The bookcase

By Kate Whiting

New fiction

And The Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini is published in hardback by Bloomsbury, priced £18.99 (ebook £8.75). Available now.

It's been six years since Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner, released his last best-seller, A Thousand Splendid Suns.

Fans eagerly awaiting his third novel won't be disappointed as Hosseini returns to his native Afghanistan for this poignant tale of separated siblings.

And The Mountains Echoed tells the story of 10-year-old Abdullah and his beloved sister Pari, who live in the poverty-stricken village of Shadbagh. As the family faces the prospect of another brutal winter, their father makes a decision that tears the children apart.

The novel explores the consequences of this act, moving across generations and continents as Hosseini examines the ties between families and the sacrifices they make. With the narrative spanning half a century, the reader might begin to question the purpose of some of the apparent digressions as the action moves back and forth in time.

But as one character observes, a story is like a moving train; no matter where you hop on board, you are bound to reach your destination sooner or later. Hosseini deftly weaves the many strands of his tale together as he takes the reader on a journey that moves from Kabul to Paris, and from California to the Greek island of Tinos.

Each story could almost stand alone - yet all the characters are connected to Pari and Abdullah, whose story is threaded throughout this beautifully crafted novel. It makes for a heartrending read, captivating until the very last page.

9/10

(Review by Sarah Tawton)

Private Down Under by James Patterson and Michael White is published in hardback by Century, priced £18.99 (ebook £9.49). Available now.

James Patterson has bottled the thriller formula and is able to transplant it to any title he puts his name to.

The latest in the Private series, Private Down Under, has moved from the United States to Australia.

The action is still fast-paced and thoroughly well researched, a repeated recipe of murder, kidnap and blackmail which once again delivers to the legion of Patterson fans who have made him one of the most successful authors in the world.

Private Down Under tells of Craig Gisto and his team who work alongside the police in Sydney to solve a series of brutal crimes.

In collaboration with Michael White - again a route Patterson has successfully trodden - this novel is sure to keep fans entertained and the author at number one in the best-seller lists.

8/10

(Review by Roddy Brooks)

All That Is by James Salter is published in hardback by Picador, priced £18.99 (ebook £8.03). Available now.

"All night in darkness the water sped past" - and so, with this lyrical but economical description, begins the first novel from veteran American writer James Salter in more than three decades.

Many anticipate it will be the last major work from the 87-year-old. Indeed, it bears hallmarks of one looking back on his life, touching on universal themes of love, passion, work and friendship, and while not precisely autobiographical, it is easy to surmise there are links between Salter and his protagonist Philip Bowman.

We join Bowman in his young navy days off Okinawa, but these exploits last but a chapter before he returns home to concentrate on the two aspects of his life that dominate All That Is - his career as a book editor in New York, and his relationships with women.

There is one marriage and several affairs, Salter weaving together the sensual and the emotional in this thread that winds its way through Bowman's life to the point we leave him, in his mid 50s.

It is an easy novel to enjoy thanks to Salter's mastery of language and an attention to detail that brings even minor characters to life.

In the novel's epigraph, Salter has quoted himself: "There comes a time when you realise that everything is a dream, and only those things preserved in writing have any possibility of being real."

With his own words, he not only - intentionally or not - pays tribute to his life as a writer, but also to his love of the written word, so clearly evident here.

8/10

(Review by Lauren Turner)

Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots by Jessica Soffer is published in paperback by Hutchinson, priced £12.99 (ebook £8.51). Available now.

Debut author Jessica Soffer plunges headfirst into difficult territory in Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots, tackling self-harm and the loss of a child in a story about a teenage girl and elderly widow finding common ground in their love of food.

Fourteen-year-old Lorca is terrified of being sent to boarding school and determines to win the love of her chef mother by recreating an Iraqi dish she had fallen in love with years earlier.

She meets Victoria, recently widowed and confronting the regrets of her life, who introduces her to the food of her native Iraq.

As their relationship develops, it appears they may be linked by more than just cookery and Soffer depicts beautifully how unlikely friendships can fill gaps left by the shortcomings of family.

While at times the plot jerks along and feels a touch contrived, the sympathetic heroines more than make up for this.

Soffer has delved into her own Iraqi Jewish heritage and in doing so has added a layer of depth and explored an identity that few readers will be familiar with.

7/10

(Review by Sarah Reid)

Clever Girl by Tessa Hadley is published in hardback by Cape, priced £16.99 (ebook £9.49). Available now.

Tessa Hadley is a master of the short story - indeed, several chapters of Clever Girl first appeared in that form in The New Yorker magazine.

She received plaudits for recent novel The London Train, but her latest work struggles to achieve the same cohesion.

Instead, the story of the life of Stella, the Clever Girl of the title, is something of a disjointed journey, despite Hadley's obvious wizardry with prose and moments of linguistic clarity.

Stella's voice, changing with subtle differences through the years, guides us from her early 1960s childhood, through to a teenage pregnancy, time spent in a commune where she meets the father of her second child, and into her advanced adulthood when her boys are fully grown.

As the anatomy of a life, it is well executed in its precision, but Clever Girls seems too slight in scope to truly pack a punch.

6/10

(Review by Lauren Turner)

The Abundance by Amit Majmudar is published in paperback by Oneworld, priced £8.99 (ebook £5.89). Available now.

Following on from the success of 2011's Partitions, Amit Majmudar once more takes time out from his day job as a radiologist to pen this touching tale of legacy and loss.

A first-generation Indian-American immigrant housewife looks back over her life after she finds out she doesn't have long to live.

As her family flock to her side, she tries to make peace with the past.

Majmudar deals with the fear we all have of parental loss, dealing with the realities of terminal illness without heavy hand-wringing.

The Abundance's gentle, unwinding narrative and vivid language (the author is a published and prize-winning poet) make it a powerful read for mothers and daughters, with Majmudar convincingly conveying the importance of the parent-child relationship. It's a remarkable read.

7/10

(Review by Sarah Warwick)

City Of Blood by MD Villiers is published in paperback by Harvill Secker, priced £12.99 (ebook £8.54). Available now.

The ghastly reality of South Africa's escalating crime wave hits the reader like a lash from a rhino whip in this first novel by promising writer MD Villiers, who was born and reared in that country but now lives in London.

The city of the book's title is her birthplace, Johannesburg, often called the "City of Gold" because of the huge deposits of the precious metal that continue to be mined there.

Johannesburg used to be South Africa's most glamorous city. Today it is probably its most dangerous, with formerly smart areas such as Berea and Hillbrow reduced to filthy, crime-ridden slums.

The book's hero is 19-year-old Siphiwe, a decent young man living in a shelter, who gets drawn into a vicious feud between two gangsters, Letswe and Abaju.

The book's relentless violence is hard to take but it is a revelatory social document. The crime-wave is certainly not restricted to Johannesburg and one is left with forebodings about South Africa's future.

5/10

(Review by Anthony Looch)

Non-fiction

The Signal And The Noise: The Art And Science Of Prediction by Nate Silver is published in paperback by Penguin, priced £8.99 (ebook £5.99). Available now.

Humans. We love making predictions, don't we? Political pundits, football fanatics, poker players - all stick their necks out in the hope of reaping the rewards of a bet well-waged.

But, truth be told, we're not very good at it. According to American statistician Nate Silver, the 2.5 quintillion bytes of information generated in the world every day create an awful lot of 'noise', making it increasingly difficult to discern a 'signal', or correct prediction.

Over the years, fudged forecasts have been responsible for lost elections, unforeseen earthquakes and plenty of casino catastrophes. Oh, and the worldwide financial meltdown, of course.

In this illuminating - and surprisingly gripping - examination of why predictions so often fail, Silver celebrates the heroes of forecasting, diagnoses experts' errors and offers advice to the layman too.

Taking heed, it would be foolish to predict that everyone will love this book, but I'd wager that current affairs junkies, non-fiction fanatics and stats geeks will race through it with glee.

8/10

(Review by Katie Wright)

Permanent Present Tense: The Man With No Memory And What He Taught The World by Suzanne Corkin is published in hardback by Allen Lane, priced £20 (ebook £11.99). Available now.

This book opens with a conversation between a woman called Suzanne and a man named Henry. "Have we met before?" asks Suzanne. Henry replies yes, they know each other from high school. He's wrong sadly.

Dr Suzanne Corkin is a neuroscientist who had at this point been examining Henry for 30 years; each time they meet, he has forgotten who she is.

Aged 28, Henry Gustav Molaison, or HM as he's known by many a psychology student, had an operation designed to alleviate his debilitating epilepsy. While it helped his epilepsy, it had a disastrous side effect - Henry lost his ability to form long-term memories.

As devastating as this was, Henry's loss was science's gain; his case taught huge amounts about how memory works.

Permanent Present Tense tells two stories - the tale of Henry's life, how he was an intelligent and kind man; and the history of memory psychology.

It's science heavy, not a light read, but for those fascinated by the human brain, it's a real gem.

7/10

(Review by Sophie Herdman)

Impulse: Why We Do What We Do Without Knowing Why We Doing It by David Lewis is published in paperback by Random House, priced £12.99 (ebook £8.51). Available now.

In this latest addition to his expanding catalogue, pioneering psychologist Dr David Lewis confidently tackles the complex subject of how and why we act impulsively.

Presented concisely, even peppered with some humour, Lewis examines the neurological process when we subconsciously act on impulse and how this affects our day-to-day lives.

He draws on relatable themes such as falling in love, taking risks and adolescence to argue that we often engage in what he coins the System I (impulsive or fast and intuitive) approach to thinking as opposed to System R (reflective or slow and methodical).

As a result, Lewis observes that our "zombie brains" are "very easily fooled", leading to impulsive and sometimes poor decision-making. But he also offers simple ways in which to engage with System R more.

Case studies provide colour and context where average readers might find themselves floundering in terminology, while diagrams illustrate the neuropsychologist's point without being patronising.

Overall, it's an engaging and fascinating read.

8/10

(Review by Mary Ann Pickford)

Iron, Steam & Money: The Making Of The Industrial Revolution by Roger Osborne is published in hardback by Bodley Head, priced £25 (ebook £12.99) Available now.

When Danny Boyle's opening ceremony for London's Olympics featured grimy chimneys of the Industrial Revolution, Isambard Kingdom Brunel stole the show.

In fact, the great engineering genius takes his bow only on page 281 of Roger Osborne's detailed and scholarly account, which dates the true catalyst for change much earlier - in the mid-18th century.

Ironmaster Abraham Darby of Coalbrookdale (now Ironbridge), using coal rather than charcoal to produce iron from 1709, emerges as perhaps the key figure, with Arkwright, Trevithick and many more also strutting their stuff.

A coincidence of key factors - a rapid widening of skills, an unregulated cotton industry ripe for growth, a massive expansion in coal output replacing charcoal and timber as a source of heat - turned Britain from an economy based on natural resources into one driven essentially by coal.

Of the huge social changes this brought, Osborne calls "horrific treatment of children" the darkest chapter in the tale, with chimney boys often dying where they got stuck, and 10-year-olds as pit pony drivers.

Meanwhile, adults who avoided illness, backstreet crime or violent protest against the machines might have found city life "liberating and exciting".

This is an extremely comprehensive survey of what we already know, rather than a breaker of new ground. For students who still read books, though, the bibliography is wide-ranging and a useful crib-sheet.

7/10

(Review by Jeremy Gates)

Best-sellers for the week ending May 25

Paperbacks

1 Bring Up The Bodies, Hilary Mantel

2 Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn

3 Sweet Tooth, Ian McEwan

4 The Red House, Mark Haddon

5 A Wanted Man, Lee Child

6 The Great Gatsby (Penguin Modern Classics), F Scott Fitzgerald

7 The Great Gatsby (Alma Classics), F Scott Fitzgerald

8 The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out Of The Window And Disappeared, Jonas Jonasson

9 The Secret Keeper, Kate Morton

10 The Fast Diet, Mimi Spencer and Michael Mosley

(Compiled by Waterstone's)

Hardbacks

1 Inferno, Dan Brown

2 And The Mountains Echoed, Khaled Hosseini

3 A Delicate Truth, John le Carre

4 Emperor: The Blood Of Gods, Conn Iggulden

5 This Boy: A Memoir Of A Childhood, Alan Johnson

6 Dead Ever After: A True Blood Novel, Charlaine Harris

7 Gwynne's Grammar: The Ultimate Introduction To Grammar And The Writing Of Good English, NM Gwynne

8 Magician's End, Raymond E Feist

9 The Dying Hours, Mark Billingham

10 I Love My Daddy, Giles Andreae and Emma Dodd

(Compiled by Waterstone's)

EBooks

1 Inferno, Dan Brown

2 Watch Over Me, Daniela Sacerdoti

3 The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald

4 The Back Road, Rachel Abbott

5 Accidents Waiting To Happen, Simon Wood

6 The Magpies, Mark Edwards

7 Wish You Were Here, Victoria Connelly

8 Only The Innocent, Rachel Abbott

9 My Secret Sister, Helen Edwards

10 Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn

(Compiled by the Kindle store at Amazon.co.uk)

 

:: Note to editors: This is a re-send of the book column, including the latest charts from Waterstone's.