This is probably one of my favourite months because books flood in for the summer holidays and I know there will be a gamut of releases from big international authors.
First we have our usual thriller, action and mystery staples. John Grisham does what he does best in the Boys from Biloxi, another twisty legal thriller in his familiar setting of Mississippi. Michael Connelly’s latest is Desert Star, in which Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) detectives Renée Ballard and Harry Bosch work together to hunt Bosch’s “white whale”, a dangerous killer. Ian Rankin returns with legendary detective John Rebus in A Heart Full of Headstones, while Hunting Time is Jeffery Deaver’s fourth Colter Shaw book. Then there’s Livid by Patricia Cornwell, her 26th book featuring chief medical examiner Dr Kay Scarpetta. Action-packed Red Mist is the second novel from Royal Marine and motivational author Ant Middleton. Lee and Andrew Child’s No Plan B , the 27th featuring Jack Reacher, is given the nod by Karin Slaughter, who says it’s “not to be missed. A perfectly plotted, fast-paced thriller, with bigger twists than ever before. It’s no wonder Jack Reacher is everyone’s favourite rebel hero.” The Favour is a stand-alone from Nicci French, English husband-and-wife team Nicci Gerrard and Sean French. The blurb: “A young woman agrees to do a favour for an estranged former boyfriend, but when things go horribly wrong, one small task turns into a murder investigation that completely upends her life, ensnaring her in a deadly web of secrets and lies.”
There are plenty other big fiction titles to look out for too. In Jodi Picoult’s Mad Honey (co-written with Jennifer Finney Boylan), the focus is on the art and business of beekeeping, teen murder and family secrets. Philippa Gregory takes us back to 1685, when England is on the brink of a renewed civil war against the Stuart kings in Dawnlands. The Romantic by William Boyd sounds epic: “Set in the 19th century, the novel follows the roller-coaster fortunes of a man as he tries to negotiate the random stages, adventures and vicissitudes of his life. He is variously a soldier, a farmer, a pawnbroker, a bankrupt, a jailbird, a writer, a gigolo — and many other manifestations — and, finally, a minor diplomat, based in Trieste (then in Austria-Hungary), where he sees out the end of his days.” Lucy by the Sea is the follow-up to Elizabeth Strout’s Oh William!, which was shortlisted for a Booker. A minor warning though: it’s set during the Covid years.
Quick and heartwarming is the novella Maureen Fry and the Angel of the North by Rachel Joyce. Though it is said it can be read as a stand-alone, it is the finale to a trilogy that began with the best-seller The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and continued in The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy. If you have not read them, I suggest you buy all three for a weeklong binge session.
The Last Chairlift is the first John Irving book in seven years and his 15th novel. It sounds like classic Irving: “In Aspen, Colorado, in 1941, Rachel Brewster is a slalom skier at the National Downhill and Slalom Championships. Little Ray, as she is called, finishes nowhere near the podium, but she manages to get pregnant. Back home, in New England, Little Ray becomes a ski instructor. Her son, Adam, grows up in a family that defies conventions and evades questions concerning the eventful past. Years later, looking for answers, Adam will go to Aspen. In the Hotel Jerome, where he was conceived, Adam will meet some ghosts and they aren’t the first or the last ghosts he sees.” It’s a doorstopper, a whopping 912 pages, so if you are a fan, keep for it a big slice of holiday time.
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