Bookcase

Keeley Bolger Book of the week The Son by Jo Nesbo is published in hardback by Harvill Secker, priced £18.99 (eBook £6.64). Available now.

Jo Nesbo has forged his reputation from carving hard-bitten characters out the many flaws of human nature. The Harry Hole series brought the Norwegian author and musician awards as well as millions in sales, and his book Headhunters also took him to the big screen, and The Son will soon follow after being snapped up by Warner Brothers.

Like the Hole series, The Son creates a brand new anti-hero, an avenging angel of sorts whose destiny is driven by righting perceived wrongs with a bloody and bullet-riddled path through the criminal underworld. As he embarks on a self-appointed one-man and, some may say, misguided crusade, The Son also discovers a truth even too shocking for him, as Nesbo delivers one final shattering twist in the tail.

To his many other talents, Nesbo should probably add accounting, such is the commercial success of his work, a success that will surely be matched by The Son. Watch it fly off the shelves and pack the audiences in the cinemas in equal measure.

9/10.

(Review by Roddy Brooks) Love And Treasure by Ayelet Waldman is published in hardback by Two Roads, priced £17.99 (eBook £6.02). Available now.

Opening with a young woman and her grandfather reconnecting in her home town after her emotional divorce, Ayelet Waldman's latest novel Love And Treasure quickly transitions into a modern fairytale filled with all of the wonder and romance we've come to expect from the genre.

This frame story introduces the reader to the life of the grandfather, also known as Jack Wiseman, a World War Two soldier charged with the care of a train filled with stolen art work and jewellery - which, with retrospect, we recognise as The Hungarian Gold Train. There are works of extraordinary value, but it is an unassuming pendant decorated with a peacock that captures Jack's attention and the reader comes to learn of its troubling journey through various characters in time.

By allowing the narrative frames of the novel to interweave different stories and historical tales, Waldman creates a rich tapestry of detail which is both beautiful and heart-wrenching. At times funny, but constantly compassionate, Love And Treasures forces you to look to the true value of objects and the worth of a life.

A wonderful and extremely precious book.

8/10 (Review by Holly McKenzie) The Dead Ground by Claire McGowan is published in trade paperback by Headline, priced £13.99 (eBook £6.49). Available now.

In The Dead Ground, Claire McGowan's follow-up to The Lost - her first novel to feature forensic psychologist Paula Maguire - the reader is immersed into a somewhat disturbing and, for many, uncomfortable read.

Firstly, a new-born baby is taken from a hospital and then a pro-abortion campaigner is brutally murdered. The reader then follows Paula and her colleagues as they investigate both cases and search for a killer who leaves no trace. It's an investigation that comes at a particularly difficult time for Paula, who has secrets of her own that she isn't ready to share with her colleagues.

Despite being the second in a series, this crime thriller would stand alone, as there is sufficient back-story for the reader to follow the goings-on. The book can be rather graphic at times, not unnecessarily so, but this may put some readers off. It is, however, an overall fast-paced and engaging read.

8/10 (Review by Rachael Dunn) Missing You by Harlan Coben is published in hardback by Orion, priced £18.99 (eBook £6.64). Available now.

Love, loneliness and lies are the central themes to US crime writer Harlan Coben's latest standalone book, which delves into the murky world of online dating.

New York City cop Kat Donovan is cynical and streetwise, but is haunted by the murder of her police officer father and plagued by regrets over a failed relationship after finding her old flame on a lonely hearts website.

While investigating a teenager's report of his missing mother, who has apparently gone away with a new lover, Kat's personal and professional lives spiral closer, and an 18-year-old mystery may finally be solved.It is hard to criticise Coben's 25th novel - it is a little frothy, with many pop culture references that will inevitably date, but it also ticks all the boxes for an excellent criminal thriller: believable characters and a tightly paced plot with plenty of twists to keep the reader guessing.

7/10 (Review by Natalie Bowen) Buried Angels by Camilla Lackberg is published in hardback by HarperFiction, priced £16.99 (eBook £7.63). Available now.

Buried Angels is bestseller Camilla Lackberg's eighth outing for husband and wife crime fighters, Patrik Hedstrom and Erica Flack.

The Swedish thriller series returns to the sleepy seaside town of Fjallbacka to crack the mystery of a whole family who suddenly vanished from their home in 1974, leaving behind a table set for dinner and a one-year old daughter, Ebba. Now, Ebba has lost her own child and she and her husband have returned to the family home for a fresh start that, predictably, ends up being anything but.

With the introduction of detective Hedstrom and his crime-writer-turned-sleuth partner, the family's disappearance becomes ever more present than past in a foreseeable who-dunnit. Lackberg's real strength is in her ability to immerse through intricate characters. As the novel switches focus between different times and characters at what can feel like a frustrating and disorientating pace, it is the textured personalities of this novel that create a very real suspense throughout. A true page-turner.

7/10 (Review by Mamiyo Padi) Turning the Stones by Debra Daley is published in hardback by Heron Books, priced £16.99 (eBook £1.69). Available now.

For fans of historical fiction with a smattering of romance and mystery, you couldn't pick a better novel. Turning the Stones is the story of Em Smith, brought to Cheshire countryside by Mrs Waterland, from, Em is told, the Foundling hospital. Treated at first as one of the family and brought up as a sister to their daughter Eliza, there arrives a fateful birthday where the Waterlands can no longer afford to keep her, and so she becomes Eliza's lady's maid.

This story is woven together with the story in the present: as the book begins, Em wakes in an unfamiliar room with a bloodied man on the floor, and flees for the coast. However, is this of her own free will, or is it the work of Kitty Conneely's black magic, turning the stones to lure Em back to Connemara and her past...?

A historical mystery for a cosy afternoon.

7/10 (Review by Emma Herdman) Campari For Breakfast by Sara Crowe is published in hardback by Doubleday, priced £14.99. Available now.

Sara Crowe is probably best known for her role in the Philadelphia adverts, but now the acclaimed theatrical actress has turned her attentions to the pen writing her first novel, Campari For Breakfast.

Campari for Breakfast is a family story told in two parts. The first story follows that of 17-year-old Sue who is finding her feet after her mother's suicide and adapting to the news that her father is to remarry. Sue moves in with her great aunt Coral at Green Place, her ancestral home and we learn more about Coral through the intersection of a commonplace book, a type of journal come scrapbook.

The second strand of the story sees Sue and her aunt create a writing group at Green Place, where Sue, Coral and her aunt's companion Delia begin to exorcise some of their past demons. Outside the group, Sue begins to spread her wings and lands a job at a cafe where she meets the boss's son Joe and her arch-nemesis Loudolle. What is the secret that is snaking its way through the family tree?

While I wanted to care about the answer, and to warm to the characters, I never did, and I found the structure of the book bitty and difficult to get into.

6/10 (Review by Rachel Howdle) Non-fiction Deep Magic, Dragons And Talking Mice: How Reading C.S Lewis Can Change Your Life by Alister McGrath is published in hardback by Hodder&Stoughton, priced £14.99 (eBook £7.99). Available now.

Imagine sitting down with Narnia creator C. S. Lewis for a cuppa. What would he talk about and what made him tick?

One his biographers, theology professor Alister McGrath, imagines this scenario and suggests eight topics - including the meaning of life, the importance of stories, apologetics, suffering and the hope of heaven.

He uses Lewis's books, letters and information about the writer's life to put across how Lewis thought and what he would have to say on the issues.

It is a deeply Christian but accessible book that gently explains Lewis's points of view; many parts are profound and the pages are crammed full of Lewis's gems of wisdom.

9/10 (Review by Caroline Firth) The Hotel on Place Vendome: Life, Death, And Betrayal At The Hotel Ritz In Paris by Tilar J. Mazzeo is published by Harper in hardback, priced £20 (eBook £6.87). Available now.

Real life events at the Hotel Ritz in war-time Paris in 1944, during the last months of the city's occupation by the German forces, were as bizarre and gripping as a work of fiction.

Author and university academic Tilar Mazzeo tells the story well and she also takes a wider look at the Ritz's glamorous history, from its opening in 1898 to the present day.

Apart from providing luxurious accommodation, the internationally famous hotel on Place Vendome became a focal point for intellectuals, writers and stars from the creative arts, in the decades before the 1939-45 war. After France surrendered to the Germans in 1940, the Nazi high command took over half the Ritz. The other half remained open to the public and spying, intrigue, deception, collaboration with the Nazis and the secret resistance against them, became the order of the day.

By the 1970s the hotel's glory had faded, but it was rescued, refurbished and revived by tycoon Mohamed al Fayed, and by a perverse stroke of fate, it was from the Ritz that his son Dodi and Princess Diana took off on that short, fatal car journey in 1997.8/10 (Review by Anthony Looch) Night School: Wake Up To The Power Of Sleep by Richard Wiseman is published in hardback by Pan Macmillan, priced £20 (ebook £7.79). Available now.

Sleep - it's something we all have in common. Whether you're a super sleeper or an insomniac, a lark or an owl, sleep features in everyone's life.

That's why Night School, the latest book from famed psychologist Professor Richard Wiseman, is one that will appeal to us all.

Wiseman has his divided his book not into chapters, but into lessons. In the first we learn some basic information about the science of sleep. Later lessons include how to be happy, wealthy and wise by harnessing the power of sleep, sleep walking and night terrors, how to power nap, an examination of dreams and much more.

Part self-help book, part a pure exploration of sleep, this book is full to the brim with research, busting many myths.

Lessons are also interspersed with questionnaires for readers to do, to help you better understand your own sleep, and cut out boxes with information about, for one example, how to avoid jet lag.

Overall, the combination of useful and plain interesting information, coupled with Wiseman's conversational and witty writing style makes this a fun and informative read that you will struggle to put down - so maybe don't read it before bedtime...

8/10 (Review by Sophie Herdman) Children's book of the week The Dawn Chorus by Suzanne Barton is published in hardback by Bloomsbury, priced £10.99. Available now.

You don't need to be a child to enjoy this delightful debut book from illustrator Suzanne Barton.

Peep is a small bird who loves to sing. One morning he wakes to hear a beautiful song and heads off to find the source.

Along the way he meets an owl, a frog and a mouse, none of whom can sing. But finally, he finds the place where the heavenly sound came from - a tree crammed with birds who tell him that they're part of the dawn chorus.

When he asks if he can sing with them, the birds tell him that he can audition the next morning. Peep practices all day but then oversleeps and misses his audition. Still determined to join the throng, he stays awake all day but then is too tired to sing the next morning.

Disheartened when the conductor says that the dawn chorus may not be for him, Peep goes away upset. But as he's leaving he meets another bird, who explains that Peep is a nightingale like him and that they sing at night not in the morning!

A gorgeous book, with loads of simple but beautifully drawn illustrations, this is a heartwarming story to read to young birders-in-the-making.

8/10 (Review by Keeley Bolger) Bestsellers for week ending April 14 Hardbacks 1 Minecraft: the Official Combat Handbook 2 Minecraft: The Official Construction Handbook 3 Mary Berry Cooks, Mary Berry 4 Minecraft: The Official Beginner's Handbook 5 Minecraft: The Official Redstone Handbook 6 Peppa Pig: Peppa's Easter Egg Hunt 7 Allegiant, Veronica Roth 8 Flash Boys, Michael Lewis 9 Wolf in Winter, John Connolly 10 The Son, Jo Nesbo (Compiled by Waterstones) Paperbacks 1 The Fault in Our Stars, John Green 2 Divergent, Veronica Roth 3 A Delicate Truth, John Le Carre 4 Insurgent, Veronica Roth 5 The Luminaries, Eleanor Catton 6 Playfair Cricket Annual: 2014, Ian Marshall 7 Life After Life, Kate Atkinson 8 Blood & Beauty, Sarah Dunant 9 Rooftoppers, Katherine Rundell 10Levels of Life, Julian Barnes (Compiled by Waterstones) Ebooks 1. Fractured, Dani Atkins 2. The Lost Daughter, Lucretia Grindle 3. The Fixed Trilogy, Laurelin Paige 4. Clean Cut, Lynda La Plante 5. Divergent, Veronica Roth 6. The Villa, Rosanna Ley 7.Twelve Years a Salve, Solomon Northrup 8. Insurgent, Veronica Roth 9. Broken Dolls, James Carol 10. Take me home, Daniela Scardoti (Chart courtesy of Amazon.co.uk)