Enjoy Life

July 2023 Roundup

More great books to look out for, reviewed by Simon Evans. 

Set in Second World War London, The Air Raid Book Club, by Annie Lyons (Headline, £20) celebrates the healing power of books as two women, damaged in their different ways, find a way of bringing together a community going through its darkest hour…

Spies, by Calder Walton (Abacus, £25) draws on new research from the British, American, Russian and Ukrainian archives to tell the story of the intelligence war between East and West over the course of a century, and The Gutenberg Parenthesis, by Jeff Jarvis (Bloomsbury, £20), traces the epoch of print from its fateful beginnings to our digital present…

By the nature of their condition blind people have, across the centuries, been overlooked, ignored or even demonised. In Life Unseen (Bloomsbury, £20) Selina Mills draws on her own experience of losing her sight to provide a much-needed and powerful examination of what it is to be blind, the challenges faced by those who are losing or have lost their sight, as well as breaking down myths and stereotypes, many rooted in history, surrounding blindness…

The Ghost Ship, by Kate Mosse (Mantle, £22) is set in 1621 and begins with the ghost ship of the title, once used to free those enslaved by pirates, now battered, burnt and under attack. For those left on board they face either an uncertain journey or the likelihood of arrest and being hanged. Although it is the third in the Joubert Family Chronicles, this works equally well as a standalone novel…

Few stories of the survival of the human spirit against almost insurmountable odds could be more powerful than those told in Daniel Finkelstein’s Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad (William Collins, £25). In it, the distinguished political commentator tells how both his parents suffered unimaginable cruelty, pain and loss at the hands of Hitler and Stalin, shedding a light not only on his own remarkable family history but also on the 20th Century’s darkest times and the consequences of political extremism in all its forms…

The Orphans from Liverpool Lane, by Eliza Morton (Pan, £7.99), follows the fate of two sisters whose lives are changed when they find themselves ‘orphans of the living’ during the Second World War, Baby Does A Runner (Zaffre, £14.99) is the first novel from the broadcaster Anita Rani, the story of a young woman who determines to journey to India to discover long-buried family secrets, A Song of Me and You (Hodder, £16.99) is the latest emotional roller-coaster novel from the ever reliable Mike Gayle, who is celebrating 25 years as a Hodder & Stoughton author, and Dawn O’Porter’s latest novel Cat Lady (HarperCollins, £6.99) is the story of an apparently settled, married woman who longs to claw her way out of conformity and explore some of her remaining nine lives, …

Historical murder mystery The Good Liars, by Anita Frank (HQ, £16.99), is set in the Twenties and follows the once esteemed Stilwell family of Darkacre Hall as they suddenly come under police scrutiny after the case of a murdered boy is reopened, and in The Stranger In The Seine, by Guillaume Musso (W&N, £20) a young woman is saved from the waters of the Seine only to disappear from hospital. The mystery deepens when DNA reveals her to be a concert pianist who died in a place crash more than a year before. Police captain Roxanne is tasked with getting to the bottom of it all in this absorbing thriller…

Every mother’s nightmare comes true in Someone You Know, by Erin Kinsley (Headline, £20), but the death of a daughter is compounded by the knowledge that someone close is keeping secrets, and a family reunion is marred by tragedy in a picture postcard village full of secrets in the cozily enjoyable crime mystery Murder at Church Lodge, by Greg Mosse (Hodder, £9.99)…

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July 23 Hardback book reviews
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Simon Evans CD Reviews for June 2023
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Book reviews
May 2023 paperback book reviews
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May's DVD Selection
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Round up of April 2023's book reviews
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