The Reading Room

In ROOM 18, our regular contributor Gill Hart previewed some of the books due for publication in early 2012. Here’s the full list of her top 5 picks...

The Woman Who Went To Bed For A Year

by Sue Townsend

Townsend is one of Britain’s favourite comic novelists, perhaps best known for the hugely popular Adrian Mole books, which this year celebrate the 30^th anniversary of Adrian’s first appearance in The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4. In The Woman Who Went To Bed For A Year, she deconstructs modern family life in a funny and touching novel about what happens when someone refuses to be the person everyone expects them to be. It tells the story of Eva who, on the day her children finally leave home, gets into bed and stays there. And from this odd but comforting place she begins to see both the world and herself very, very differently.

Publication date: 1^st March 2012 | Price: £18.99

The Gallows Curse

by Karen Maitland

Local novelist Karen Maitland visited The Reading Room back in ROOM 12. Her latest book, The Gallows Curse, is set in a fear-ravaged and spiritually desolate 13^th Century England populated by desperate priests, scheming herbalists, torturous conspirators and a plot of treason against the King. First published in 2011, the paperback version is published in March, offering an opportunity for new readers to discover this increasingly popular historical novelist.

Publication date: 15^th March 2012 | Price: £7.99

Blue Remembered Earth

by Alastair Reynolds

In the first volume of his new trilogy, Sci-Fi author Alastair Reynolds traces the Akinya family across more than 10,000 years of future history. This first volume begins 150 years from now in a world where Africa is the dominant power and where crime, war, disease and poverty have been banished to history. Geoffrey Akinya wants nothing more than to be left alone to continue his studies of the elephants of the Amboseli Basin – but his family, the vast Akinya business empire, has other plans for him...

Publication date: 19^th January 2012 | Price: £18.99

A Room Full Of Bones

by Elly Griffiths

The fourth novel in the Ruth Galloway crime series set in atmospheric Norfolk. It is Halloween night and the local museum in Kings Lynn is preparing for an unusual event – the opening of a coffin containing the bones of a medieval bishop. But when Dr Ruth Galloway arrives to supervise, she finds the museum’s curator lying dead beside the coffin. Soon the museum’s wealthy owner lies dead too, and when threatening letters come to light, events take an even more sinister turn.

Publication date: 5^th January 2012 | Price: £16.99

Tom-All-Alone's

by Lynn Shepherd

2012 is the bi-centenary of Charles Dickens' birth and this Victorian murder-mystery from the author of Murder at Mansfield Park engages with Dickens' world, being set in the grimy world of Dickens' Bleak House. In Lincoln’s Inn Fields the affairs of the mighty Dedlock family are not the only concern on the mind of formidable lawyer Edward Tulkinghorn. He has other clients’ interests to safeguard, and other deadly secrets to hide... Described as “Dickens but darker”, you don’t need to know Bleak House to enjoy this book, but Dickens fans will find it a creative and fascinating response to the events and themes of Dickens’ masterpiece.

Publication date: 2^nd February 2012 | Price: £12.99