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Winter books 2025

Curl up in front of the fire with these great new reads suggested by Simon Evans

A_Girls_guide_to_winning_the_war_book_cover.A Girls Guide to Winning the War, by Annie Lyons (Review, £9.99) is the story of a young librarian who, with her brother serving at the front during the Second World War, gets a job at the Ministry of Information but finds herself in hot water when some of her innermost thoughts are inadvertently published. It’s a heart-warming novel of friendship and courage that also highlights the important role women played during the conflict…

 

A young woman seeks to save the ancestral home she was exiled from, and uncover its many secrets, in Val Wood’s novel Foster’s Mill (Penguin, £8.99), long-buried family secrets emerge in Adrienne Young’s engrossing A Sea of Unspoken Things (Quercus, £20), and, based on the remarkable story of Fredy Hirsch, The_Teacher_of_Auschwitz_book_coverThe Teacher of Auschwitz (Zaffre, £14.99) is a tale of extraordinary courage as a young, gay Jewish teacher seeks to teach children in the concentration camp the most important lesson of all, survival…

 

The_Bookseller_book_cover.The Bookseller, by Tim Sullivan (Head of Zeus, £20) is the latest in the compelling George Cross series, following the unconventional detective as he enters the surprisingly murky world of the second-hand book trade, and Your Child Next (Orion, £9.99) is a twisty thriller in the mode of Harlan Coben from masters of the genre MJ Arlidge and Andy Masten…

 

Radicals_Rebels_and_Royals_book_cover.Radicals, Rebels and Royals, by Martyn Routledge and Elspeth Wills (Pavilion, £16.99), is a fascinating trawl through history as filtered through the ultimate pub crawl, more than 70 hostelries with tales to tell of pirates, plots, sporting heroes and literary giants, featuring illustrations by Adam Forster…

 

Simon_Mayo_Black_Tag_book_cover.DJ Simon Mayo has recently emerged as a crime writer of some renown, and Black Tag (Bantam Press, £16.99) is his latest, following crusading journalist Famie Madden as she investigates a mysterious, tragic fire at a fashionable West End gallery, and detective William Wisting is on the trail of an enemy within in Jorn Lier Horst’s The Traitor (Michael Joseph, £18.99) …

 

Universal_Mother_book_coverTwo new titles in the excellent 33 1/3 series focus on important albums from artists who shared a common willingness to transgress acceptable boundaries and explore the limits of their artistry. Adele Bertel examines Sinead O’Connor’s 1994 album Universal Mother, which came hard on the heels of her controversial, very public, statements about child abuse in the Catholic church, focussing on how the record managed to combine rage with empathy and grief, as well as mourning the loss of innocence of Sinead’s beloved Ireland.

In Paris 1919 Mark Doyle looks at John Cale’s enduring 1973 album of the same name, his most commercial offering up to that point, but one also steeped in his Welsh cultural upbringing. Both books are priced at £9.99 and are published by Bloomsbury…

 

Murder_on_the_Marlow_Belle_book_cover.Murder On The Marlow Belle (HQ, £16.99) is the latest cosy crime novel from Death In Paradise creator Robert Thorogood, and the fourth in the Marlow Murder Club series. It finds amateur sleuths Judith, Suzie and Becks on the trail of a killer linked to the local amateur dramatic society where all is not as it seems. And in similar vein is The Last Word Is Death, by Faith Martin (HQ, £16.99) which sees unconventional amateur sleuths Arbie and Val teaming up again, this time to solve a murder at a swanky hotel. The apparent suicide of a neighbour arouses suspicions in hyper-sensitive Nancy, but no one seems to believe her, least of all boyfriend Felix, in Nicci French’s The Last Days of Kira Mullen (Simon and Schuster, £18.99), and DI Ryan Wilkins returns in A Voice In The Night (Quercus, £16.99), the fourth in the acclaimed series by Simon Mason. It finds Ryan and partner Ray having to prove themselves to a new DCS while investigating the death of an elderly gentleman…

 Gone to Earth (Verve, £10.99) is the third and final instalment in Jane Jesmond’s series featuring daredevil climber Jan Shaw, which finds our heroine still reeling from the events of the previous book and finding herself, and her family, becoming the target of powerful, sinister people with links at the heart of the Glasgow police force…

Sod_70_The_Guide_to_living_well_book_coverLast but not least, the newly updated edition of Muir Gray and David Mostyn’s inspirational Sod Seventy! (Bloomsbury Sport, £14.99), is a must-have guide to life in the eighth decade and beyond, with plenty of tips on staying active and healthy, keeping the brain engaged – and navigating the labyrinthine bureaucracy of the NHS…

 

 

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