A Planet for the President by Alistair Beaton

Absolutely hilarious, I think this is the best satire I have ever read, AZ: "It is the near future and things are not going well for the President of the United States. He wants Americans to be adored by everyone but half the planet seems to be in a permanent state of insurrection against US power. What's more, there's a growing environmental crisis that even he can't ignore. It's one thing when there are floods in Bangladesh, quite another when almost 2,000 Americans die in flooding in Texas. His advisers warn him he could be remembered as the President who wrecked the planet. The President is persuaded of one simple fact: there are too many people in the world. Only radical action can deal with the problem. His advisors come up with a solution more ruthless than anything ever contemplated before. Appalled, the president refuses to go along with their plan. But it isn't long before he is committed to thinking the unthinkable ..."

The Edge of the Sea by Rachel Carson

I only knew Carson as the author of Silent Spring, which I still haven't got to. Carson has my sense of wonder about the world and here she speaks of the shoreline, the magical world between the tides. There is no shortage of factual information but it is couched in captivating prose.

Fluke by James Herbert AUDIO

I've never got on with Herbert apart from this one, the story of a man reincarntated as a dog and his journey to discover why he died.

AZ: "He was a stringy mongrel, wandering the streets of the city, driven by a ravenous hunger and hunting a quarry he could not define. But he was something more. Somewhere in the depths of his consciousness was a memory clawing its way to the surface, tormenting him, refusing to let him rest. The memory of what he had once been: A man"

The Pact by Jodie Picoult

AZ: "For eighteen years the Hartes and the Golds have lived next door to each other, sharing everything from Chinese food to chicken pox to carpool duty. Parents and children alike are best friends - so it's no surprise that in high school Chris and Emily's friendship blossoms into something more. They've been soul mates since they were born. When the midnight calls come in from the hospital, no one is prepared for the appalling truth: Emily is dead at seventeen from a gunshot wound to the head as part of an apparent suicide pact. The gun holds a single unspent bullet that Chris tells police he intended for himself, but a local detective has doubts. And the Hartes and Golds, in a single terrifying moment, must face every parent's worst fear: do we ever really know our children at all?"

Picoult is now an author I turn to with relief, becuase as with Francis, Koontz, Faulkner and Jasper Fforde, I know that what I'm about to read will be a pleasure. The Pact is the desperately sad story of two children who grow up next door to each other (Em and Chris) and as teenager begin going out together. Em is conflicted in two ways, one by loving Chris very deeply but there being incestuous elements of brotherly love, and by a moment of sexual assault that drives her to self-loathing and suicidal tendencies.

Kissing the Rain by Kevin Brooks

AZ: "In Moo Nelson's life it rains every day - a constant rain of spite and derision - and every day he walks through it all with his eyes down, wishing things were different. But knowing they're not. His only refuge is the bridge, where he spends his time thinking and dreaming and watching the world go by. Until the night he witnesses a car-chase - and a murder...Or does he? What is the truth, and who is it for? The police? The gangsters? The lawyers? The bullies at school? Moo must decide: between truth and lies, loneliness and loyalty, weakness and strength. And he must do it soon...Kissing the Rain is a story about the unique confusions of being a teenager: the turmoil of emotions, the complexity of relationships, the inner world of feelings, and how to express them. More than anything, though, the story is Moo Nelson - his mind, his body, his words, his truth"

"Kevin Brooks is a proper writer. He never lets you stop thinking. Caught in the brilliant dialogue and tense situations, his characters fumble and stumble with real-life dillemmas, just like us. But for them the threats are frightening and all too close. No easy endings, no bland half-truths - Kevin is the real thing" (Barry Cunningham, publisher)

The 'rain' is the verbal abuse that overweight Moo Nelson endures every day, keeping his head down like an umbrella. He witnesses an act of violence and, in his own awkward badly spelt speak, tells of his life where getting through each day is an achievement. I was there and no, adults had no idea.

Where Mermaids Sing by Brian Keaney

I had a real problem with teenage reading that week didn't I. Keaney's book is brilliant but it doesn't have a good ending, and that's my problem not his.

AZ: "Jasmine, Alice and Phoebe. As friends they were inseparable, but when friendship turns to rivalry and distrust, they begin to drift apart. Then tragedy strikes - and Alice knows life can never be the same again."

Teacher's Dead by Benjamin Zephaniah

I like Zephaniah's poetry but I found this a bit predictable and boring. The subject was interesting, but not the story or execution, disappointing

AZ: "A teacher is dead, murdered by two of his students in front of the school. He was a good man. People liked him. So how could this happen? Why? It just doesn't make sense to Jackson, and he is determined to investigate the case until he understands."

The Butterfly Lion by Michael Morpugo

Written for young readers, short and utterly beautiful

AZ (MM): "The Butterfly Lion grew from several magical roots: The memories of a small boy who tried to run away from school a long time ago; a book about a pride of white lions discovered by Chris McBride; a chance meeting in a lift with Virginia McKenna, actress and champion of lions and all creatures born free; a true story of a soldier of the First World War who rescued some circus animals in France from certain death; and the sighting from a train of a white horse carved out on a chalky hillside near Westbury in Wiltshire."

Nerve by Dick Francis

This is one of my favourites, I return to it again and again. Up there with Flying Finish.

AZ: "Robert Finn, a steeplechase jockey, finds himself the focus of a malicious campaign and when it begins to affect his friends as well, he sets out to uncover its source and remove it. This is the author's second racing thriller and was first published in 1964."

On Hitler's Mountain: My Nazi Childhood by Irmgard Hunt

AZ: "Irmgard Hunt was born in Nazi Germany and brought up in the Bavarian village of Berchtesgaden, just outside the fence that surrounded Hitler's alpine retreat. At the age of three, she was photographed sitting on the Fuhrer's knee - one of her parents' proudest moments. Irmgard grew up innocently accepting the Nazi doctrine, believing the lies of her teachers and joyfully singing anthems to National Socialism. In simple, powerful prose Hunt reveals the creeping Nazification of Germany and shows how ordinary people were seduced - and cowed - by the campaigns set in train by their leaders."

I got this for S as we visited the Eagle's Nest and Berchtesgarten I was interested in this book. An amazing story about growing up in Nazi Bavaria, a traditional life which differs not that greatly from alpine Austrian life today, and the indocrinations, food shortages and final defeats of WWII. To me, as important a chronicle as Carrie's War and The Diary of Anne Frank, and I felt brought an understanding of why Nazism flourished better than The Reader

The Reader by Bernhard Schlink

AZ: "Michael Berg is 15 when he begins a long, obsessive affair with Hanna, an enigmatic older woman. He never learns very much about her and when she disappears one day, he expects never to see her again. But, to his horror, he does. Hanna is a defendant in a trial related to Germany's Nazi past and it soon becomes clear that she is guilty of an unspeakable crime. As Michael follows the trial, he struggles with an overwhelming question: what should his generation do with its knowledge of the Holocaust? "We should not believe we can comprehend the incomprehensible, we may not compare the incomparable... Should we only fall silent in revulsion, shame, and guilt? To what purpose?"

A book group read, and a good fascinating one, although it only really came alive in the second half. Makes us ask ourselves hard questions about what we would have done in Hanna's situation. About it part the effects of the Holocaust on the next generation and in part about the sexual awakening of a 15 year old boy, about levels of responsibility and absolution. And, in a way, about the power of reading and redemptive power of words.

M is for Magic by Neil Gaiman

A collection of short stories for children, some of which I've encounterd before. Gaiman's imagination never fails to entertain, and here where he's writing for children he writes less self consciously, children don't need to be asked to suspend disbelief! In this collection of short stories I most loved the short story about the boy born in a graveyard but wanted more of it, luckily Gaiman also felt the same and expanded it into his The Graveyard Book. I particularly liked reading again 'The Price' which is about a family who are adopted by a mysterious black cat who sustains terrible injuries night after night.

Alone on a Wide Wide Sea by Michael Morpugo

AZ: "Orphaned in WWII, Arthur is separated from his sister and sent to the other side of the world. There his extraordinary journey continues as he and his friend Marty survive brutal captivity on a working farm, find a new family with the eccentric Aunty Meg and her animals, and discover their talent for designing yachts. Sixty years later, Arthur's daughter Allie sets sail single-handed in a yacht designed by her father, determined to find his long-lost sister in England. Can family love stretch across time and the vastness of the oceans? And will the threads of Arthur's life finally come together?"

This book is split into two parts, the memoir of Arthur Hobhouse as a boy who is shipped to Australia in 1947 and his daughter Allie's account of her single handed yacht journey from Australia to the UK in 2005. It is hard to believe that the memoirs are not genuine, Arthur's experience of being ripped from his family (his sister Kitty), his home and his country and sent without any consultation to an alien country is heart rending and made me so angry, but Morpugo also captures 18-year-old Allie's voices, those of her emails and those of her own thoughts, utterly convincingly.

Save Cash and Save the Planet by Friends of the Earth

A briliant little book that does what it says on the tin! Well designed and easy to find your way around, from the easy to the more complex ways of saving the planet and living more light footedly