New books to read this week

Snap and Exit author Belinda Bauer returns with another gripping crime story…

Fiction

The Impossible Thing by Belinda Bauer is published in hardback by Bantam

Set against a backdrop of the wild cliffs of the North Yorkshire coast, The Impossible Thing is a thrilling story about greed and obsession – those ugly traits to which humans seem so susceptible – and the crimes against nature committed in the pursuit of power and notoriety. There is, however, beauty in Belinda Bauer’s latest novel as well, not only in the wonderful descriptions of the birds’ eggs so coveted by their compulsive collectors. The narrative moves between the early 20th century and the present day, following ripples sent across decades by a small, neglected girl who makes an accidental discovery. It is a mystery woven together by the full gamut of human behaviour with brilliantly crafted characters – the wicked and the kind, the grasping and the gentle. Full of intrigue, humour, joy and sadness, this book, like its titular object, is a unique and beautiful thing.

Show Don’t Tell by Curtis Sittenfeld is published in hardback by Doubleday

Curtis Sittenfeld is the master of imagining – and reimagining – the lives of the wives of powerful men, including Hilary Clinton in her novel Rodham, and Laura Bush in the faultless American Wife. In The Richest Babysitter In The World, MacKenzie Scott, ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, appears to get the Sittenfeld treatment, in a story where a college student looks after the daughter of a woman called Diane, whose husband Bryan has recently started an internet sales business called Pangaea. In it, Sittenfeld stealthily drip-feeds information, packing in acres of nuance and a creeping sense of discomfort, that accompanies many of the short stories in this collection. In The Marriage Clock, romance is dismantled; in White Woman LOL, the ‘Karen’ type is painfully but sympathetically skewered and in The Hug, a simple embrace becomes fraught with politics and makes a couple reassess the entire structure of their day-to-day existence together. Beyond clever, these stories don’t make for a pleasant, restful read, but they’ll make you think.

The Violet Hour by James Cahill is published in hardback by Sceptre

Opening with the suicide of a young man later revealed as the associate director of an art gallery, the intertwined lives of those associated with painter Thomas Haller, a recluse bringing a new show out, are slowly unravelled. A billionaire art collector, Leo Goffman, is desperate for one of the paintings. Haller’s former friend and US dealer Lorna Bedford tries to understand what changed between them. Meanwhile, lost children recur like an artist’s motif through the novel, shaping the lives of those left behind. Cahill’s insider experience in the artworld as a critic and academic comes to the fore in his descriptions of artwork both real and imagined. His insights are particularly enlightening about the money and internal politics of it all – and how that changes you when you are caught up in it.

Non-fiction

Calling Una Marson: The Extraordinary Life Of A Forgotten Icon by June Sarpong and Jennifer Obidike is published in hardback by Akan Books

Have you heard of Una Marson? The chances are you haven’t. June Sarpong certainly hadn’t and was shocked that such a trailblazer for black women broadcasters could have been so resoundingly forgotten. Una Marson was a journalist, playwright and activist who became the first ever black female producer and broadcaster to work at the BBC. Writing with Jennifer Obidike, Sarpong tells Marson’s story, from her childhood in Jamaica and launching her first magazine, to travelling to London, alone, to pursue her writing career and up to her early death aged 60, in 1965. What’s most striking is the fact that Sarpong and Obidike don’t shy away from the fact that Marson was, in many ways, a very difficult person. She was petty and jealous, but also highly driven, brilliant and engaging. There are lengthy passages on the men that helped Mason during her career, which at times slows the pace, and it would be illuminating to read more of Marson’s own writing, but everything on Marson herself is fascinating. It’s about time she was celebrated.

Children’s book of the week

Ten Little Rabbits by Maurice Sendak is published in hardback by Puffin

Most small children would argue that you can’t have enough rabbits in your life, with their soft fur and floppy ears. But Mino the magician would not agree. Suited and booted with jaunty pinstripe trousers, he can seemingly handle four or five bunnies pulled from his top hat in this simple picture book, but six tips him over the edge. His face scrunches with consternation and at one point he even has a rabbit’s ears gripped in his fist! And so he magics them away again. This posthumous release from Where The Wild Things Are author Maurice Sendak, who died in 2012, injects whimsy and humour into basic adding and subtracting, but isn’t all that riveting. In fact, it is a little bewildering at first, and grumpy Mino is not overly endearing. However, the illustrations are charming and some theatricality from the adult reading can boost the drama and engagement levels for little ones.