mankell, Harvill/Secker, $32.95

Hans Bengler is a 19th century loser, running away from his purposeless, hopeless life in Sweden.

Deep in the Kalahari Desert he finds a young boy who’s survived the massacre of his entire family.

With the kindest of intentions he adopts the child, re-names him Daniel, and takes him home to Sweden.

But his ignorance, alcoholism, and lack of imagination, condemn an intelligent child to life as a freak show exhibit, and worse. Daniel dreams of his family, his home, and of his rich culture, and he shows determination and courage in trying to save himself.

Sweden’s Henning Mankell has conquered the world with his wildly popular crime writing. With this latest novel he addresses deeper historical and cultural issues.

He often writes about Africa and says he has one foot in the desert and one in the snow. His understanding of both cultures is striking. Daniel is deep, strange, disturbing, and tragically beautiful.

Now to Love

The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul by Deborah Rodriguez, Bantam Australia, $32.95

Sunny is a Southern gal who’s made herself a home, and a buzzing small business, in the middle of a war zone. Her coffee shop in Kabul, Afghanistan, is a place where men check their weapons at the door, and women support each other in one of the most misogynistic places on earth.

Sunny’s 60-year old landlady Halajan is hiding a life-long love affair. Young Yazmina is taken in, after being stolen from her village, and is desperately disguising a burgeoning pregnancy. Wealthy American Candace has escaped her loveless marriage and run away with her Afghan lover. And journalist Isabel is asking all the right questions of all the wrong people.

Author, Deborah Rodriguez lived and worked in Kabul, and wrote the bestselling memoir The Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind The Veil. This is her first work of fiction, and it hums along with humour and understanding.

Now to Love

Vanity Fairby William Makepeace Thackeray

With tongue-in-chic and cheeky chutzpuh, Becky Sharp was the Madonna of her day, flaunting tradition and challenging hypocritical sexual mores. And what a survivor. After the nuclear holocaust, all that will be left are a couple of cockroaches and Becky. Okay, she had a few minor faults – snobbery and sexual kleptomania (Becky climbed the social ladder – lad by lad); husband-hunting ( she wasn’t interested in Mr Right, but Lord, Sir, Marquis, at the very least!) …..But we’re talking 1810. With no vote, no union, no fixed wage, no welfare, no contraception ……..what options were available to women? Apart from factory work, being a governess or doing domestic service, it was prostitution or marriage. (Often a tautology in those days.)

The razor-sharp satire ofVanity Fairis as topical and relevant today as ever. A tour de farce.

Now to Love

Emma by Jane Austen

I adore Emma because it reminds me of what we should expect from men when it comes to courtship; the gallantry of Mr Weston, the generosity of Frank Churchill, the chivalry and honesty of Mr Knightley and the perseverance of Mr Martin.

We should only accept hand-written and delivered invitations (not text messages), and must always be collected by carriage. All hail Jane Austen: the original chick-lit author.

Now to Love

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Some of the world’s greatest books were written for children and Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland takes, for me, pride of place in that pantheon. Carroll’s surreal fictional world maybe full of games and riddles and bizarre characters but it is Alice herself with whom we engage – the knowing innocent, adrift in an illogical world over which she has no power (until she destroys it, of course).

Without this book opening up the possibilities of fiction to me, I would never have become a writer.

Now to Love

The Golden Prince by Rebecca Dean, HarperCollins, $32.99

Buttercup blond, blue-eyed 16-year-old Edward VIII – heir to the British throne and love-thwarted subject of novel, The Golden Prince – bears an uncanny physical resemblance to another young prince and heir to the British throne, about to wed in London this Easter. But this is where the similarity ends. Edward, of course, went on to marry a divorcee and abdicate for love.

But Rebecca Dean’s gentle, slightly far-fetched part-fact part-fiction tale precedes that, recounting a royal love affair which could have changed the course of history. The lonely teen naval cadet, eldest of four brothers, son of disciplinarian King George V and distant Queen Mary, falls in love with a commoner and for this prince there’s no happy ending. A country road collision brings “David” – as the Prince is known at Dartmouth naval college – face to face with Rose Houghton, the eldest of four sisters who reside at Snowberry, a gentrified, yet blue blood-less family seat. David is bewitched with the “spiffing family life” and especially with youngest sister, loveable Lily.

Dean deftly weaves social and political detail into her historical fantasy – Rose’s suffragette leanings, Marigold’s flirtation with an emerging Hollywood – as well as commentary on the stifling royal rulebook. Perfect to wile away the hours while waiting for Wills and Kate to appear on Buck House balcony, for their post-wedding kiss.

Now to Love

Separate Beds by Elizabeth Buchan, Penguin UK, $24.95

British author Elizabeth Buchan writes chick-lit for the middle-aged woman which may sound a little grumpy-old-womanish but is actually surprisingly thought-provoking and hugely enjoyable.

Separate Beds centres on Annie Nicholson, a 49-year-old health service manager, who hasn’t slept in the same bed as her media exec hubby Tom for five years. Added to this the couple appears to have been abandoned by their eldest daughter, their son is facing the loss of his furniture business, wife and child and their younger daughter is living in the attic trying to be a novelist. So when Tom loses his high-powered job, the new stress threatens to push this family further apart.

What sets Buchan apart in this crowded genre is her perceptive and intelligent observations, smart plotting and likeable characterisation.

Now to Love

The Leopard by Jo Nesbo, Harvill Secker, $32.95

Since Swedish author Stieg Larsson and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo smashed the bestseller lists, a new literary sub-genre has developed – “Scandicrime” – with a buzz all of its own. Scandicrime is noir-ish, slightly subversive packed with antiheroes and set in the frozen snow-deadened landscapes of Scandinavia. There literally seems to be something in the water – well the snow – that seems perfectly suited to confronting, dark, emotional thrillers but the similarities between the works ends there and standing head and shoulders above the Scandi stereotypes is Norwegian writer Jo Nesbo.

The Leopard is Nesbo’s sixth Harry Hole novel published in English (his eighth over all) and at 611 pages, it may seem quite an undertaking. But fear not, you won’t be putting this down! Nesbo’s special skill is in his storytelling – even more impressive when you consider this is in translation.

The gentle drip drip of nuggets of information, and superb twists and turns, keep you guessing always a few steps behind the wily protagonist – brooding detective Harry Hole, who at the beginning of the story is holed up in Hong Kong, trying to erase the memory of his last painful case and the loss of his wife and son with a mix of compulsive gambling and opium.

The beautiful Kaja is sent over to lure Harry back to Oslo to work on the case of a burgeoning serial killer whose form of murder involves a uniquely gruesome torture instrument called Leopold’s apple which chokes its victims and then shoots deadly spikes into them at the pull of a chain. Harry only agrees to come because officer Kaja tells him his father is gravely ill.

Once back in Oslo, Harry finds himself at the centre of a police turf-war and forced to work undercover with only a couple of officers to help him (including Kaja) which of course suits his unconventional ways perfectly. As the bodies mount up, it becomes evident that the only connection between the victims is that they all spent a night together in an isolated mountain hut along a ski route and the killer is picking off the guests one by one. How many will die before Harry works it out?

The action switches deftly between Hong Kong, Norway and Africa and the constantly swirling plot is laced with a fevered romance, a subplot as Harry tries to help his dying father and lashings of dark emotion. This is slick, sophisticated thriller telling at its peak.

About the Author

Jo Nesbo was born in Oslo, Norway in 1960, his father a bus company managing director and his mother a librarian. He describes his childhood as “a painful delight” and decided to be a writer when he was 14 “songwriting for my friends who all played in bands”.

He worked as a freelance journalist and even a strockbroker before writing his first Harry Hole novel at 36, an instant hit winning the Glass Key Award for best Nordic crime novel. He also continued writing songs and is the lead singer and songwriter in Norwegian rock band Di Derre.

His inspiration for Harry Hole was “the police officer in the village where my grandmother lived. She would tell us kids that if we weren’t home by eight, Hole would come get us!” and he says he derived the ideas for the crimes in The Leopard from “my own fears and nightmares.”

Jo has a daughter Selma, 11, and is currently working on his ninth Harry Hole novel.

JOIN THE AWW BOOK CLUB

In 30 words or less, tell us what is great about a book you are reading at the moment. Post your review below, email [email protected], or write to The Great Read, GPO Box 4148, Sydney, NSW 2001.

The best critique will be printed in the May issue of The Weekly and the writer will win The AWW Cooking School cookbook, valued at $74.95.

Please ensure you leave an email address you can be contacted on in order to be eligible for the prize.

Now to Love