Gods Behaving Badly by Marie Phillips Being immortal isn't all it's cracked up to be. Life's hard for a Greek god in the 21st century: nobody believes in you any more, even your own family doesn't respect you, and you're stuck in a delapidated hovel in north London with too many siblings and not enough hot water. But for (goddess of hunting, professional dog walker), (goddess of beauty, telephone sex operator) and (god of the sun, TV psychic) there's no way out... Until a meek cleaner and her would-be boyfriend come into their lives, and turn the world literally upside down. Gods Behaving Badly is that rare thing, a charming, funny, utterly original first novel that satisfies the head and the heart. 290 pages Kindle £4.99 Plenty of used.

Anne Patchett - State of Wonder - I have liked all her books I have read (especially Bel Canto) but not tried this one. My wife and both daughters have read and enjoyed this one a lot Mark There were people on the banks of the river. Among the tangled waterways and giant anacondas of the Brazilian Rio Negro, an enigmatic scientist is developing a drug that could alter the lives of women for ever. Dr Annick Swenson's work is shrouded in mystery; she refuses to report on her progress, especially to her investors, whose patience is fast running out. Anders Eckman, a mild- mannered lab researcher, is sent to investigate. A curt letter reporting his untimely death is all that returns. Now Marina Singh, Anders' colleague and once a student of the mighty Dr Swenson, is their last hope. Compelled by the pleas of Anders's wife, who refuses to accept that her husband is not coming home, Marina leaves the snowy plains of Minnesota and retraces her friend's steps into the heart of the South American darkness, determined to track down Dr. Swenson and uncover the secrets being jealously guarded among the remotest tribes of the rainforest. What Marina does not yet know is that, in this ancient corner of the jungle, where the muddy waters and susurrating grasses hide countless unknown perils and temptations, she will face challenges beyond her wildest imagination. Marina is no longer the student, but only time will tell if she has learnt enough. 362 pages Kindle £6.47 Plenty of used.

Roddy Doyle - A Star Called Henry Born in the Dublin slums of 1901, his father a one-legged whorehouse bouncer and settler of scores, Henry Smart has to grow up fast. By the time he can walk he's out robbing and begging, often cold and always hungry, but a prince of the streets. By Easter Monday, 1916, he's fourteen years old and already six-foot-two, a soldier in the Irish Citizen Army. A year later he's ready to die for Ireland again, a rebel, a Fenian and a killer. With his father's wooden leg as his weapon, Henry becomes a Republican legend - one of Michael Collins' boys, a cop killer, an assassin on a stolen bike. 354 pages Kindle £4.99 Plenty of used.

Philip Hensher - The Northern Clemency Beginning in 1974 and ending with the fading of Thatcher's government in 1996, ‘The Northern Clemency’ is Philip Hensher's epic portrait of an entire era, a novel concerned with the lives of ordinary people and history on the move. Set in Sheffield, it charts the relationship between two families: Malcolm and Katherine Glover and their three children; and their neighbours the Sellers family, newly arrived from London so that Bernie can pursue his job with the Electricity Board. The day the Sellers move in there is a crisis across the road: Malcolm Glover has left home, convinced his wife is having an affair. The consequences of this rupture will spread throughout the lives of both couples and their children, in particular 10-year-old Tim Glover, who never quite recovers from a moment of his mother's public cruelty and the amused taunting of 15-year- old Sandra Sellers, childhood crises that will come to a head twenty years later. In the background, England is changing: from a manufacturing and industrial based economy into a new world of shops, restaurants and service industries, a shift particularly marked in the North with the miners' strike of 1984, which has a dramatic impact on both families. 757 pages so probably too long. Kindle £4.74 used available

Kazuo Ishiguro – Nocturnes Five Stories of Music and Nightfall In Nocturnes, Kazuo Ishiguro explores the ideas of love, music and the passing of time. From the piazzas of Italy to the 'hush-hush floor' of an exclusive Hollywood hotel, the characters we encounter range from young dreamers to café musicians to faded stars, all of them at some moment of reckoning. Gentle, intimate and witty, this quintet is marked by a haunting theme: the struggle to keep alive a sense of life's romance, even as one gets older, relationships founder and youthful hope recedes 242 pages Kindle £3.99 Used available

Winter in Madrid by CJ Sansom

1940: The Spanish Civil War is over, and Madrid lies ruined, its people starving, while the Germans continue their relentless march through Europe. Britain now stands alone while General Franco considers whether to abandon neutrality and enter the war. Into this uncertain world comes Harry Brett: a traumatized veteran of Dunkirk turned reluctant spy for the British Secret Service. Sent to gain the confidence of old school friend Sandy Forsyth, now a shady Madrid businessman, Harry finds himself involved in a dangerous game - and surrounded by memories. Meanwhile Sandy's girlfriend, ex-Red Cross nurse Barbara Clare, is engaged in a secret mission of her own - to find her former lover Bernie Piper, a passionate Communist in the International Brigades, who vanished on the bloody battlefields of the Jarama. In a vivid and haunting depiction of wartime Spain, Winter in Madrid by C. J. Sansom is an intimate and compelling tale which offers a remarkable sense of history unfolding, and the profound impact of impossible choices. 556 pages Kindle £3.79 used avail.

The Kalahari Typing School for Men by Alexander McCall Smith Precious Ramotswe is continuing to run her detective agency from the garage of her fiancé, Mr J. L. B. Matakoni. Plans for their wedding need to be made - but when, if ever, will they wed? Intriguing cases present themselves and Mma Ramotswe juggles new clients with her usual formidable talent. However, when her first-class assistant Mma Makutsi decides to expand the agency by opening a much-needed typing school for men, things become complicated. 194 pages Kindle £5.49 Used avail. Aberystwyth Mon Amour - Malcolm Pryce Schoolboys are disappearing all over Aberystwyth and nobody knows why. Louie Knight, the town's private investigator, soon realises that it is going to take more than a double ripple from Sospan, the philosopher cum ice-cream seller, to help find out what is happening to these boys and whether or not Lovespoon, the Welsh teacher, Grand Wizard of the Druids and controller of the town, is more than just a sinister bully. And just who was Gwenno Guevara? 260 pages Kiindle £5.03 Used avail

All the Pretty Horses - Cormac McCarthy John Grady Cole is the last bewildered survivor of long generations of Texas ranchers. Finding himself cut off from the only life he has ever wanted, he sets out for Mexico with his friend Lacey Rawlins. Befriending a third boy on the way, they find a country beyond their imagining: barren and beautiful, rugged yet cruelly civilized; a place where dreams are paid for in blood. All the Pretty Horses is an acknowledged masterpiece from Pulitzer Prize winning author Cormac McCarthy, and a grand love story: a novel about childhood passing, along with innocence and a vanished American age. Steeped in the wisdom that comes only from loss, it is a magnificent parable of responsibility, revenge and survival. 330 pages Kindle £5.69 Used avail.

Brodeck's Report - Philippe Claudel From his village in post-war France, Brodeck makes his solitary journeys into the mountains to collect data on the natural environment. Day by day he also reconstructs his own life, all but lost in the years he spent in a camp during the war. No-one had expected to see him again. One day, a flamboyant stranger rides into the village, upsetting the fragile balance of everyday life. Soon he is named the Anderer, “the other”, and tensions rise until, one night, the newcomer is murdered. Brodeck is instructed to write an account of the events leading to his death, but his report delivers much more than the bare facts: it becomes the story of a community coming to terms with the legacy of enemy occupation. 288 pages Kindle £4.99 A few used available

Carter beats the Devil - Glen David Gould Charles Carter, dubbed Carter the Great by Houdini himself, was born into privilege but became a magician out of need: only when dazzling an audience can he defeat his fear of loneliness. But in 1920s America the stakes are growing higher, as technology and the cinema challenge the allure of magic and Carter's stunts become increasingly audacious. Until the night President Harding takes part in Carter's act only to die two hours later, and Carter finds himself pursued not only by the Secret Service but by a host of others desperate for the terrible secret they believe Harding confided in him. Seamlessly blending reality and fiction, Gold lays before us a glittering and romantic panorama of our modern world at a point of irrevocable change. 506 pages Kindle £4.49 a few used available

English Passengers - Matthew Kneale 'A big, ambitious novel with a rich historical sweep and a host of narrative voices. Its subject is a vicar's ludicrous expedition in 1857 to the Garden of Eden in Tasmania, [as] meanwhile, in Tasmania itself, the British settlers are alternately trying to civilise and eliminate the Aboriginal population ... The sort of novel that few contemporary writers have either the imagination or the stamina to sustain' - Daily Telegraph 480 pages Kindle £4.99 Used avail.

New Finnish Grammar - Diego Marani A man searches for his lost identity in wartime Italy and Finland. 196 pages Kindle £7.21 Used avail. Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha - Roddy Doyle Paddy Clarke is ten years old. Paddy Clarke lights fires. Paddy Clarke's name is written in wet cement all over Barrytown, north Dublin. Paddy Clarke's heroes are Father Damien (and the lepers), Geronimo and George Best. Paddy Clarke has a brother called Francis, but Paddy calls him Sinbad and hates him because that's the rule. Paddy Clarke knows the exact moment to knock a dead scab from his knee. Paddy Clarke loves his Ma and Da, but it seems like they don't love each other, and Paddy's world is falling apart. 290 pages Kindle £4.99 Used avail

Quite Ugly one Morning - Christopher Brookmyre Yeah, yeah, the usual. A crime. A corpse. A killer. Heard it. Except this stiff happens to be a Ponsonby, scion of a venerable Edinburgh medical clan, and the manner of his death speaks of unspeakable things. Why is the body displayed like a slice of beef? How come his hands are digitally challenged? And if it's not the corpse, what is that awful smell? A post-Thatcherite nightmare of frightening plausibility, QUITE UGLY ONE MORNING is a wickedly entertaining and vivacious thriller, full of acerbic wit, cracking dialogue and villains both reputed and shell-suited. 287 pages Kindle £6.99 Used avail.

Staying On - Paul Scott Tusker and Lily Smalley stayed on in India. Given the chance to return 'home' when Tusker, once a Colonel in the British Army, retired, they chose instead to remain in the small hill town of Pangkot, with its eccentric inhabitants and archaic rituals left over from the days of the Empire. Only the tyranny of their landlady, the imposing Mrs Bhoolabhoy, threatens to upset the quiet rhythm of their days. Both funny and deeply moving, Staying On is a unique, engrossing portrait of the end of an empire and of a forty-year love affair. 260 pages Kindle £4.99 Used from £0.37 Strandloper - Alan Garner I sing the eagle. "Bone of the Cloud. The Clashing Rock. The Hard Darkness." It hangs above the grave mound. I sing, dreaming... William Buckley was transported to Australia in 1801. He escaped and lived as an Aborigine for thirty-one years. In this visionary novel, Alan Garner is true to William the Cheshire bricklayer and William the Aboriginal spiritual leader, as William is true to his fate. The result is extraordinary. 211 pages Kindle £3.99 Used quite pricey at £7.20 + (including postage)

The life and times of Michael K - J M Coetzee In a South Africa torn by civil war, Michael K sets out to take his mother back to her rural home. On the way there she dies, leaving him alone in an anarchic world of brutal roving armies. Imprisoned, Michael is unable to bear confinement and escapes, determined to live with dignity. Life and Times of Michael K goes to the centre of human experience - the need for an interior, spiritual life, for some connections to the world in which we live, and for purity of vision. 194 pages Kindle £4.99 Used avail.

The Siege of Krishnapur - J G Farrell In the Spring of 1857, with India on the brink of a violent and bloody mutiny, Krishnapur is a remote town on the vast North Indian plain. For the British there, life is orderly and genteel. Then the sepoys at the nearest military cantonment rise in revolt and the British community retreats with shock into the Residency. They prepare to fight for their lives with what weapons they can muster. As food and ammunition grow short, the Residency, its defences battered by shot and shell and eroded by the rains, becomes ever more vulnerable.The Siege of Krishnapur is a modern classic of narrative excitement that also digs deep to explore some fundamental questions of civilisation and life. 378 pages Kindle £5.99 Used avail.

The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts - Louis de Berniere When the spoilt and haughty Dona Constanza tries to divert a river to fill her swimming pool, she starts a running battle with the locals. The skirmishes are so severe that the Government dispatches a squadron of soldiers led by the fat, brutal and stupid Figueras to deal with them. Despite visiting plagues of laughing fits and giant cats upon the troops, the villagers know that to escape the cruel and unusual tortures planned for them, they must run. Thus they plan to head for the mountains and start a new and convivial civilisation. 386 pages Kindle £4.99 Used avail.

The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks 'Two years after I killed Blyth I murdered my young brother Paul, for quite different reasons than I'd disposed of Blyth, and then a year after that I did for my young cousin Esmerelda, more or less on a whim. That's my score to date. Three. I haven't killed anybody for years, and don't intend to ever again. It was just a stage I was going through.' Enter - if you can bear it - the extraordinary private world of Frank, just sixteen, and unconventional, to say the least. 194 pages Kindle £5.99 Used avail

Black Ops by ~Stephen Leather Spider Shepherd's MI5 Controller, Charlie Button, has gone rogue, using government resources to get revenge on the men who killed her husband. Spider is told to betray her. Worse, he's asked to cooperate with his nemesis at MI6, Jeremy Willoughby Brown, in taking Charlie down. And he will have to cross the assassin, Lex Harper, currently on the trail of two Irish terrorists, who may be able to lead him to his ex-boss. Meanwhile, Spider's 16-year-old son is caught with drugs, expelled from school and threatened with prosecution. But the drug police offer Spider a deal: go undercover, unmask a local dealer and his son will go free. Spider has no option but to cooperate. But is he any better than Charlie, using work resources to resolve personal issues? 385 pages Kindle £5.69

A high mortality of Doves Ellis, Kate, 1919. The Derbyshire village of Wenfield is still reeling from four terrible years of war, and now, just when the village is coming to terms with the loss of so many of its sons, the brutal murder of a young girl shatters its hard-won tranquillity. Myrtle Bligh is found stabbed and left in woodland, her mouth slit to accommodate a dead dove, a bird of peace. During the war Myrtle worked as a volunteer nurse with Flora Winsmore, the local doctor's daughter, caring for badly wounded soldiers at the nearby big house, Tarnhey Court. When two more women are found murdered in identical circumstances, Inspector Albert Lincoln is sent up from London, a man not only wounded in war but damaged in peace by the death of his young son and his cold, loveless marriage. Once in Wenfield, Albert begins to investigate the three recent murders and the Cartwright family of Tarnhey Court and their staff fall under suspicion as their hidden lives and secrets are uncovered. With rumours of a ghostly soldier with a painted face being spotted near the scene of the murders, the village is thrown into a state of panic - and with the killer still on the loose, who will be the next to die at the hands of this vicious angel of death? 368 pages Kindle £4.99 Used from £1.16 plus postage

The Dying Game by Asa Avdic ‘Oh, it’s really quite simple. I want you to play dead.’ On the remote island of Isola, seven people have been selected to compete in a 48-hour test for a top-secret intelligence position. One of them is Anna Francis, a workaholic with a nine-year-old daughter she rarely sees, and a secret that haunts her. Her assignment is to stage her own death and then observe, from her hiding place inside the walls of the house, how the other candidates react to the news that a murderer is among them. Who will take control? Who will crack under pressure? But as soon as Anna steps on to the island she realises something isn’t quite right. And then a storm rolls in, the power goes out, and the real game begins… 268 pages Kindle £4.99 Used from £1.65

The Magician's Lie by Greer Macallister The Amazing Arden is the most famous female illusionist of her day, renowned for her notorious trick of sawing a man in half on stage. But one night she swaps her trademark saw for an axe. When Arden's husband is found dead later that night, the answer seems clear, most of all to young policeman Virgil Holt. Captured and taken into custody, all seems set for Arden's swift confession. But she has a different story to tell. Even handcuffed and alone, Arden is far from powerless, and what she reveals is as unbelievable as it is spellbinding. 288 pages Kindle £1.99 used from £1.78

May You Burn by Jan Merete Weiss

In the Italian city of Naples, senior police officer Captain Natalia Monte is called to investigate the theft of a painting from the medieval Church of San Domenico Maggiore. No sooner is the investigation underway than the city is rocked by a much graver crime: the murder of a talented and much-loved female violinist, known across the city and beyond.

As Captain Monte and her fellow Carabinieri interview close friends and family of the victim, they sense all around them the dark forces of Naples' organised crime bosses, the Camorra. It seems that anyone could be a suspect and as Monte struggles to keep her professional and her personal dealings from becoming dangerously intertwined, the plot reaches a dramatic conclusion. This book provides a thrilling read and effectively contrasts the serene beauty of Naples and the surrounding area with its gruesome and violent underworld. 235 pages Kindle £3.50 There do not appear to be any cheap used copies.

Love and Summer by William Trevor It's summer and nothing much is happening in Rathmoye. So it doesn't go unnoticed when a dark-haired stranger appears on his bicycle and begins photographing the mourners at Mrs Connulty's funeral. Florian Kilderry couldn't know that the Connultys were said to own half the town; and, in any case, he had come to Rathmoye only to see the scorched remains of the cinema. But Mrs Connulty's daughter, liberated at last by the death of her imperious mother, resolves to keep an eye on Florian Kilderry, and it's she who comes to witness the events that follow. A few miles out in the country a farmer called Dillahan lives with the knowledge that he was accidentally responsible for the deaths of his wife and baby. He has married again: Ellie is the young convent girl who came to work for him when he was widowed. But she falls in love with Florian and though he plans to leave Ireland, a dangerously reckless attachment develops between them . In a characteristically masterly way Trevor evokes the passions and frustrations felt by Ellie and Florian, and by the people of a small Irish town during one long summer. 226 pages Kindle £4.99 Used avail

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James A young governess arrives at Bly, a country home in Essex, England, to care for Miles and Flora, two precocious and pure children. But as ghostly visions take shape, the obsessively protective governess soon fears for the safety of her wards—only to wonder if these hauntings are a conjuring of her own imagination. In challenging what we see—and what we believe we see—in the dark of the night, The Turn of the Screw stands as one of the boldest and most chilling ghost stories ever told. 137 pages Kindle £0.00 Used avail

Girl in Hyacinth Blue by Susan Vreeland Here is the story of an imaginary painting by Vermeer, and the aspirations and longings of those whose lives it illuminates, and darkens. From a proud father regretting his lost love to a compromised French noblewoman, from a hanged girl to Vermeer's own gifted daughter, Susan Vreeland's beautiful and luminous tales link to form an evocative jewel. 192 pages Kindle £5.99 Used avail