The Red Moth is the fourth book in Sam Eastland's brilliant Inspector Pekkala series. Pekkala is a Finnish soldier who was at one time employed by Tsar Nicholas II as a personal detective. Stalin releases him from a Gulag after nine years when he decides he needs his skills and employs him as his chief investigator. The Red Moth is set in 1941 on the eve of the Battle of Stalingrad. Pekkala is asked to uncover the secret of an apparently ordinary painting of a red moth belonging to a passenger of a crashed German scout plane. As always, Pekkala is ably assisted by his friend and colleague

The story begins in Dublin in 1964, when Tatty is nearly four and the extended family is celebrating the christening of baby Luke. Tatty is sure that the baby has just begun to see properly, ‘Or nearly see anyway. He’s all excited, squinting and blinking, his little tongue sticks in and out. His little finger scrabs the air like he’s pulling away the last bit of veil, and his feet punch the end of his dress’. It is a lovely, evocative image with which to begin the story.

The journalist, correspondent, editor and historian Max Hastings recreates the horror, tragedy, sorrow, stupidity, courage, inhumanity and fanaticism in the final year of WW2 in the Pacific as the Japanese Empire staring defeat in the face fought on against the Allies until the inevitable came in 1945.

He takes the reader into the corridors of power in Tokyo, Washington, London and Moscow as the fate of millions and the post war global order hung in the balance. We encounter Japanese soldiers who threw themselves into suicidal defences at Iwo Jima, Saipan and Okinawa; kamikaze pilots who flew

Ostensibly a walking tour through the East Anglia counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, this novel is much more; it is a profound reflection on identity and human mortality in the face of the ravages of time, or the Eternal Present of the 17th century philosopher, Sir Thomas Browne, whose ghostly presence haunts this work. Each chapter represents a leg on the narrator’s journey and his reflections on his location then unwind in unexpected directions, some personal, some historical, but always mediations on the passage of time and how it undoes the work of man. Thus, from the dreary present of the

This is a lovely book about little readers starting school and beginning to read books by themselves. Natalie and her monster brother Alphonse both love stories and even make up some of their own! But when Natalie discovers that reading is a little trickier (and more boring) than she was expecting, she declares that she does not like books anymore!

This kind of frustration with starting to learn something new is something that we can all empathize with, and the author deftly mixes this sympathy with the enjoyment of sharing stories and creative solutions.

This is the second novel in Walker's very engaging series featuring Bruno Correges, chief of police in a fictional town in the Dordogne. In Dark Vineyard, Bruno has to contend with an arson attack on a barn belonging to an agricultural company experimenting with genetically-modified crops. On top of that, the arrival of an American businessman in the area with a proposal to establish a commercial winery sparks resentment and protests. When two bodies are found, the story becomes very complex and Bruno has to call on all his skill and guile to solve the mounting crime spree. Bruno himself is a

It is hard to believe that this novel, now a cult classic, was almost not published and that it was only the persistent efforts of the writer’s mother, Thelma, that saw it into print. Disheartened at being unable to have the work published, Kennedy Toole took his life and left behind a smeared carbon copy of the original manuscript that his mother discovered following his death. Thelma never gave up on the novel and eventually persuaded Walker Percy, a lecturer at Loyola University in New Orleans, to read it. Initially reluctant he was soon captivated by it and wrote the introduction to it

This is a fiendish murder mystery by celebrated Japanese crime writer Seishi Yokomizo (1902-81), which has only recently been translated into English and published by Pushkin’s Vertigo imprint. The book, set not long after the war features Yokomizo’s eccentric detective Kosuka Kindaichi who appears in seventy-seven of his crime novels, the first of which was published in1946. In this story, Kindaichi has to solve a series of bizarre murders, but first he has to figure out ‘whydunit’ before he can see ‘whodunit’.

After a robbery at the home of a senior civil servant, a criminal discovers a trove of top secret documents which he returns to the British security services. The civil servant who is an anti-communist has been passing them secretly to an official from apartheid South Africa who is in fact a KGB agent. The traitor is turned by veteran intelligence operative John Preston and his superior Sir John Irvine and forced to feed his contact disinformation.

Pale Grey for Guilt, published in 1968, is the ninth novel in the Travis McGee series by John D. MacDonald. McGee is neither a police officer nor a private investigator. Instead, he describes himself as a "salvage consultant" who recovers others' property for a fee of 50%. The plot revolves around McGee's investigation in to the death of his close friend Tush Bannon, who he suspects was murdered to acquire his waterfront property when he refused to sell to developers. Together with his friend, Meyer, a respected economist, McGee sets out to take revenge on his friend's killers. MacDonald