5 new books to read this week

Brooke Shields is back with her latest book, tackling what it’s like to be a woman in mid-life…

Fiction

1. Disappoint Me by Nicola Dinan is published in hardback by Doubleday, priced £16.99 (ebook £8.99). Available January 23

Nicola Dinan’s promising 2023 debut, Bellies, was an engaging novel dealing with themes of gender and racial identity and making your way in the world. Her sophomore offering, Disappoint Me, picks up many of the same threads – and sees Dinan a lot more confident and captivating in her writing. It flicks between the perspective of Max – a 30-year-old published poet who still works for a tech firm, feeling like something’s missing in her life – and Vincent, a lawyer she meets and starts dating, who is supportive of her trans identity – but won’t tell his whole family, and might be hiding a secret from his youth. The characters are fully fleshed out and realistic, and while the story deals with big philosophical questions, it still feels pacy and readable as you try to untangle Vincent’s past – and Max’s increasingly murky future. Dinan certainly is one to watch.

9/10

The easiest seeds to sow in winter

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(Review by Prudence Wade)

2. Confessions by Catherine Airey is published in hardback by Viking, priced £16.99 (ebook £8.99). Available January 23

Tangled, like any confession ends up being, Catherine Airey’s richly layered, highly detailed debut is devastating, yet gripping. It starts with 9/11 and teenager Cora Brady hanging up posters of her missing father around the reeling city, but hinges on two sisters, Máire and Róisín, separated by an ocean, as well as an inability to really talk to each other. Máire abandons Róisín in Burtonport, Donegal, for an artist’s life in America, and from there, every decision she makes sends ripples, good and bad, slicing through the book. Do not expect any laughs, but this dread-heavy story is beautifully constructed and thrums with intrigue across three generations of women. As with any novel told from multiple perspectives, there are times when you wish you could get back to a certain voice (Cora’s father’s haunting letters), and some you’d rather skate through quickly (Máire, floundering painfully in New York). But not one of the voices leaves you unscathed.

8/10

(Review by Ella Walker)

3. Black Tag by Simon Mayo is published in hardback by Bantam, priced £16.99 (ebook £8.99). Available January 30

Broadcaster Simon Mayo’s latest thriller is set in the art world, where firefighters have a list of artworks to prioritise in saving from the flames in the event of a fire. Only it’s discovered later it’s the wrong list. A fashionable gallery in Coal Drops Yard near Kings Cross, London, owned by the secretive Nash family, is set ablaze by an arsonist as a demo goes on outside. Then a body is found in the ashes. Someone who shouldn’t have been there. Journalist Famie Madden gets drawn in to the puzzle via her daughter. Short chapters, plenty of twists, the odd conspiracy theory to ramp up the pace. Insider glimpses into the media and the art world add fascination too. It can be read as a standalone but readers of his previous Famie Madden thriller Knife Edge will want to see what happened next.

8/10

(Review by Bridie Pritchard)

Non-fiction

4. Brooke Shields Is Not Allowed To Get Old by Brooke Shields is published in hardback by Piatkus, priced £25 (ebook £12.99). Available now

When you think of actor Brooke Shields, perhaps your mind goes to those famous Calvin Klein ads, or her 1980 role in Blue Lagoon. But time has passed, and Shields is 59 now – even if the public consciousness still thinks of her as someone in her 20s, she’s more comfortable in her skin than ever. That’s clear in her latest book, wittily titled Brooke Shields Is Not Allowed To Get Old, where she mixes personal stories (such as her experience with becoming an empty nester, or some rather shocking anecdotes involving a lack of information she was provided around her healthcare) with wider stats and facts about what it’s like to be a woman in mid-life. Shields is funny and upfront – while she might not be sharing much new information about ageing as a woman, her signature charm combined with some thorough research makes this well worth a read.

8/10

(Review by Prudence Wade)

Children’s book of the week

5. The Hedgehog’s Dilemma by Toon Tellegen, translated by David Colmer, illustrated by Annemarie van Haeringen, is published in hardback by Pushkin Press, priced £9.99 (ebook £5.99). Available now

The first of Dutch writer Toon Tellegen’s series of animal stories for adults, The Hedgehog’s Dilemma is, on the surface, a gentle and easy book to read with simple illustrations and chapters of only two or three pages. Though short, however, each chapter deserves a slow and thoughtful reading. Set almost entirely inside a hedgehog’s little house – and more often than not a house in his imagination – its litany of hypothetical, socially disastrous visits from various animals are funny and evocative, and will surely strike a chord with any social overthinker. The quiet moments of self-reflection tucked among them are a poignant and sometimes heartbreaking depiction of loneliness. If ever there was a book to take into a warm and soft corner and curl up with, this is it – and once you’re finished, if you’re feeling bold enough, you’ll want to invite a friend to do the same.

9/10

(Review by Dorothy Smith)

BOOK CHARTS FOR THE WEEK ENDING JANUARY 11

HARDBACK (FICTION)

1. I Haven’t Been Entirely Honest with You by Miranda Hart

2. Pinch of Nom All in One, One-pan Slimming Meals by Kay Allinson and Kate Allinson

3. The Food For Life Cookbook: 100 recipes created with ZOE by Tim Spector

4. The Book of Gifts, by Lucy Claire Dunbar

5. Want:Sexual Fantasies by Anonymous, by Gillian Anderson

6. A Pawtobiography: My adventures on Gone Fishing by Ted the Dog

7. Open When…:A Companion for Life’s Twists and Turns, by Julie Smith

8. Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton

9. Bored of Lunch Six Ingredient Slow Cooker:All new easy calorie-counted, by Nathan Anthony

10. Private Eye Annual 2024, by Ian Hislop

(Compiled by Waterstones)

HARDBACK (NON-FICTION)

1. We Solve Murders, by Richard Osman

2. Quicksilver, by Callie Hart

3. In Too Deep:Jack Reacher, by Lee Child and Andrw Child

4. Intermezzo, by Sally Rooney

5. Killing Time, by Alan Bennett

6. The Hotel Avocado, by Bob Mortimer

7. Precipice, by Robert Harris

8. There are Rivers in the Sky, by Elif Shafak

9. Rewitched, by Lucy Jane Wood

10. You Are Here, by David Nicholls

(Compiled by Waterstones)

AUDIOBOOKS (FICTION AND NON-FICTION)

1. The House of My Mother, by Franke Shari

2. Atomic Habits, by James Clear

3. We Solve Murders, by Richard Osman

4. Make Change That Lasts, by Dr Rangan Chatterjee

5. I Haven’t Been Entirely Honest with You, by Miranda Hart

6. The Hotel Avocado, by Bob Mortimer

7. The Satsuma Complex, by Bob Mortimer

8. The Thursday Murder Club, by Richard Osman

9. Butter, by Asako Yuzuki

10. Unruly, by David Mitchell

(Compiled by Audible)