What to read in January

The Last Days of Kira Mullan - Nicci French

RRP £18.99 (Simon & Schuster)

A move to a new flat was to be a fresh start for Nancy North and her partner. But she’s fragile. She had a breakdown, and when the death of their neighbour Kira is written off as suicide, no one will listen to Nancy’s concerns. After all, what does she know? She met Kira only briefly, once.

Gripping stuff from this husband-and-wife team. You wonder what they talk about over their cornflakes.

A Voice in the Night - Simon Mason

RRP £16.99 (Quercus)

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When an elderly professor goes missing one night and his body is discovered, soaking wet and in pyjamas, far from home, it’s a fourth case for Thames Valley’s DIs Wilkins and Wilkins – Ray the handsome, cultured, Oxford-educated Nigerian Londoner, and Ryan, the puffa-jacketed, gobby chav, product of a trailer park and the university of life.

A terrific, character-driven read that makes you guess – and guess again.

Books covers for The Last Days of Kira Mullan and The Voice in the Night — Image credit: Simon & Schuster/Quercus

The Players - Minette Walters

RRP £20 (Allen & Unwin)

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It is 1685 and the people of Dorset await the arrival of James II’s henchman, George (‘Hanging Judge’) Jeffreys, and the ‘Bloody Assizes’, in the wake of the failed Monmouth rebellion. Septuagenarian Lady Jane Harrier and her son, Elias, Duke of Granville (a kind of Scarlet Pimpernel figure) must use all their wiles to save thousands from a hideous execution.

A hair-raising sequel to The Swift and the Harrier.

City of Silk - Glennis Virgo

RRP £22 (Allison & Busby)

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Bologna, 1575. Orphan Elena Morandi learned the tailor’s art at her father’s knee, but she can only hope to skivvy for the men in a Bolognese workshop, until a powerful brute from her past swaggers back into her life, and she determines to bring him to book.

An elegant, evocative novel, as beautifully wrought as a sampler, it very justly won the inaugural Jenny Brown Associates Debut Writers Over 50 Award.

Book covers for The Players and City of Silk — Image credit: Allen & Unwin/Allison & Busby

Our pick

Myself & Other Animals - Gerald Durrell

RRP £20 (Viking)

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Whether writing of the resplendent rainbow backside of a mandrill, playing matchmaker to gorillas, or opening a tortoise village, Gerald Durrell never fails to delight.

He would have been 100 on 7 January, and to mark his centenary, his widow, Lee, has compiled a memoir of his extraordinary life, from his writings published and unpublished, with a foreword from HRH Princess Anne.

It’s a joy, but also a posthumous warning against species loss. So, 30 years after his death, Durrell leaves us with a New Year’s resolution to ‘be grateful for having been born into such a magical world’, and to take care of it.