Anyone read anything good recently?

[charliegreensmum]

Am looking for something good/interesting to read. Recently read time traveller's wife, Harry Potter, Jodi Picoult and the Ivy Chronicles, would like some more suggestions please!

TIA

We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver who is actually a woman.

It was really good and an interesting topic - I can recommend it!

Was going to say Time Travellers Wife, which I thought was fab.
Am currently reading "Home" by Julie Myerson (?) which is quite interesting but doesn't exactly lure you to bed!!

Yes, have read that too, found it a bit heavy going and suspected the twist in the tale from about half way through, but a good read nonetheless.

CGMum

Don't know what you like but Sleepy Head by Mark Billingham is good - a bit dark but I enjoyed it.

Amazon.co.uk Review
The art of inducing fear in a reader via the printed page is a speciality of only a few skilled craftsmen. Mark Billingham is such an author, and Sleepy Head is such a book. The blurb on the jacket warns that we are in for a disturbing experience and that is precisely what we get: "He doesn't want you alive. He doesn't want you dead. He wants you somewhere in between".

The killer who Billingham's protagonist Tom Thorne is up against is a particularly creepy specimen: he has savagely killed three victims but his fourth, although alive, is perhaps not so fortunate. She has undergone a deliberately induced stroke and although all her senses are intact, she is totally unable to move or communicate. This hideous condition, called Locked-in Syndrome is, however, quite possibly the killer's first miscalculation ... or is it? Soon the dogged Thorne (given to distrusting his own abilities) is playing a cat-and-mouse game with a psychopathic killer. And the brilliant and sadistic killer is just as interested in leading Thorne a merry dance as he is in fulfilling his degraded obsessions.

All characterisations here are spot-on, even the killer (although one wonders just how many more hyper-intelligent psychopaths readers will be prepared to take) while the British setting is handled with intelligence, the horrific set pieces with real élan:

Will try to read almost anything but since charlie has arrived brain is somewhat mushy so am looking for thrillers and stories that aren't too 'literary' if that makes sense. For instance found 'In the Line of Beauty' and 'Cloud Atlas' v hard work recently, but really enjoyed Val McDermid's Wire in the Blood series, which managed to make a v premature ceasarean bearable! Would particularly like recommendations of books likely to be in the library due to a shortage of funds at the moment.

well Sleepyhead is a good thriller and I know exactly what you mean - its not too literary!

Kevin was a bit hard going at times I concede.

Recently read 'The Lovely Bones' by Alice Sebold its brilliant - couldn't put it down!

I've been reading Robin Hobb - Assassins Trilogy, Liveships and Fools Trilogies... They are more fantasy though, so it depends if you like that kind of thing.

I enjoyed Sleepyhead too.

I read a couple of books on my hols:

A Mother's Daughter
Damaged Done

Not sure of author of either. They are true stories about imprisonment abroad. They are quite harrowing in parts but are a very interesting incite into how the prison system works in different countries. They are both true stories.

I'm half way through Donna Tartt's new book A Little Friend which is brilliant (and her earlier one The Secret History is good aswell).

If you like detective stories, I'd recommend the Henning Mankell books.

An easy read I've just finished is Harlan Coben's The Final Detail.