Holidays are, apart from commuting or wallowing in the bath, the best time for catching up on reading. You need books for when you’re at your destination, or travelling, or waiting for a delayed flight or train.
You may need something light by way of distraction, or something to show off with, or something demanding because when else do you get a chance for serious reading?
The rule is, never be without a book, because you never know when you’ll find yourself at a loose end – and there’s nothing more tragic than scrolling. At the very least, carry a slim paperback in case of emergencies.
Here are some suggestions for new, or newly reissued, titles that may fit the bill.
'Nonesuch' by Francis Spufford, published by Faber & Faber
Set in London in the Blitz, this is a riotous combination of an office clerk’s wartime adventure, a vivid account of a city under bombardment, a Cruella de Vil-style aristocratic Nazi villainess and a plot on the part of time-travelling “magical fascist lunatics” to assassinate Winston Churchill.
It sounds and is utterly bizarre, and if magic brings you out in boils this isn’t for you, but the author’s sheer brio and telling historical detail carries the reader along.
Buy now, Amazon.co.uk
'The Prisoner' by Sally Carson
Written by a young Englishwoman in Bavaria in 1935 and published in 1936, this novel is about the effect of Hitler’s rise on an ordinary family. Each is affected: one goes to the dark side, another is broken, a friend is destroyed, but the current sweeps them all along. As for the effect on the girl of the family, you must read the brilliant previous volume, Crooked Cross, also set in 1933.
There is nothing like this in modern historical fiction; the sheer conviction of a writer who was there, witnessing these things, is unmistakable. It was a warning for its time, and remains a cracking read.
Buy now £16.55, Amazon.co.uk
'The Correspondent' by Virginia Evans, published by Penguin
One of those books that people beg you to read. If you need further persuasion, it’s the winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction (which isn’t to say it’s just for women). It’s made up of a series of letters from Sibyl, a woman in her seventies who writes three times a week not only to her friends and relations, but also to the famous, including Joan Didion and George Lucas.
They reveal much about the writer, who is by turns crabby and kind. Given the conspiracy on the part of Royal Mail to price letters out of existence, this is a moving reminder of their importance.
Buy now £7.99, Amazon.co.uk
'Villa Coco' by Andrew Sean Greer, published by Sceptre
Perhaps the perfect holiday read. It’s an effervescent account of a hapless American graduate who takes a job as an archivist at an aristocratic Tuscan villa.
Our reviewer observed: “Through the eyes of a provincial young American, we are served a joyous, vibrantly colourful and often hilarious account of the Italian way, filled with trips to Venice and Florence, the most delicious artichokes and anchovies, ‘lizard green’ Fiats and peripheral characters such as ‘the lady who sits in a chair and yells at cars’.” Greer set out to write “ a charm novel” and he has.
Buy now £16.00, Amazon.co.uk
'Hotel Exile' by Jane Rogoyska, published by Allen Lane
Subtitled Paris in the Shadow of War, this is an engrossing account of displaced German emigrés in Paris, mostly Jewish, between the wars; the doomed attempt by some of those exiles to set up an opposition government; the German occupation; and the return of traumatised survivors of the concentration camps.
And it’s all done through the prism of a single institution, the Hotel Lutetia, which went from being Charles de Gaulle’s honeymoon hotel to the base of German intelligence to a centre for survivors. Genius idea.
Buy now £19.40, Amazon.co.uk
'A Glastonbury Romance' by John Cowper Powys, published by Penguin
You want a long, challenging read do you? Have I got the book for you. It’s a new edition of A Glastonbury Romance, described as “perhaps the longest undivided novel in English”, weighing in at more than 1,000 pages. Originally published in 1932, it concerns the fortunes of a family over a year and revolves around a bid by John Geard, the mayor of Glastonbury, to restore the town to its medieval glory as a place of pilgrimage.
It’s a bewilderingly well- peopled story — the word epic is probably in order — and finishes with Glastonbury flooding and becoming the isle of Avalon again. One for a very long stopover.
Buy now £17.00, Amazon.co.uk
'The Land and its People' by David Sedaris, published by Abacus
The essay is perhaps the perfect form for reading when you’re on the move. David Sedaris’s tenth collection is a very easy read and we get the same quirky, deadpan humour as in the previous nine.
The pieces are life-affirming, involving his partner Hugh, his late mother and umpteen encounters with the public. Of a No Kings protest in New Hampshire, he writes that the protesters seem to offer “the worst possible advertisement for the Democratic Party: ‘Join us! We folk-dance!’” Fans of his Radio 4 series, rejoice.
Buy now £16.99, Amazon.co.uk
Read more: 12 best new books that everyone is talking about this summer
