Perfect Match by Jodie Picoult

AZ: "Assistant DA Nina Frost prosecutes child molesters, and in the course of her everyday work she endures the frustration of seeing too many criminals slip through the system and walk free. So when she realises that her son Nathaniel has been sexually abused and is so traumatised that he has stopped speaking she takes justice into her own hands. Nina Frost may have killed the man who hurt her son, but has she destroyed her family in the process? And whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty?"

A book that kept me turning the pages until the end, about a woman who kills the man she believes has raped her 5 year old son. It's a question of is it most courageous to inflict punishment on the perp or to allow the law to take its course even if the law is flawed and criminal proceedings will tramatise your beloved child still further. And what if you do go ahead and you are wrong. I don't think I could turn the other cheek. Picoult is brilliant at never allowing you to rest in a choice, always moving a seemingly black or white situation to shades of grey.

The Butterfly Tattoo by Philip Pullman

AZ: "Chris falls in love with Jenny the moment he sets eyes on her at an Oxford ball. She's beautiful but secretive and he can't help but want to be with her. But fate is cruel and, as their relationship blossoms, tragedy and violence wait in the wings. Chris's boss has a shady past that won't stay hidden. And his ruthless enemies will use two innocent teenagers to exact their revenge on him ..."

Cracking opening line, very Dick Francis: 'Chris Marshall met the girl he was going to kill on a warm night in early June, when one of the colleges in Oxford was holding its summer ball". Generally a much better coming of age book than The Broken Bridge, although I really disliked the lack of resolution. However, I understand this would be attractive to teenage readers.

The Broken Bridge by Philip Pullman

AZ: "Sixteen-year-old Ginny's life is secure. Her mother is dead, but she's inherited her outstanding artistic talent, and she loves her life with her father in a seaside village in Wales. But the day a social worker arrives and old files are re-opened, Ginny's world cracks apart. Everything her father has told her about her family is a lie. And Ginny must uncover the hidden secrets of the past on a journey that will ultimately lead her to the mother she's never known..."

A little thin, if this is his writing for teenagers I prefer the Dark Materials trilogy. I loved the inclusion of the loa Haitian gods and the slightly supernatural element but I found the lead character Ginny annoying at times and her slow walking towards self-awareness a little predictable. Interestingly, unlike Faulks, Pullman was unable here to make me interested in a character I did not like.

Pompeii by Robert Harris

AZ: "A sweltering week in late August. Where better to enjoy the last days of summer than on the beautiful Bay of Naples? But even as Rome's richest citizens relax in their villas around Pompeii and Herculaneum, there are ominous warnings that something is going wrong. Wells and springs are failing, a man has disappeared, and now the greatest aqueduct in the world - the mighty Aqua Augusta - has suddenly ceased to flow...Through the eyes of four characters - a young engineer, an adolescent girl, a corrupt millionaire and an elderly scientist - Robert Harris brilliantly recreates a luxurious world on the brink of destruction"

Was unsure how the days leading up to the reruption of Vesuvius in Roman times would make for a novel but Harris' sideways approach via the volcanic damage to an aqueduct, the tensions in the life of the aquarian Marcus Attilius sent to fix the aqueduct is set against the countdown to the eruption and the knowledge of what happened to the people of Pompeii and Herculaneum. A quick read but very interesting. Not the finess of Faulks but a good engaging story which has me caring about the main and periperal characters.

Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks

AZ: "Set before and during the great war, "Birdsong" captures the drama of that era on both a national and a personal scale. It is the story of Stephen, a young Englishman, who arrives in Amiens in 1910. His life goes through a series of traumatic experiences, from the clandestine love affair that tears apart the family with whom he lives, to the unprecedented experiences of the war itself."

Often heard people say this was brilliant but never attempted it because I'd already read one book on the effects of World War I on the minds of people (2 actually, Pat Barker's Regeneration which I either didn't get or found overrated, and Rebecca West's The Return of the Soldier which I found too good to want to read anything else on the subject) but then I read Engelby via the book group and was captivated by Faulks and decided to begin with the French trilogy of which Birdsong is the first novel. Plus, reverse snobbery I guess.

Birdsong is brilliant, I wanted so much to know more, hear more about the characters and yet opening as it does in 1910 knowing the Great War is only 4 years away and will come down like the wolf on the town of Amiens gives us a kind of narratorial omniscience and curiosity about characters so immersed in their lives and the politics of the fabric industry, unknowing unlike Damocles that the sword is about to fall on their head.

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

AZ: "In this nightmare vision of a not-too-distant future, fifteen-year-old Alex and his three friends rob, rape, torture and murder - for fun. Alex is jailed for his vicious crimes and the State undertakes to reform him - but how and at what cost?"

In terms of plot ACO is quite thin, the lead character is a sociopath who gets his kicks from violence, goes to prison, is put into a rebab programme which makes him feel sick at the thought of violence. This programme includes music, he tries to commit suicide and ends up cured from his programming, but at the end of the book grows up and out of his taste for violence. The interest is in the language, largely in the nadsat which young people speak which is never explained and gives the text a vivacity It was touching but I believe Burgess when he says it's not his best work.

From Potter's Field by Patricia Cornwell

"Christmas had never been a particularly good time for Dr Kay Scarpetta. Although a holiday for most, it always seem to heighten the alienation felt by society's violent fringe; and that usually means more work for Scarpetta, Virginia's Chief Medical ExaminerI. The body was naked, female and found propped against a fountain in a bleak area of New York's Central Park. Her apparent manner of death points to a modus operandi that is chillingly familiar: the gunshot wound to the head, the sections of skin excised from the body, the displayed corpse - all suggest that Temple Brooks Gault, Scarpetta's nemesis, is back at work. Calling on all her reserves of courage and skill, and the able assistance of colleagues Marino and Wesley, Scarpetta must track this most dangerous of killers in pursuit of survival as well as justice - heading inexorably to an electrifying climax amid the dark, menacing labyrinths of the New York subway."