BOOK OF THE WEEK

The Lost Child by Suzanne McCourt is published in paperback by Text Publishing, priced £10.99 (ebook £6.79). Available now

The first thing that strikes you about this coming-of-age novel is its guileless charm.

Narrated by five-year-old Sylvie, the book's Australian author Suzanne McCourt portrays the essence of her character's childlike innocence through creative prose and imagery.

It offers a refreshing perspective of what family life is like for Sylvie growing up in the 1950s in a small fishing village on the southern coast of Australia.

In this we take her lead as she traipses on the fragile path towards adulthood. Along the way, Sylvie tries to get her head around key moments in her life such as the disappearance of her brother and the divorce of her parents.

The bittersweet nature of the tale is poignant and uplifting at the same time, complemented by beautiful story-telling that satisfies to the end. As debuts go, it's a wonderful start to what is sure to be the first of many great novels for McCourt.

8/10

(Review by Mary Ann Pickford)

FICTION

The Prophecy Of Bees by RS Pateman is published in paperback by Orion, priced £12.99 (ebook £6.99). Available now

A manor house with a chilling past. An isolated village full of superstitious rituals and beliefs. A fresh start for mother and daughter. Lindy and her teenage daughter, Izzy, move to Stagcote Manor in search of a new life. While Lindy is keen to embrace the new start, Izzy finds her new home and the village beyond unsettling. From the villagers' welcome gift, to their bizarre customs and traditions, Izzy knows something is not quite right. As strange things begin to occur within the manor, she becomes obsessed with investigating the house's past, leading the reader down a twisting and mysterious path to a dramatic conclusion. This may sound like a familiar story, but RS Pateman has managed to create a gripping and atmospheric thriller in The Prophecy Of Bees. Following on from his debut novel, The Second Life Of Amy Archer, Pateman has once again produced a well-plotted and captivating page-turner.

8/10

(Review by Rachael Dunn)

The End Of Days by Jenny Erpenbeck is published in hardback by Portobello Books, priced £12.99 (ebook £7.79). Available now

In Eastern Europe, in the early 1900s, two parents are left devastated when their baby daughter dies. But maybe she doesn't; maybe she survives and is later driven to desperation by a doomed romance. Or maybe she gets involved with Communist revolutionaries; becomes a celebrated writer; a senile old woman... All of these possibilities are explored in German author Jenny Erpenbeck's ingenious novella, winner of the English Pen Prize for this fluent translation by Susan Bernofsky. In short stories separated, like music, by 'intermezzi', we follow the lead character as she travels down many divergent paths during the tumultuous first half of the 20th century, noting how such seeming trivialities regarding weather or chance encounters can alter a whole life's outcome. However, it's left to the reader to decide whether it's the nature of history or the nature of Erpenbeck that all of them turn out to be so bleak.

7/10

(Review by James Robinson)

Christmas In The Snow by Karen Swan is published in paperback by Pan, priced £7.99 (ebook £1.80). Available now

The bestselling author of Christmas At Tiffany's and Christmas At Claridge's returns. Allegra Fisher works in the City, in the hustle and bustle of the hedge fund bankers. Christmas is getting ever closer and the snow has started to fall, not that she has the time to stop and look - she's all work and no play. Just as the biggest contract of her career arrives, she meets a handsome stranger, Sam, on the plane to a meeting, but it turns out he's pitching for the same deal. Allegra's sister and best friend Isobel is a married mum of one and the pair's beating heart. When a phone call informs the sisters a body has been recovered in the Swiss Alps inside a long-lost mountain cabin, they fly over to Zermatt to make sense of the mystery. But will Allegra's heart melt to let anyone else in and forgive her past? A great festive tale, with twists and turns worthy of its own ski run.

7/10

(Review by Rachel Howdle)

The Architect's Apprentice by Elif Shafak is published in hardback by Viking, priced £14.99 (ebook £5.99). Available now

Richard III's reputation has been fatally overshadowed by his possible involvement in the disappearance of the two young Princes in the Tower. Yet the Sultans of the Ottoman Empire routinely began their reigns by despatching entire kindergarten loads of junior relatives as a sensible precaution against civil strife and nobody seems to have batted an eyelid. Elif Shafak's seventh novel opens with one such massacre of the innocents. The Architect's Apprentice tells the story of a young Indian mahout, or elephant keeper, who rises to become the valued assistant to Mimar Sinan, a prolific builder, who was a contemporary of Michelangelo and possibly his equal in artistic achievement. Shafak is the most widely read female writer in Turkey, and with good reason as she is gifted with a fabulous ability to evoke the sights, smells, achievements and terrors of a city where East and West have always met and mingled in astonishing ways.

8/10

(Review by Liz Ryan)

This Should Be Written In The Present Tense by Helle Helle is published in hardback by Harvill Secker, priced £12.99 (ebook £7.99). Available now

An odd but intriguing piece of work, this is the first of the bestselling Danish author's novels to be translated into English. The story of 20-something year old Dorte is told, rather disjointedly, as a stream of consciousness and flashbacks. Her family think Dorte is studying at university in Copenhagen but she spends her time pottering around her little bungalow next to the railway line, or shopping for cream cakes and bargains. Lonely and unable to sleep at night, she embarks on a series of doomed relationships, including a fling with the station office clerk who lives opposite with his girlfriend. This is an extremely short novel that's more like an extended piece of prose or poem, in that it has a beautifully lyrical quality. There are some particularly poignant scenes between Dorte and her flaky aunt, and it's threaded-through with subtle humour. But although there's a car-crash-like compulsion to keep reading to the end, ultimately, it's an art house book that may disappoint anyone expecting a conventional story-led novel.

6/10

(Review by Gill Oliver)

NON-FICTION

A Matter of Life And Death: A History Of Football In 100 Quotations by Jim White is published in hardback by Head of Zeus, priced £20 (ebook £5.99). Available now

If you had a penny for every story written about football on a daily basis, chances are your earnings would be worthy of Premier League status. However, seasoned sports journalist Jim White took on the task of cutting through all the hyperbole that surrounds the beautiful game to produce this wonderful chronological snapshot of how football has evolved. It's an entertaining read right from the kick off, when it takes in the first recorded law in the fight against a riotous London street game during 1314 "from which many evils may arise". Smartly presented with its Pele-adorned sleeve, cracking snaps encapsulating the drama and characters of the game and some smart line art throughout, this would make a great present for any football fans in the family. Pleasingly, this highly enjoyable compendium is also much more than just coffee table furniture, as the author isn't shy of sharing his own opinion, be the subject a good, bad, breathtaking or ugly side of the sport.

9/10

(Review by Gary Gilliland)

100 Essential Things You Didn't Know About Maths & The Arts by John D Barrow is published in hardback by Bodley Head, priced £10 (ebook £6.99). Available now

Roller coasters, art galleries, singing in the shower, pyramids and kidney transplants may not appear to have much in common at first glance, but John Barrow's book will change your mind. As professor of mathematics at Cambridge University, he's obviously at ease with complicated calculations but his real genius is in being able to explain everything so well it makes perfect sense to the rest of us. Mathematics and the arts are often thought to be poles apart, but this fascinating book shows how intertwined they are and how numbers and calculations are vital to our everyday lives without us realising. With flashes of humour and an endearingly light-touch style of prose, this is a book to keep handy so it can be dipped into again and again.

8/10

(Review by Gill Oliver)

BESTSELLERS FOR WEEK ENDING DECEMBER 13

HARDBACKS

1. Private Eye Annual: 2014, Ian HIslop

2. Guy Martin: My Autobiography, Guy Martin

3. The Miniaturist, Jessie Burton

4. The Churchill Factor: How One Man Made History, Boris Johnson

5. Girl Online, Zoe Sugg

6. Awful Auntie, David Walliams

7. Guinness World Records 2015

8. Jamie's Comfort Food, Jamie Oliver

9. Diary Of A Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul, Jeff Kinney

10. You Are Here:Around the World in 92 Minutes, Chris Hadfield

(Compiled by Waterstones)

PAPERBACKS

1. Mystery in White: A Christmas Crime Story: British Library Crime Classic, J Jefferson Farjeon

2. The Guest Cat, Takashi Hiraide

3. Test Your Dog:Is Your Dog an Undiscovered Genius?, Rachel Federman

4. Test Your Cat: The Cat IQ Test, EM Bard

5. Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn

6. We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, Karen Joy Fowler

7. I am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban, Malala Yousafzai and Christina Lamb

8. Alan Turing: The Enigma: The Book That Inspired the Film, the Imitation, Andrew Hodges

9. This Boy, Alan Johnson

10. The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt

(Compiled by Waterstones)

EBOOKS

1. Because She Loves Me,Mark Edwards

2. The Photographer's Wife, Nick Alexander

3. There's Something I've Been Dying to Tell You, Lynda Bellingham

4. Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn

5. The Letter, Kathryn Hughes

6. Us, David Nicholls

7. Only the Innocent, Rachel Abbott

8. Look Behind You, Sibel Hodge

9. Lamentation, C. J. Sansom

10. Home for Christmas, Annie Groves

(Compiled by amazon.co.uk)