A Cold Death in Amsterdam - Anja de Jager

A Cold Death in Amsterdam is a smart and engaging police procedural about a Dutch detective struggling to come to terms with her past.


‘Frozen canals and deserted streets make an athmospheric setting for Anja de Jager’s debut A Cold Death in Amsterdam. Detective Lotte Meerman has become a celebrity after solving the disappearance of a young girl 15 years earlier. The suspect is due in court, and Meerman is dreading the trial because of a possibly disastrous error of judgement on her part. She tries to distract herself with an unsolved murder, even though the investigating officer was her estranged father. Her painstaking police work is undermined by emotional turmoil in a novel brilliantly evoking the isolation of a woman with an unbearable weight on her conscience.’ Joan Smith in The Sunday Times.

The Vegetarian - Han Kang

Before the nightmares began, Yeong-hye and her husband lived an ordinary, controlled life. But the dreams—invasive images of blood and brutality—torture her, driving Yeong-hye to purge her mind and renounce eating meat altogether. It’s a small act of independence, but it interrupts her marriage and sets into motion an increasingly grotesque chain of events at home. As her husband, her brother-in-law and sister each fight to reassert their control, Yeong-hye obsessively defends the choice that’s become sacred to her. Soon their attempts turn desperate, subjecting first her mind, and then her body, to ever more intrusive and perverse violations, sending Yeong-hye spiraling into a dangerous, bizarre estrangement, not only from those closest to her, but also from herself.

Celebrated by critics around the world, The Vegetarian is a darkly allegorical, Kafka-esque tale of power, obsession, and one woman’s struggle to break free from the violence both without and within her.

Glowfly Dance - Jade Gibson

'I never see my father. My father never sees me. But I see with the eyes he gave me. Slanted like the wings of gulls flying in the sky. And, when my mother speaks of Mexico, her eyes mist up with the lights of memory.'

Through young Mai’s eyes, life is enchanting and full of beauty. She dances on her grandfather’s feet while he talks of freedom. But the world is hard and her mother is struggling. When Rashid arrives, he casts a deep shadow over their lives. Nothing is beyond her new stepfather. They are desperate to escape from him, and their world becomes a constant battle for survival – one of fleeing, multiple identities, abduction and upheaval. Mai’s eyes not only witness the story of her mother, but also the poignant stories of the many women she encounters across different countries. Finally, Mai learns that, when freedom comes, it comes at a bitter price.

From Mexico to Scotland to London to North Africa, the West Indies and back again, Glowfly Dance is a powerful and haunting story of migration, resilience and, ultimately, hope.

The Minds's Eye - Judith Mason

This is not a how-to book. It is a how-to-think-about-how-to book. In it I bombard you with images and metaphors with never a photograph or diagram in sight. Your mind's eye will create all the images in this text, and each mind is unique. Getting these, and other images, down on paper will provide you with fun, frustration, joy and despair. Like life. (Judith Mason)

The High Mountains of Portugal - Yann Martel

The extraordinary new novel from the author of Life of Pi. 

In Lisbon in 1904, a young man named Tomás discovers an old journal. It hints at the location of an extraordinary artefact that - if it exists - would redefine history. Travelling in one of Europe's earliest automobiles, he sets out in search of this treasure. Some thirty-five years later, a Portuguese pathologist finds himself at the centre of a murder mystery.

Fifty years on, a Canadian senator takes refuge in northern Portugal, grieving the loss of his beloved wife. But he comes to his ancestral village with an unusual companion: a chimpanzee.

The High Mountains of Portugal takes the reader on a road trip through Portugal in the last century - and through the human soul.

Midnight Sun - Jo Nesbo

Jon is on the run. He has betrayed Oslo's biggest crime lord: The Fisherman.

Fleeing to an isolated corner of Norway, to a mountain town so far north that the sun never sets, Jon hopes to find sanctuary amongst a local religious sect.

Hiding out in a shepherd's cabin in the wilderness, all that stands between him and his fate are Lea, a bereaved mother and her young son, Knut.

But while Lea provides him with a rifle and Knut brings essential supplies, the Midnight Sun is slowly driving Jon to insanity.