Take your pick from the best new reads of the week...
THE OUTSIDER
Stephen King
This chilling novel starts as a police procedural before morphing into the sort of supernatural thriller King is best known for.
When Detective Ralph Anderson sets out to collar baseball coach Terry Maitland, he is so incensed by his despicable crime – the rape and murder of a young boy – that he arrests him in front of a crowd of shocked spectators. Maitland’s DNA is all over the victim and eye witnesses saw him on the day wearing a blood-soaked shirt. Yet he has a cast-iron alibi. How could one man be in two places at once?
Until the murder, the town of Flint appeared to be perfectly normal, but there is violence simmering below the surface of this tightly plotted yarn.
By Mernie Gilmore
Hodder & Stoughton, £7.99
ALWAYS LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE OF LIFE
Eric Idle
This “sortabiography” of Monty Python star Idle takes us from boarding school misery to Cambridge, comedy and stardom. He seems more comfortable name-dropping friends like George Harrison, Bowie and Robin Williams than his fellow Pythons. But it’s bearable because Idle seems amazed at his success.
By Jake Kerridge
W&N, £8.99
NORMAL PEOPLE
Sally Rooney
This best-selling story of two teen lovers was last year’s Waterstones Book of the Year and won the Costa Novel Award.
Marianne and Connell live in rural Ireland – her family are well off, his are poor. He’s cool and popular, she’s clever, odd and socially awkward, yet they hit it off outside school.
A savvy exploration of a complex relationship.
By Eithne Farry
Faber & Faber, £8.99
EAST OF CROYDON
Sue Perkins
Sue says she’d “never travelled further East than Torremolinos” when she was asked to make a BBC documentary about the Mekong river. Here she documents her journeys from India to Indonesia, far out of her comfort zone. Alongside laugh-out-loud travel stories, the book also provides a moving account of her coming to terms with her father’s death.
By Caroline Sanderson
Penguin, £8.99
LOVE IS BLIND
William Boyd
In 1894, Scottish piano tuner Brodie Moncur lands a job in Paris with John Kilbarron, a brilliant, if often drunk, Irish pianist. But he falls in love with Kilbarron’s girlfriend, beautiful Russian singer Lika, and, in pursuit of his love, ends up travelling the world, contracting TB, fighting a duel and getting revenge on his tyrannical father. Curiously hollow but compelling and witty.
By Jake Kerridge
Viking, £8.99
