Book reviews

Bento Santiago is madly in love with his neighbour, Capitu. He even breaks a promise his devout mother made to God that he become a priest in order to marry her. But, once wed, Bento becomes increasingly convinced that Capitu is having a torrid affair, that his son is not his own, and that his best friend has cuckolded him.

What follows is a rich and sardonic narrative, as Bento attempts to discern his sons paternity. Are his suspicions actually based in reality or have his obsessive ruminations given way to deceptive illusions?

The Japanese bestseller: a tale of love, new beginnings, and the comfort that can be found between the pages of a good book.

When twenty-five-year-old Takako's boyfriend reveals he's marrying someone else, she reluctantly accepts her eccentric uncle Satoru's offer to live rent-free in the tiny room above his shop. Hidden in Jimbocho, Tokyo, the Morisaki Bookshop is a booklover's paradise.

On a quiet corner in an old wooden building, the shop is filled with hundreds of second-hand books. It is Satoru's pride and joy, and he has devoted his life to the bookshop since his wife left him five years earlier. Hoping to nurse her broken heart in peace, Takako is surprised to encounter new worlds within the stacks of books lining the shop.

Willis Wu doesn't perceive himself as the protagonist in his own life: he's merely Generic Asian Man. Sometimes he gets to be Background Oriental Making a Weird Face or even Disgraced Son, but always he is relegated to a prop. Yet every day, he leaves his tiny room in a Chinatown SRO and enters the Golden Palace restaurant, where Black and White, a procedural cop show, is in perpetual production. He's a bit player here, too, but he dreams of being Kung Fu Guy--the most respected role that anyone who looks like him can attain. Or is it?

An exhilarating tale of twisted desire, histories and homes, and the unexpected shape of revenge - for readers of Patricia Highsmith, Sarah Waters and Ian McEwan's Atonement.

It's 1961 and the rural Dutch province of Overijssel is quiet. Bomb craters have been filled, buildings reconstructed, and the war is well and truly over. Living alone in her late mother's country home, Isabel's life is as it should be: led by routine and discipline. But all is upended when her brother Louis delivers his graceless new girlfriend, Eva, at Isabel's doorstep-as a guest, there to stay for the season . . .

At the turn of the twenty-second century, scientists make a breakthrough in human spaceflight. Through a revolutionary method known as somaforming, astronauts can survive in hostile environments off Earth using synthetic biological supplementations. They can produce antifreeze in sub-zero temperatures, absorb radiation and convert it for food, and conveniently adjust to the pull of different gravitational forces. With the fragility of the body no longer a limiting factor, human beings are at last able to explore neighbouring exoplanets long suspected to harbour life.

Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, Tara Westover was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. Her family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education, and no one to intervene when one of Tara’s older brothers became violent.

When another brother got himself into college, Tara decided to try a new kind of life. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge University. Only then would she wonder if she’d traveled too far, if there was still a way home.

Enter a school of magic unlike any you have ever encountered.

There are no teachers, no holidays, friendships are purely strategic, and the odds of survival are never equal. Once you're inside, there are only two ways out: you graduate, or you die.

El Higgins is uniquely prepared for the schools many dangers. She may be without allies, but she possesses a dark power strong enough to level mountains and wipe out untold millions -- never mind easily destroy the countless monsters that prowl the school.

Except, she might accidentally kill all the other students too. So El is trying her hardest not to use it . . . that is, unless she has no other choice.

As a people-pleasing gay man, thirty-year-old music lawyer Domenic Marino is an expert at code-switching between the hypermasculine and ultrafeminine worlds of his two soon-to-be-wed best friends: handsome sports attorney Patrick Cooper and glamorous beauty editor Kate Wallace. But this summer—reeling from his own failed engagement and tasked with attending both their bachelor and bachelorette parties at the Cooper family’s idyllic shoreline estate in Mystic, Connecticut—Dom is anxious about having to play both sides.

Two eccentric orphans bring together a grumpy viscount and the free-spirited heroine who steals his heart in the first novel in Eloisa James’s new Accidental Brides series, in which haughty aristocrats find themselves married to the wrong women.

He wants a nanny, not a bride…

She wants to marry for love…

When the arrogant viscount finds that his viscountess has stolen his heart, he’ll have to give all he has to win her love.

What if one half of a pair of twins no longer wants to live? What if the other can’t live without them?

This question lies at the heart of Jente Posthuma’s deceptively simple What I’d Rather Not Think About.

The narrator is a twin whose brother has recently taken his own life. She looks back on their childhood, and tells of their adult lives: how her brother tried to find happiness, but lost himself in various men and the Bhagwan movement, though never completely.