One of the great things about having a well-stocked Kindle is that you don’t need to think too much about what books to take away with you on holiday. You can finish a book and just pick whatever takes your fancy next instead of having to guess in advance just what you might feel like reading on a plane, on a beach or in your hotel. For my recent trip to Istanbul I had actually downloaded a couple of novels set in the city but then got the urge for something completely different – in this case a very funny account of one man’s introduction to India as a result of following the England cricket team on the 2001 test series. The book is Not Very Bollywood At All by Richard Beeching.

Richard Beeching

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It is over 10 years since Timothy Mo’s last novel, but Pure has been worth the wait. Mo has written an effervescent novel overflowing with verbal ticks and tricks, addressing some serious topics in a most unusual way. The book is set in southern Thailand, where a small but vigourous Islamic insurgency, vaguely linked with global backers, dreams of a South Asian caliphate and embarks on a campaign of terrorism. In an effort to infiltrate one of the Islamic cells, the police recruit a most unlikely double agent, Snooky – a Thai ladyboy of Islamic origin working as a film critic in the city. Against all expectations, Snooky proves to be a very effective terrorist and a somewhat less effective informant for the authorities.

Timothy Mo

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That Woman by Anne Sebba is a biography of Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor, wife of the Duke of Windsor, the former King Edward VIII, and blamed for his decision to abdicate in 1936. Hated by the royal family, particularly Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, and mocked by society, history has painted her as a manipulative and cunning woman, allegedly using tricks learnt in Chinese brothels to exert her hold on the King.

Born Bessiewallis Warfield in Baltimore in the late nineteenth century, she was on her second marriage by the time she met the then Prince of Wales. Her first marriage was as a naval wife and ended in divorce, she spent time in China before moving to England and marrying Ernest Simpson, who offered her stability.

Anne Sebba

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A city is a lot like a woman. You may fall for it because of a certain physical attribute — the eyes, the smile, the dimple…That is how Bishwanath Ghosh looks at Chennai in his Tamarind City. It’s an odd combination, a Bengali who grew up in Kanpur moving to Chennai because at some point in time his parents had lived in the city and had fond memories of it. However from that arbitrary decision to move to Chennai from Delhi, came one of the first histories of Chennai – not so much a history in the timeline sense, though Ghosh does talk about how the British set foot in Madras and bought land in Masulipatam – but a history that shifts from physical attributes to spiritual to iconic in an attempt to capture the many realities of Chennai.

Bishwanath Ghosh

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Gone by Michael Grant is the first novel in a series which, like many book series, is named after its first novel. It is a young adult novel, something I wasn’t actually aware of before I read it – although I do read quite a bit of young adult fiction.

One day, in a Californian town called Perdido Beach, everyone aged fifteen and over disappears. There is no warning – they just vanish into thin air. Cars crash, homes are left empty, TV and phones stop working. And the only ones left are those under fourteen. Sam Temple and his friends Quinn and Astrid try to figure out what is happening as they go in search of Astrid’s autistic brother Little Pete.

Michael Grant

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Waiting for Sunrise by William Boyd is a literary thriller, starting in pre-first World War Vienna and finishing in wartime London. In between it touches down in the battlefields of France and a more peaceful Geneva. The main protagonist is Lysander Rief, a young English actor beginning to make a name for himself on the stage, following in the footsteps of his more famous father. As the novel commences, Lysander has travelled to Geneva seeking psychotherapy for a sexual problem from one of Vienna’s leading psychotherapists. Lysander remains at the centre of events throughout the novel, becoming a wartime undercover agent on a mission to identify a traitor who is leaking important logistical information to the Germans.

William Boyd

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Three Thousand Miles for a Wish is one British Muslim woman’s account of going to Saudi Arabia to take part in the annual Hajj pilgrimage. Growing up in the UK her religion had become such a minor part of her life that she barely noticed that she’d lost touch with her roots. Succeeding academically, she trained as a lawyer and hated the tedium of the job. She went to nightclubs, drank and got a boyfriend. But ‘living the dream’ turned out to be more of a nightmare. When the dream boyfriend turned out to have a fiancé about whom she knew nothing until the other woman was screaming in her face, Safiya’s life started spiralling into dangerous depression. She ripped up her prayer mat, blamed God, screamed at her parents, abused her friends and family and was heading on the fast-track to self destruction. Then one day her parents told her they were going to Mecca for the Hajj and she found herself asking to go with them.

Safiya Hussain

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Ten Years On is the latest book from Alice Peterson and tells the story of Rebecca and Joe who, as the title might suggest, have not seen each other for ten years. A lot has happened in the intervening years and it is only because of a devastating turn of events that they meet up again.

Rebecca and Joe did not part on the best of terms. They were at university together along with Rebecca’s boyfriend Olly who she later married. They were an inseparable trio until one drunken evening, whilst Olly was ill in bed, Joe declared his true feelings of love for Rebecca. After spending the night together, she is racked with guilt and leaves.

Alice Peterson

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One woman; two men. Which will she chose? The core of many a Victorian Novel, and also the underlying premise of The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides. Eugenides is not a prolific author – the Marriage Plot is his first book for a decade, but his novels are generally worth waiting for and this is no exception. It is an intelligent and humorous book, with many unexpected twists and turns as Eugenides sets out to make a Victorian novel for our age.

Madeleine is the central female character. We meet her as she prepares to graduate, uncertain as to what to do with her life.

Jeffrey Eugenides

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Maharshi Patel is a well-to-do student attending a top US university and spoilt by his successful oncologist father and his doting mother. He is arrogant, selfish and self-indulgent. He likes fast cars and expensive watches not because they’re fast or they tell the time better but because they tell everyone around him just how wonderful his life is. There’s no point being a success if the world can’t SEE how fabulous your life is, after all. When a series of deaths amongst family and friends sends his privileged lifestyle off its axis, Maharshi has a breakdown, fails at his studies and his father threatens to cut him off financially. It’s taken him a while but the realisation dawns that he can’t take his life of privilege for granted. In search of an escape from the life that’s spiralling out of control, he heads to India to spend time with his paternal grandfather in search of truths about himself, his father and his father’s father.

Maharshi Patel

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The Land of Decoration is a first novel told in the voice of a young girl who has been brought up as a member of a religious sect; Grace McCleen is a young writer who was herself brought up in a similar environment, and she is probably writing about things that she knows. Of course, most authors draw deeply on personal life experiences as they write, not surprising since writing about events and circumstances you know is likely to be more realistic and easier. However, sometimes the parallels between events and a novel and the author’s own life seem particularly close – Anthony Powell’s Dance to the Music of Time sequence being a good example – and perhaps that is also the case here. Certainly, the setting of the novel is completely convincing, even if the events are at least partly imagined.

Grace McCleen

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