I listen to a lot of audiobooks, mainly crime, and this was the year I discovered Harlan Coben. I only knew him previously as the source material for high-quality Netflix thrillers, so I knew he’d be good at plot.
Still, I wasn’t prepared for the quality of his prose and the amazing heart with which he creates an endless series of compelling characters. I’ve loved every one I’ve listened to this year, but his latest, I Will Find You, about a father wrongly jailed for the murder of his child, is utterly spell-binding.
The chill prison realism and haunting desolation on the part of the central character gradually turn to hope and determination, with a thrilling and totally believable dénouement. Superb.
From the # 1 author and creator of the hit Netflix drama Stay Close, a page-turning thriller that will keep you guessing until the very last page. The new Harlan Coben blockbuster has arrived. ______________
David and Cheryl Burroughs are living the dream - married, a beautiful house in the suburbs, a three year old son named Matthew - when tragedy strikes one night in the worst possible way.
David awakes to find himself covered in blood, but not his own - his son's. And while he knows he did not murder his son, the overwhelming evidence against him puts…
As anyone who has read my satires will know, I’m hugely concerned by the rise of extreme gender ideology with its impact on vulnerable children.
Hannah Barnes’ calm, readable, but ultimately devastating book chronicles the medical scandal that led to the closure of the UK’s only child gender clinic. She based the book on more than 100 hours of interviews with clinicians and former patients, revealing that an institution set up to provide talking therapies now almost entirely spurned those therapies in a rush to medicalise confused children.
In the future, when people want to know how this madness was allowed to flourish, Time to Thinkwill provide all the answers.
LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION
SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL WRITING
'This is what journalism is for' - Observer
Time to Think goes behind the headlines to reveal the truth about the NHS's flagship gender service for children.
The Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS), based at the Tavistock and Portman Trust in North London, was set up initially to provide - for the most part - talking therapies to young people who were questioning their gender identity. But in the last decade GIDS has referred more than a thousand children, some as young as nine…
James Lees-Milne began writing his diaries while invalided out of the Second World War, acquiring grand country houses for the fledgling National Trust and recording his dealings with their aristocratic owners as they shivered in vast piles that they could no longer afford to staff or heat.
He started to publish edited versions in the mid-1970s, and they were abridged and assembled into their present form by Michael Bloch in 2006. A friend has been pressing me to read them for ages – and I’m so grateful he didn’t give up.
Gloriously gossipy about Lees-Milne’s own sexually adventurous, upper-crust literary milieu, the entries are crafted with a conciseness and acuity of observation that justifies the book’s reputation as a minor masterpiece.
James Lees-Milne (1908-97) made his name as the country house expert of the National Trust and for being a versatile author. But he is now best known for the remarkable diary he kept for most of his adult life, which has been compared with that of Samuel Pepys and hailed as 'a treasure of contemporary English literature'.
The first of three, this volume covers its first dozen years, beginning with his return to work for the National Trust during the Second World War, and ending with his tempestuous marriage to the exotic Alvilde Chaplin.
When Tara Farrier returns to the UK after a long spell as an aid worker in war-torn Yemen, she’s hoping for a well-deserved rest. But a cultural battleground has emerged while she’s been away, and she’s unprepared for the sensitivities of her new colleagues at an international think tank.
Dinosaurs are being written out of history to suit a fashionable political agenda and people are getting cancelled just for mentioning them – as Tara discovers to her cost. Faster than she can say ‘Tyrannosaurus Rex’, she’s at the centre of a gruelling legal drama. Inspired by the real-life Maya Forstater trial, In the Beginning is a stiletto-sharp satire on modern crank beliefs and herd behaviour.
