The Hurricane Lover by Joni Rodgers

Reviewer: Catriona Troth

What we thought: The Hurricane Lover is the story of two former lovers from polar ends of the deep political divide who collide – sexually, emotionally and in every other way – as Hurricane Katrina rolls over New Orleans and a predatory serial killer called Queen Mab takes advantage the ensuing chaos.

Corbin is a meteorologist, one of the best hurricane forecasters around – a liberal, a Democrat and an alcoholic. Shay is a small-time TV presenter, fobbed off with stories about ice cream and Ziploc bags – a former beauty queen and daughter of a wealthy and influential Republican. He is on the trail of Katrina and she is on the trail of Queen Mab.

I have never been to Louisiana or to Texas (where part of the action takes place), nor have I ever lived through a hurricane. But there is a filmic quality to the writing that means that the book played out in my mind in a series of vivid images. Rodgers has an ear, too, for the rich language of the Louisiana: colourful, gutsy and laced with Old French.

Katrina, of course, provides a gift of a setting for any thriller. No one reading it can doubt that the jeopardy of the hurricane is real – no need here for writerly exaggeration. And Queen Mab is a frighteningly plausible killer – a modern take on an old nightmare, using the Internet to lure her victims into traps she baits with their own lusts.

Shay and Corbin have a chemistry that flies off the page. They are an impossible pairing, striking sparks off each other at every encounter, yet you find yourself rooting for them to find a way past their differences and be together, because they are also perfect for each other.

The book has an undoubted political edge. It’s hard to miss the deep underlying anger at the woefully inadequate response to the hurricane. It comes through in Corbin’s railing against head-in-the-sand attitude of the authorities, and also in the verbatim reproduction, as chapter headings, of published emails to and from the Head of FEMA – the organisation charged with preparing for and coping with the disaster. Yet Rodgers avoids polemic by giving the ‘opposition’ their own rounded, sympathetic characters.

This is a powerful book that deserves to be read both for the yarn it spins and for the real-life story it uncovers.

You'll enjoy this if you liked: Entry Island by Peter May, Purple Cane Road by James Lee Burke.

Avoid if you dislike: sex and politics with your crime

Ideal Accompaniments: iced tea and southern barbecue

Genre: Crime Fiction, Political Thriller

Available from Amazon

The Golden Lynx by C.P. Lesley

Reviewer: Liza Perrat, author of Spirit of Lost Angels and Wolfsangel.

What we thought: The Golden Lynx is set in 16th century Russia, with Nasan, an Islamic Tatar as protagonist. Nasan witnesses the murder of her brother by a Russian, triggering a battle, and the young Tatar princess becomes the peace offering. Nasan is sent by her parents, far away from her homeland to marry Daniil, who is related to her brother’s killer. Before long, Nasan finds herself caught up in events that will decide the future of Russia.

This was a period of history about which I knew next to nothing, and I enjoyed learning about it through this story, which is always a sign of good historical fiction for me. I loved the author’s excellent descriptions, and her intriguing exploration and contrast of the two cultures.

Nasan, in her refusal to play the expected role of women in this society, comes across as strong independent, but I would have liked to witness more of her nightly escapades.

I loved the idea of the Golden Lynx playing “detective” in parallel to Daniil, and, all in all, found this a compelling 16th century adventure. I look forward to reading the next book from this author, The Winged Horse.

You’ll enjoy this if you like: Russian history

Avoid if you don’t like: 16th century Tatar adventure tales

Ideal accompaniments: bowl of borscht, plate of pelmeni 

Genre: Historical

Available from Amazon

A God in Every Stone by Kamila Shamsie

Reviewer: Rebecca Johnson Bista

What we thought: A novel that cleverly intertwines the history of Indians in combat in the First World War and subsequent issues of loyalty to the Empire, with the ancient Greek legend of Scylax, explorer of India, and an Edwardian British woman’s passion for archaeology and independence.

As you would expect of Kamila Shamsie, A God in Every Stone unearths a unique perspective on WWI. Her English heroine, Vivian Rose Spencer, is a non-suffragette in the mould of Gertrude Bell (a spy and colleague of T E Lawrence) who defies convention to travel to the Ottoman Empire and to Peshawar during the war. This is a woman who studies ancient Greek, suffers traumatic shock from her experience of VAD nursing in London, smokes Turkish cigarettes and speaks Pashto. She is on the trail of a legendary artefact sought by the man she loves, but from whom she has been separated by the war.

On the way to Peshawar, she meets a discharged Pathan soldier who served at Ypres and lost an eye. Much of the rest of the novel is the story of this man, Qayyum, and his brother Najeeb. I was gripped by this part of the novel, with its atmospheric descriptions of the old quarters of Peshawar and its museum rich with Buddhist art. I also found compelling Qayyum’s moral and emotional dilemma of divided loyalties between the British Army, particularly his own regiment the 40th Pathans, and the growing anti-British independence movement back home in what would eventually become Pakistan. At times, for a non-Pakistani audience, the different factions are confusing, but the concerns, cruelties and resentments and the shift in sympathies – often creating a division between the two brothers – are very clearly portrayed. None of these issues is resolved within the novel except that the two brothers grow closer again through their experience of a massacre of non-violent protesters in Peshawar by the British authorities. The subsequent historical events leading to Partition are well known.

The novel is clearly driven by its anti-colonial sympathies, and the English character, Vivian, is left without resolution to her own stories at the end – the artefact she seeks, though Najeeb finds it, is lost again, kept out of even sympathetic British hands. Much is left ambiguous, with the reader invited to draw their own conclusions about the ultimate fate of the relationship between Vivian, Najeeb and Qayyum. For all this, A God in Every Stone is a vivid and compelling read, shaping individual tragedy, experience and relationships as part of a much larger pattern of historical forces and political concerns. In doing so it makes that history profoundly moving and intimately human.

You’ll enjoy this if you like: Nadeem Aslam, Salman Rushdie, Pashtunwali, war stories, Buddhist sculpture, ancient Greek legend.

Avoid if you don’t like: WWI, archaeology, stories of colonial India.

Ideal accompaniments: A cup of finest Darjeeling and a stick of sugar cane.

Genre: Post-colonial fiction, literary fiction, historical fiction.

Available from Amazon

Feral Youth by Polly Courtney

Reviewer: Catriona Troth

What we thought: Feral Youth is the story of Alesha – a fifteen year old from Peckham in South London. At the start of the book, Alesha is living under the radar, dodging social services, gang violence and her alcoholic mother. But she has a roof over her head, a friend she owes everything to, a youth centre that provides an occasional refuge, and a ‘rep’ that provides some flimsy protection on the streets.

In the course of a few short weeks over the summer of 2011, even those are taken away. No wonder Alesha’s angry. Angry enough that when messages start crowding onto her phone, telling her riots are kicking off all over south London, she is ready to take revenge on the whole self-satisfied world she sees around her.

Only, it’s beginning to look as if the one person she can really trust isn’t from the streets at all. She’s Alesha’s eccentric former music teacher, Miss Merfield – and she’s trying to tell Alesha there’s another way out.

There is almost an unspoken rule of writing that you may write as a serial killer or a space pirate or Marie Antoinette – but you don’t bust through the barriers of age and class to write a piece of serious contemporary literature from a point of view totally outside your own experience. And Courtney is no street kid. But she has had both the courage to know that rules are there to be broken, and the integrity to see that it must done right. Before she wrote the book, she immersed herself with South London teenagers and those that worked with them, absorbing their speech and learning at first hand what life on the streets is like. The result is a voice that will haunt you.

Reading Feral Youth brought back all the anger I felt in those weeks following the 2011 riots. At the end of it, I was crying. Aching for the Aleshas of this world. There is no doubt that Alesha is at times her own worst enemy. There were points where I wanted to reach into the pages of the book and shake her for not saying aloud what is going through her head. But Alesha can’t tell anyone about what’s happening. Everything in her life has taught her to say nothing, to trust no one.

Like Celie from The Color Purple, Alesha is a barely literate teenager reaching out to you from a world most of us would rather pretend doesn’t exist. And so long as we go on pretending, it will go on existing – to the shame of us all.

You'll enjoy this if you liked: The Colour Purple, Noughts and Crosses

Avoid if you dislike: having your preconceptions of today's youth shaken to the core

Ideal Accompaniments: Debussy spliced with DJ Dice

Genre: Contemporary Fiction; Young Adult

Available from Amazon

The Monogram Murders by Sophie Hannah

Reviewer: Gillian Hamer, author of The Charter, Closure, Complicit & Crimson Shore (www.gillianhamer.com)

What we thought: One of my most highly anticipated new novels of the year! As a lifelong Agatha Christie fan I couldn’t wait to read Sophie Hannah’s interpretation. These kinds of ‘tribute’ novels can be hit or miss, but after the success of Anthony Horowitz/Sherlock Holmes, and knowing the quality of Sophie Hannah’s writing, I was expecting to be impressed. And I wasn’t disappointed.

Hannah is clearly as much of a Christie geek as me, and that is great! It was also apparent in this book that the author got tremendous pleasure in resurrecting Hercule Poirot and her research into both the characters and the period really made the book shine.

In a Christie style, this is a typical Who-dunn-it. Three bodies found at a well-to-do London hotel, all laid out in the style of professional courtesy of the dead, but with a monogramed cufflink in each mouth. It was impossible to guess the killer, as the plot twisted and turned, back and forth, scattering red herrings in its wake. We view the case through the eyes of ‘Catchpole’ – a Scotland Yard detective with slightly more intelligent side-kick to Hastings, but one whose failings throw spotlight on the intelligence of the little Belgian detective. Personally, more chapters in Poirots' POV would have pleased me, I found Catchpole’s re-telling of some aspects of the story seemed to dilute the narrative.

There will be no spoilers here, but let’s say the ending did surprise me.

I experienced an undeniable excitement to be back in the 1920’s London scene as I love the language, customs and idiosyncrasies of the time. There was even more of a buzz to be back inside the mind of Hercule Poirot and his little grey cells.

I’m envious of Sophie Hannah for getting this opportunity, and know from her love of the Queen of Crime she would jump at the chance to do it all again if the option arose – and I hope it does. There’s no better tribute to Christie than a tribute novel of this quality.

You’ll enjoy this if you like: Agatha Christie.

Avoid if you don’t like: Belgian detectives and period crime writing.

Ideal accompaniments: Crème de cassis and smoked salmon sandwiches.

Genre: Crime Fiction.

Available from Amazon

The Boleyn Inheritance by Philippa Gregory

Reviewer: JD Smith, author of Tristan and Iseult and The Rise of Zenobia.

What We Thought: It's been a long time since I read The Other Boleyn Girl, but I distinctly remember the court, menacing, unforgiving, moulded and manipulated by the strong families surrounding Henry VIII, that Gregory created. And now I entered that world once more with The Boleyn Inheritance. The year is 1539 and Henry Tudor must take yet another wife following the death of Jane Seymour and the birth of his only legitimate son. Anne of Cleves takes the crown.

Only Gregory can make the world of Tudor England appear as dangerous through the eyes of its women as it must have been. She builds a world through the voice if its women, in this case Anne of Cleves, a young girl who is tormented by her brother, Katherine Howard, a silly girl who is naive right to the end, and Jane Boleyn, sister in law to Anne Boleyn and wife to George, who betrayed them both to save herself. She is perhaps the most complex character, the one who is not innocent, who would do anything to live, who professes her constant and undying love for her husband and sister despite her betrayal.

It is the characters who make the story, their accounts and retelling in their own words. For without their distinct voices, without the smell and texture of a court life that draws you in and keeps you reading until the very last page, this would not be as engaging as it is, for we all know what happened to Henry's six wives.

You'll enjoy this if you like: fine gowns, the Tudor court, lots of description.

Avoid if you dislike: Lots of repetition, first person narrative, silly girls.

Ideal accompaniments: A glass of port and a plate of cheese and crackers, a warm fire, visits to lots of Elizabethan manor houses.

Genre: Historical Fiction.

Available from Amazon

We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo

Reviewer: Catriona Troth

What we thought: We Need New Names is a novel that pulls no punches.

The first part takes place in an unnamed Southern African nation as it undergoes violent disintegration. As in To Kill and Mockingbird, we see all this through the unquestioning eyes of a young child. But Darling and her friends – Bastard, Chipo, Godknows, Sbho and Stina – have no Atticus to protect them and provide them with a moral compass. Their fathers are dead or away working in South Africa and their mothers are working constantly just to survive. Schools have long since closed and they are perpetually hungry.

These are children who have been robbed of a childhood – Lord of the Flies in a war zone. Faced with horror after horror, they translate what they see into the games they play.

Darling dreams of going to live with her aunt in ‘Destroyedmichygan.’ Eventually, as a young teenager, she is sent to live in the USA – ‘the big baboon of the world.’ There she must deal with a whole new set of challenges. Her longing for the taste of guavas that she and her friends used to steal from trees along the roads where the whites lived. The shallow ignorance that lumps the diversity of Africa’s fifty-some countries into one amorphous mass. The sexualisation of childhood. And the loss of language.

Bulawayo describes the process of trying to make yourself understood in a language that is not your own – how you must think what you want to say, then find the words and arrange them in your head and say them to yourself before you speak them out loud. “And when you get to the final step, something strange has happened to you and you speak the way a drunk walks. And because you speak like falling, it’s as if you are an idiot.”

Darling and her family are illegals, unable to leave the US for fear they will never be allowed back. As the years pass, this creates an ever increasing distance between them and the country they have left behind. As her friend Stina had warned her “leaving your country is like dying and when you come back you are like a lost ghost returning to earth.”

Bulawayo repeatedly uses the phrase “things falling apart,” echoing the title of Chenua Achebe’s seminal novel of African dissolution, Things Fall Apart. The fact that she never names Darlings’s country as Zimbabwe is in itself a powerful statement on censorship and the danger of political opposition in that country.

A powerful and often disturbing read, and a wake up call to Western complacency.

You’ll enjoy this is you liked: Half of a Yellow Sun, The Kite Runner

Avoid if you dislike: facing the brutalities of civil war through the eyes of a child.

Ideal Accompaniment: the taste of fresh guavas

Genre: Literary Fiction, Contemporary Fiction from Africa

Available from Amazon