Are you into intelligent, gratifying, engaging, original, insightful, intriguing, tenacious, candid, compelling, heartwarming and compassionate holiday reads? We’ve rounded up 10 great recently-published books that are a must for your beach bag these holidays. 

 

It is 1867, Canada and as winter tightens its grip on the isolated settlement of Dove River, a man is brutally murdered and a 17-year-old boy disappears. In this wake of violence, people are drawn to the township, but do they want to solve the crime or exploit it? One by one the assembled searchers set out across a desolate landscape, home only to wild animals, madmen and fugitives, variously seeking a murderer, a son, two sisters missing for 17 years, a Native American culture, and a fortune in stolen furs before the snows settle and cover the tracks of the past for good. Winner of three major awards, this book is described as ‘an imaginative tour de force’.

 

When ten-year-old Enaiatollah Akbari’s small village in Afghanistan falls prey to Taliban rule in early 2000, his mother shepherds the boy across the border into Pakistan but has to leave him there all alone to fend for himself. Thus begins Enaiat’s remarkable and often punishing five-year ordeal, which takes him through Iran, Turkey and Greece before he seeks political asylum in Italy at the age of fifteen. Along the way, Enaiat endures the crippling physical and emotional agony of dangerous border crossings, trekking across bitterly cold mountain pathways for days on end or being stuffed into the false bottom of a truck. Told with humour and humanity, In the Sea there are Crocodiles brilliantly captures Enaiat’s moving and engaging voice and lends urgency to an epic story of hope and survival.

 

In April 1941, without declaration or warning, the German bombs started falling over a Balkan city. A tiger escapes from the local zoo, padding through the ruined streets to a ridge above the village of Galina. His visits hold the villagers in a terrified thrall. But for one boy, the tiger is magical – Shere Khan awoken from the pages of The Jungle Book. Natalia is the granddaughter of that boy. Now a doctor, she is visiting orphanages after another war has devastated the Balkans. In her search to find out about her grandfather, she stumbles upon a clue that will lead her to a tattered copy of The Jungle Book, and to the extraordinary story of the tiger’s wife.

 

Between these covers you have the best of Ben Trovato’s popular satirical columns, letters and assorted rants from the Sunday Times since 2008. After thousands of hours of close reading and heated debate, the publishers compiled the funniest and cleverest material for maximum levels of enjoyment and entertainment. This is Ben’s tenth book, but it would not be an overstatement to say that herein lies some of the most insightful and unbalanced social commentary currently available in print. Trovato is a national treasure for his relentless pursuit of truth, justice, cold beer and women. The book includes his columns, hilarious fictional ‘job applications’, open letters and his off-the-wall self-made news.

 

Le Cirque des Rêves delights all who wander its circular paths and warm themselves at its bonfire. The Circus of Dreams is no conventional spectacle. Some tents contain clouds, some ice. The circus seems almost to cast a spell over its aficionados. At the heart of the story is the tangled relationship between two young magicians, Celia, the enchanter's daughter, and Marco, the sorcerer's apprentice. At the behest of their shadowy masters, they find themselves locked in a deadly contest. The Night Circus is a captivating novel that will make the real world seem fantastical and a fantasy world real.

 

Coco Chanel created the look of the modern woman and was the high priestess of couture. For more than half a century, Chanel’s life from 1941 to 1954 has been shrouded in vagueness and rumour, mystery and myth. Now Hal Vaughan, in this explosive narrative fully pieces together the hidden years of Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel’s life, from the Nazi occupation of Paris to the aftermath of World War II. Vaughan reveals the truth of Chanel’s collaboration with Hitler’s high-ranking officials in occupied Paris. He writes in detail of her affair with Baron Hans Günther von Dincklage and the book pieces together how Coco Chanel became a German intelligence operative and why she was enlisted in a number of spy missions.

 

Far more than a superb memoir about the highest levels of professional tennis, Open is the engrossing story of a remarkable life. Agassi had his life mapped out for him before he left the crib. Groomed to be a tennis champion by his demanding father, by the age of 22 Agassi had won the first of his eight grand slams and achieved wealth and celebrity. But as he reveals here, off the court he was often unhappy and confused, unfulfilled by his achievements in a sport he had come to resent. Agassi writes candidly about his success and his uncomfortable relationship with fame, his marriage to Brooke Shields, and, described in haunting detail, the highs and lows of his career.

 

Life on the Johannesburg mines in 1958 is tough. Scorched by searing heat and choked by dust, it's a place of downtrodden women and hard-drinking men whose prejudices seem out of date. Twelve-year-old Chris and Tommy are kindled by the sounds of Elvis, Chuck Berry and the kwela rhythms of the black ghettos, and the young jive cats look to prove their grit on the township dance floors and in the sweat-soaked ring of the boxing club. But when Tommy's beloved sister Cecilia disappears, and their cold-blooded father falls under suspicion, the two friends find that they need loyalty and courage to face their future. Frank, witty and heartbreakingly poignant, this is a compelling story about the endurance of friendship.

 

It’s June 1965 when Wrecker enters the world. The war is raging in Vietnam, San Francisco is tripping toward flower power, and Lisa Fay, a young innocent from a family farm down south, is knocked sideways by life as a single mother. Three years later, she’s alone again. Children aren’t allowed in prison. And Wrecker, scared silent, furious, and hell-bent on breaking every last thing that crosses his path, is shipped off to live with distant relatives in Humboldt County. Wrecker is the story of this nearly broken boy whose presence turns a motley group of isolated eccentrics into a real family. And for Lisa Fay, there’s one thought keeping her alive through fifteen years of hard time. One day she’ll find her son and bring him home.

 

Nicola Fuller and her husband was a glamorous and optimistic couple and East Africa lay before them like a promise. They had everything, including two children. However, life became increasingly difficult and they moved to Rhodesia to work as farm managers. When one of their children died, they returned to England where the author was born before they returned to Rhodesia during the civil war. On a farm in the Zambezi Valley, they had built their ramshackle dining room under the Tree of Forgetfulness, the customary meeting place for villagers determined to resolve disputes. It is here that Nicola finally forgot – but did not forgive – all her enemies, including her daughter. Funny, tragic, terrifying, exotic and utterly unselfconscious, this is a story of survival and madness, love and war, passion and compassion.