Last Dance with Valentino, by Daisy Waugh (HarperCollins/Jonathan Ball) Jenny Doyle leaves London at the height of World War I to seek a better life in New York. She gets a job as a domestic worker for the De Saulles family, rich and elegant, but a family whose home life is full of malice and madness. There is hope, however, in her friendship with the dancer Rodolfo, and she falls hopelessly in love. But things go terribly wrong. Ten years later Rodolfo, now known as the glorious Rudolph Valentino, is dazzling all of America with his dancing on the silver screen, and the pair meet again, to find themselves as much in love as ever. Will there be a Hollywood happy ending? Don’t hold your breath.
The Dragon with the Girl Tattoo, by Adam Roberts (Gollancz/ Jonathan Ball) All Stieg Larssoned out? Here’s an antidote. “Being ripped from the mouth does tend to diminish the loquacious potential of the tongue,” Detective Superintendent Smaug tells Helltrik Vagner, as they open the 300th parcel sent to Vagner over the years containing a dragon tongue. Vagner suspects the perpetrator is the same creature who killed his grandniece all those years ago – and that all 300 dragons are dead. In comes Käal Brimstön, the celebrated Starkhelm journalist, to get to the bottom of the mystery. And with Brimstön comes the delinquent and dangerous Lizbreath Salamander. The cover blurb tells us this is a thriller and – in case you were wondering – a parody.
The Breakers, by Claudie Gallay (Quercus/ Book Promotions)
A birdwatcher has come to a remote village in Normandy to observe and catalogue migratory birds. One day a devastating storm hits the village, the same day that a stranger arrives in the local inn, piquing the birdwatcher’s curiosity. The stranger is there to find answers to what the villagers consider unanswerable questions about his family, lost years earlier in an accident at sea. What really happened? The birdwatcher is intrigued, and despite the determined secrecy of the villagers, she eventually unravels a mystery at the heart of the village. This book was first published in French in 2008 and has now been translated into English. It was chosen by Le Monde and by readers of Elle as their novel of the year.