Good read – Scuffed Granny

Frances Finkel and the Passenger Pigeon by D. M. Mahoney

A nice, heart-warming read about teenager Frances Finkel and her yearning to become a fighter plane pilot in the Second World War

A tale of a frontier town and the promise offered by gold prospecting – dark, threatening and thrilling, and excellently told

A reflection on a childhood in Africa at the end of empire and how that has inexorably shaped the author into the man he was and is now

A book very much of our times, A.I. Fabler’s novel starts as a search for the truth about a copied painting but becomes much more

One farmer’s fight to preserve the land that his family has farmed for generations is a story of the little man versus the power of money

Short but definitely not sweet, this novella holds all the hallmarks of a good short story and is threaded with dark humour throughout

The book that begins Maya Angelou’s memoir is full of her experiences at a young age of what is wrong with the world but also, what is right

A modern novel containing the essence of the classic fairytale with its hints of the magical – like a river, a story of twists and turns

The wonderfully told story of Toby Wey who, from humble origins, has an adventurous, character-filled life surviving by living on his wits

A well-paced thriller set in Paris in the 50s about a man trying to find the truth of his wife’s death, in a troubled and war-scarred city