The Room
Emma Donoghue

Jack is five and excited about his birthday.  He lives with his Ma in Room, which has a locked door and a skylight, and measures eleven feet by eleven feet.  He loves watching TV, and the cartoon characters he calls friends, but he knows that nothing he sees on screen is truly real - only him, Ma and the things in Room.  Until one day, Ma admits there’s a world outside.  Told in Jack’s voice, Room is the story of a mother and son whose love lets them survive the impossible.  It’s brilliant!

Faithful Place
Tana French

The course of Frank Mackey’s life is set by one defining moment when he was nineteen.  The moment his girlfriend, Rosie Daly, failed to turn up for their rendezvous in Faithful Place and failed to run away with him to London as they had planned.  Frank never heard from, or of, her again.  Twenty years on, Frank is still in Dublin, working as an undercover cop.  He’s cut all ties with his dysfunctional family until his sister calls to say that Rosie’s suitcase has been found.  This book had me absolutely glued - I couldn’t leave it alone.

Cruiser
Mike Carlton

Of all the Australians who fought in WWII, none saw more action nor endured so much of its hardship and horror as the crew of the cruiser HMAS Perth.  Most were young - many were still teenagers - from cities and towns across the nation.  In three tumultuous years, they battled the forces of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, the Vichy French, and finally, the Imperial Japanese Navy. A very accessible history of an important part of the Australian story

The Glass Rainbow
James Lee Burke

When Dave Robicheaux gets the call saying his ex-partner Clete Purcel is in jail for felony assault and resisting arrest, bailing him out is instinctive.  After all, Clete is the man who saved Robicheaux’s life by carrying him down a fire escape with two bullets in his back.  But Clete’s latest escapade isn’t just worrying because it shows his demons are gaining the upper hand; it also brings some of those demons into Robicheaux’s life, in the most personal way possible.

Tigerlily’s Orchids
Ruth Rendell

When Stuart Font decids to throw a  house-warming party in his new flat, he invites all the people in his building.  After some deliberation, he even includes the unpleasant caretaker and his wife.  There are a few other genuine friends on the list, but he definitely does not want to extend the invitation to his girlfriend as that might involve asking her husband.  The party will be one  that everyone remembers.

The Woodcutter
Reginald Hill

Wolf Hadda’s life has been a fairytale.  From humble origins as a Cumbrian woodcutter’s son, he has risen to become a hugely successful entrepreneur, happily married to the girl of his dreams.  A knock on the door early one morning ends it all.  Universally reviled, thrown into prison while protesting his innocence, abandoned by friends and family, Wolf retreats into silence.  Seven years later, prison psychiatrist Alva Ozigbo makes the breakthrough.  Wolf begins to talk and under her guidance gets parole, returning to his rundown family home in rural Cumbria.  But there is a mysterious period in Wolf’s youth when he disappeared from home and was known to his employers as the Woodcutter.  And now the Woodcutter is back, looking for the truth, and with the truth, revenge.