Despite happening over a hundred years ago, the six killings over the autumn of 1888 that were attributed to Jack the Ripper continue to hold a powerful grasp over our collective imaginations. While not the first serial killer in history, he was the first to have his crimes sensationalised by the media of the day, and the first to be given a nickname. Hundreds of books, articles and films have been produced speculating as to the identity and motive of the killer, and are still being produced – the study of this particular series of crimes has even spawned its own name: “ripperology”. I am far from being a ripperologist, but do have an interest in true crime and have read a number of books about Jack in the past. The Autobiography of Jack the Ripper is something quite different from other things I have read, however.

James Carnac

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Lisa Jewell is one of my favourite contemporary women’s authors and I have loved reading all of her books. Her latest, The Making of Us is just as readable and compelling as all of the others, and I was hooked in to the absorbing storyline from the very first page.

The Making of Us is about a set of disparate people who have never met but who are intrinsically linked by a twist of fate – they all share the same father. This would not be so unusual were it not for the fact that their mothers had never met their father either; the reason for this being that they were all conceived through sperm donation. Their father, Daniel Blanchard was a French medical student who had his own reasons for making the donation and never intended to ever meet his children.

Lisa Jewell

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A novel based on Charlotte Brontë’s notes.

Many modern writers have tried their hands at writing books in the style of classic authors. Clare Boylan succeeds in making Charlotte Brontë come alive on the page again.

When Charlotte Brontë, author of the classic novel “Jane Eyre”, died in 1855, she left behind 20 pages of a manuscript of a new novel, along with some other scraps of pieces she had been working on. Almost 150 years later in 2003, Irish author Clare Boylan took it upon herself to complete what Charlotte had begun, and published Emma Brown. Despite being published in the 21st century, this is truly a classic novel, and a credit to the Charlotte Brontë name and legacy.

Clare Boylan

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Some people believe that life consists of a series of problems with solutions, whereas others believe that there are simply situations which have their own internal life and momentum. This difference is an important one in We Had it So Good by Linda Grant. Stephen Newman is American, and an example of the first type of person, while his wife Andrea is English and an example of the second. Stephen and Andrea meet while at Oxford University, and embark on a marriage (in part of convenience) which is at the core of this book. Stephen and Andrea are very different – (“You fall for what you do not know, he figured out eventually. But you do fall: the loss of balance is the point.”) – and this allows Linda Grant to explore some very different perspectives during the course of the book.

Linda Grant

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“There is no great genius without some note of madness” runs the strap line for The Bellwether Revivals, an entertaining first novel with some dark undertones by Benjamin Wood.   The story is told mainly from the perspective of Oscar Lowe, a clever but uneducated young man working as a nursing home assistant in Cambridge.  Oscar falls in with a close knit group of privileged students which includes Eden Bellwether and his sister Iris, and gradually becomes part of their circle. Oscar forms a relationship with Iris and Eden provides the genius with a note of madness; from the beginning it is clear that things are not going to end well.

Benjamin Wood

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Nicole Krauss’ latest novel is all about a desk, or rather about all the various people who have possessed one very special and imposing desk. This particular desk has practically had a life of its own. From the library of a Jew in Hungary during the Nazi occupation or in the hands of a Chilean poet caught up in Pinochet’s reign of terror. From the bright living room of a writer in New York, or in a dark London attic of a woman with an even darker secret, or closed up in Jerusalem as a relic of the past. And in all its incarnations, the people who have used it or lived with it have been affected by it. In a patchwork collection of times and places, Krauss brings the stories behind this desk to life in her novel Great House.

Nicole Krauss

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A lot is happening in The Blasphemer by Nigel Farndale, probably too much for my taste – a few less plot lines and a little more depth would have made for a better book. Nonetheless, this is an interesting novel with an ambitious approach which makes for a good holiday read. There are two main story lines which are interwoven. The dominant story focuses on academic Zoologist Daniel Kennedy, a prominent atheist with a television series and a developing public profile who is about to undergo a crisis in almost every area of his life. As the novel starts it seems that everything is going his way – he is on the verge of promotion to a Professorship, his television series is becoming increasingly popular and he is planning to propose to his long term partner after taking her on a surprise holiday to the Galapagos islands.

Nigel Farndale

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The Art of Fielding by Chard Harbach is a big novel, in length and ambition. It was apparently ten years in the making, and along with a fine story it contains a considerable amount of intellectual ambition. Best to deal first, though, with a question which may well be in the mind of readers from outside the baseball-playing world – will I enjoy and understand this novel even though I know nothing about baseball? It will certainly help if you understand at least the basics of baseball – without this knowledge you can still enjoy the book, but you will undoubtedly struggle a little with some of the key sections. And those parts which deal with baseball games, especially near the climax of the story, are very well written and rather exciting.

Char Harbach

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“Lots of husbands forget things: they forget that their wife had an important meeting that morning; they forget to pick up the dry cleaning; some of them even forget their wedding anniversary. But Vaughan has forgotten that he even had a wife. Her name, her face, their history together, everything.”

When you pick up a book called The Man Who Forgot His Wife, you can be pretty confident about what you are going to get: a story about a man who has forgotten his wife. If that book happens to be brightly coloured and authored by John O’Farrell (a writer who claims “Spitting Image” amongst his many credits) then you can be pretty confident that you are going to get a comedy.

John O’ Farrell

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Back in the late 80s I got hooked on Armistead Maupin’s series ‘Tales of the City’ which followed the lives and loves of a group of friends and neighbours living in San Francisco. I was perhaps a little late to catch the craze since the first six volumes had been completed before I had even picked up the first. Published between 1978 and 1989 they were almost Dickensian in style with their short snappy chapters and serialised format, bouncing between a cast of very different characters and responding quickly to the zeitgeist. The series straddled an era when ‘The City’ was at the heart of a rapidly growing and deeply frightening series of events; the first occurrences and rapid spread of AIDS and HIV infection in San Francisco’s gay community.

Armistead Maupin

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When You were Older is the fabulous new novel by Catherine Ryan Hyde. Set against the backdrop of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, it tells a poignant and moving tale of family and prejudice. I loved this book from the moment that I first picked it up and I hardly wanted it to finish.

Russell Ammiano should have died on September 11th 2001. In fact he would have died had it not been for the phone call that informed him of his mother’s death and the need for him to return home to his home town in Kansas to sort out care for his mentally disabled older brother, Ben. Taking that call prevented him getting to his office in the twin towers for the scheduled 8.30 am meeting.

Catherine Ryan Hyde

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