The summer holidays are finally upon us, so whether you’re simply planning on pulling up a chair in the garden or jetting off to relax in a hammock by the sea, there’s nothing better than switching off and getting lost in a good book.
To help you pick your perfect holiday companion, WHSmith at Greenwich Shopping Park shares this year’s top summer reads.
The Poison Tree, Erin Kelly
In the summer of 1997, shy and straight laced Karen is befriended by the ultra glamorous, passionate Biba and moves into her secluded Highgate mansion with Biba’s enigmatic brother, Rex. Karen starts a relationship with Rex and embarks on a life of new found happiness, filled with alcohol and romance.
But Biba and Rex have a complicated history and an unrivalled closeness built from a childhood of abandonment and guilt. The arrival of a stranger shatters this fragile idyll with fatal consequences.
A decade later, Rex is released from prison and he and Karen must try to rebuild their life with their ten year old daughter, Alice. For Rex, the life sentence is over but Karen has secrets of her own. For her, the nightmare is just beginning.
The Return of Captain John Emmett, Elizabeth Speller
1920. The Great War has been over for two years, and it has left a very different world from the Edwardian certainties of 1914.
Following the death of his wife and baby and his experiences on the Western Front, Laurence Bartram has become something of a recluse.
Death and the aftermath of the conflict continue to cast a pall over peacetime England, and when a young woman he once knew persuades him to look into events that apparently led her brother, John Emmett, to kill himself, Laurence is forced to revisit the darkest parts of the war.
As Laurence unravels the connections between Captain Emmett's suicide, a group of war poets, a bitter regimental feud and a hidden love affair, more disquieting deaths are exposed. Even at the moment Laurence begins to live again, it dawns on him that nothing is as it seems, and that even those closest to him have their secrets...
Every Last One, Anna Quindlen
The Lathams seem to have it all: health, wealth and a vibrant family life. As Mary Beth Latham contemplates a life built around home, friends and community, she has every reason to feel fulfilled and content.
Then, for one of her sons, a process of unravelling begins. Mary Beth starts to focus on him, only to find that the comfortable life she has spent years carefully constructing is shattered in a single moment. Forced to confront her own demons, Mary Beth realises how the inconsequential moments we all share - and one shameful act she has hidden from everybody - may have contributed to her fate.
The Poison Tree, The Return of Captain John Emmett and Every Last One are all available in store now at WHSmith, Greenwich Shopping Park, off Bugsby’s Way in Charlton.
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