Enjoy Life

February 2023 Books Round up

February bookshelf

The Little Girl Who Could Not Cry, by Lidia Maksymowicz (Macmillan, £15.99) is the remarkable story of a young girl who survived Auschwitz and, even after suffering unimaginable horrors, would, decades later, still believe in the redeeming power of love.

Winter’s Daughter (Penguin, £7.99) is the first in Val Wood’s powerful new Hull-set saga series, and in Holly Hepburn’s latest,

Escape to Darling Cove (Simon and Schuster, £8.99), originally published as four e-book novellas, a mysterious stranger turns up on an idyllic island off the Northumberland coast, causing problems for bar owner Eve, who soon discovers the visitor renting her cottage has secrets he’d rather keep hidden.

The gentle tones of Ivor Cutler reciting one of his quirky verses accompanied by the melancholy tones of the harmonium became familiar to anyone who tuned into John Peel’s radio shows in the Seventies and Eighties and for a while he was singed to Virgin Records, when it still had a certain alternative cachet. Bruce Lindsay’s affectionate Ivor Cutler: A Life Outside The Sitting Room (Equinox, £15) tells the story of this true outsider.

And Later… with Jools Holland, by Mark Cooper (William Collins, £25) goes behind the scenes of the long-running music show, telling the story from its beginnings as an adjunct to The Late Show to the unique global brand it is today. Cooper’s book also features some fascinating memories from many of Later…’s guests down the years, including KD Lang, Richard Thompson, Dave Grohl and Nick Cave.

The Drift (Michael Joseph, £14.99) is the latest spine-tingler from the ever-reliable CJ Tudor, A Dangerous Business, by Pullitzer Prize-winning author Jane Smiley (Abacus, £16.99) is a pacey murder mystery set in Gold Rush-era California, Sam Blake’s The Mystery of Four (Corvus, £12.99) is an involving country-house-set thriller, and The Last Remains, by Elly Griffiths (Quercus, £22), sees the return of archaeologist and sleuth Dr Ruth Dalloway in the long-running North Norfolk-set series, this time involved in a case that has an old friend as chief suspect.

Sailor of Liberty (Canelo, £18.99) is the first in a new adventure series from naval historian and award-winning author JD Davies, set in late 18th-century France and the revolutionary fervour of The Terror,

Elektra, by Jennifer Saint (Wildfire, £8.99), tells the story of the Trojan War from the point of view of the women who were at the heart of it all and

Buried (Simon and Schuster, £9.99) is an alternative view of the first millennium from the TV historian Professor Alice Roberts.

Hidden Valley, by Paul Richardson (Abacus, £20) is the story of how the author abandoned his ambitions and opted for life in a rural Spain, picking up the kind of survival skills that have become ever more important in the search for a simpler, more sustainable existence.

And Shy (Hodder, £25) is the counter-intuitive title of writer, composer and Broadway legend Mary Rodgers’ memoirs. Written in collaboration with theatre critic Jesse Green, shy and withdrawn they are not; instead Mary’s recollections are wonderfully gossipy and entertaining, providing a front row seat at Theatreland’s golden age.

Simon Evans

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