Sleepless
Charlie Huston

Parker T Haas is a straight-arrow LAPD cop whose sense of right and wrong has made him a lone wolf on the force.  But when a plague of sleeplessness attacked Los Angeles and the world beyond, his philosophical certainties are tested to destruction.  Sent undercover to pose as a dealer, Haas is on the trail of a black market drug that is the one thing providing relief to the sleepless.  But as Haas negotiates the increasingly chaotic and dangerous world of a city slowly going mad, he crosses the path of an equally fanatical amoral hired killer.  He must decide not only where the moral centre is located in this frightening new landscape, but also how he is going to save his wife, herself a victim of the disease, and their newborn baby.  Brilliant.

The Surrendered
Chang-Rae Lee

June Han has forged a life thousands of miles from her birthplace.  She has built a business in New York, survived a husband, borne a child.  But her past holds more secrets than she has ever been able to tell, and thirty years after her escape from war-ravaged Korea, the time has come for her to confront them.  Hector Brennan, fighter, drinker and ‘failure grand and total’, is the man who in the aftermath of the Korean war saved June’s life.  And between June and Hector lies the story of the beautiful, damaged missionary wife, Sylvie Tanner, whose elusive love they both once sought.  June and Hector go in search of their past, bound together by a legacy of shocking acts of violence and love.

Trespass
Rose Tremain

Set among the hills and gorges of the Cevennes, the dark and beautiful heartland of southern France, this novel is about disputed territory, sibling love and devastating revenge.  In a silent valley stands an isolated stone farmhouse, the Mas Lunel.  Its owner is an alcoholic so haunted by his violent past that he’s become incapable of all meaningful action, letting his hunting dogs starve and his land go to ruin.  Meanwhile, his sister, alone in her modern bungalow within sight of the Mas Lunel, dreams of exacting retribution for the unspoken betrayals that have blighted her life.  Into this closed world comes Anthony Verey, a wealthy but disillusioned antiques dealer from London.  Now in his sixties, Anthony hopes to remake his life in France and he begins looking at properties in the region.  From the moment he arrives at the Mas Lunel, a frightening and unstoppable series of consequences is set in motion.

All That Follows
Jim Crace

Lennie Lessing is a jazzman taking a break.  His glory days seem to be behind him, his body is letting him down, and rather than continue to take on the world, he relives old gigs and feeds his media addiction during solitary days at home.  Increasingly estranged from his busy wife who is herself mourning the sudden absence of her only daughter, Leonard has found his own groove: suburban and safe from surprises.  Then comes the news bulletin that threatens to change everything.  A gunman seizes hostages a short drive from Leonard’s house.  His face leaps out of the evening news, and out of Leonard’s own past.  Leonard has a choice to make.  Set in England 2024 and George Bush’s Texas, 2006.

The Hopeless Life of Charlie Summers
Paul Torday

Hector Chetwode-Talbot, Eck to his friends, has left the army after a spot of bother in Afghanistan.  At a loss as to what to do next, he is approached by a former schoolfriend  Bilbo Mountwilliam.  Bilbo runs an investment fund and with business booming, he persuades Eck to join the company as a ‘greeter’.  All Eck has to do is supply his rich contacts with entertainment and large gin and tonics and let the fund managers do the rest.  It is on a golfing trip to France with his friend Henry Newark that Eck first meets Charlie Summers, a fly-by-night entrepreneur who is hiding out in France after a misunderstanding with Her Majesty’s Customs and Revenue.  Charlie’s latest scheme is to import Japanese dog food into the UK - another sure fire success until it becomes clear the food has unsavoury side effects.  In the meantime, Eck’s boss has ambitious - and risky- plans for his new protege.

Point Omega
Don DeLillo

In the middle of a desert somewhere south of nowhere, to a forlorn house made of metal and clapboard, a secret war advisor has gone in search of space and time.  Richard Elster, 73, was a scholar - an outsider- when he was called to a meeting with government war planners.  They asked Elster to conceptualise their efforts - to form an intellectual framework for their troop deployments, counterinsurgency, orders for rendition.  For two years he read their classified documents and attnended secret meetings.  He was to map the reality these men were trying to create.  At the end of his service Elster retreats to the desert where he is joined by a young filmmaker intent on documenting his experience.   The two men sit on the deck, drinking and talking.  Weeks go by.  And then Elster’s daughter visits and dramatically alters the dynamic of the story.