Off the Shelf: Return of the big hitters
Emily Henry! Libby Page! Stacey Halls! And a tour-de-force from David Nicholls.
April, how you spoil us with a glut of good books. It’s like dipping into an overflowing bucket of ripe cherries.
As a child I lived in California for three years, in a long, low white house with a cherry tree in the garden under which Megan-across-the-road and I would plunder on long, hot summer days after we tired of riding out bikes around the block. (Yes, it was a bit like The Wonder Years set in the late 1980s, and Megan was an Irish American straight from a novel: she had freckles on her cute turned-up nose and a dad called Chuck who drove a Chevy pick-up truck.) One summer, we gorged myself on cherries to the extent that we had to lie, supine, under the tree, groaning quietly.
But there will no groaning with these books - even if you do choose to gorge yourself. There’s a witty romance from the queen of booktok Emily Henry; Libby Page’s tender story of new motherhood, community and friendship in the sequel to The Lido; a new impeccably-researched historical psychological mystery via Stacey Halls; and a new - for my money, his best yet - novel from David Nicholls. The treats in store!