The Road of the Dead by Kevin Brooks AUDIO

AZ: "On a storm-ravaged night, a 19-year-old girl is murdered. Three days later, her two younger brothers set out in search of her killer. Cole is a dark-eyed devil who doesn't care if he lives or dies; Ruben is a strange child who sometimes, inexplicably, experiences sensations above and beyond his own.

This is the story of the boys' journey from their half-gypsy home in a London junk yard to the ghostly moors of Devon, where they hope and fear to find the truth about their sister's death. It's a long road. It's the road of the dead...."

Brilliant Brooks as ever, was utterly with Cole and Rueben as they come to a small village intent on keeping its secrets, and solve the mystery of the violent death of their sister. And the elements of the supernatural are there as with his best books, not in the front but there informing the narrative.

Double Cross by Malorie Blackman

The fourth installment in the teenage fiction Noughts and Crosses series which I began reading last year, a series about racism set in another world, very well written, compelling and emotionally draining, really makes you think

Corvus: A Life With Birds by Esther Woolfson

An extraordinary book that has reinforced my love of nature, I just wish I could work out which of the wonderful noisy birds are in rookeries are corbies, ravens or rooks. AZ: "Esther Woolfson has been fascinated by corvids, the bird group that includes crows, rooks, magpies and ravens, since her daughter rescued a fledgling rook sixteen years ago. That rook - named Chicken - has lived with the family ever since. Other birds have also taken their place in the household - a magpie, starling, parrot and the inhabitants of an outdoor dovehouse. But above all, it has been the corvids (a talking magpie named Spike, Chicken the rook, and, recently, a baby crow named Ziki) that she has formed the closest attachments with, amazed by their intelligence, personality and capacity for affection.Living with birds has allowed Woolfson to learn aspects of bird behaviour which would otherwise have been impossible to know - the way they happily become part of the structure of a family, how they communicate, their astonishing empathy. We hear about Chicken's fears and foibles: her hatred of computers and other machines and her love of sitting on Woolfson's knee in the evening and having her neck scratched; the birds' elaborate bathing rituals, springtime broodiness, and tendency to cache food in the most unlikely places. Woolfson tells the darker story of way corvids have always been objects of superstition and persecution; and with the lightest of touches, she weaves in the science of bird intelligence, evolution, song and flight throughout. Her account of her experiences is funny, touching and beautifully written, and gives fascinating insights into the closeness human beings can achieve with wild creatures."

Depths by Henning Mankell

AZ: "A break from his ordinary subjects but well written and still quite compelling:It is October 1914: the destroyer Svea emerged from the Stockholm archipelago bearing south-south-east. On board was Lars Tobiasson-Svartman, a naval engineer charged with making depth soundings to find a navigable channel for the Swedish navy. As a child Tobiasson-Svartman was fascinated by measurement; nothing is as magical as exact knowledge. His instinct for his profession is reflected in the comfortable domesticity he enjoys with his wife - herself meticulous in every detail. Close to the waters where soundings are taken Tobiasson-Svartman alights on a barren skerry, presumed uninhabited, and is surprised to discover there a young woman, Sara Fredrika. Despite her almost feral appearance, something about her strikes him to the core. The mission is a success and the Svea returns to Gothenburg. Tobiasson-Svartman, however, remains haunted by this chance encounter; his equilibrium has been disturbed, and he is now compelled to find any pretence to return to the remote islet."

Breath by Tim Winton

I'd heard so much about Winton that I wanted to try one of his books, it was okay but not really my thing: AZ: "Bruce Pike, or 'Pikelet', has lived all his short life in a tiny sawmilling town from where the thundering sea can be heard at night. He longs to be down there on the beach, amidst the pounding waves, but for some reason his parents forbid him. It's only when he befriends Loonie, the local wild boy, that he finally defies them. Intoxicated by the treacherous power of the sea and by their own youthful endurance, the two boys spurn all limits and rules, and fall into the company of adult mentors whose own addictions to risk take them to places they could never have imagined.Caught up in love and friendship and an erotic current he cannot resist, Pikelet faces challenges whose effects will far outlast his adolescence. "Breath" is the story of lost youth recollected: its attractions, its compulsions, its moments of heartbreak and of madness. A young man learns what it is to be extraordinary, how to push himself, mind and body, to the limit in terrible fear and exhilaration, and how to mask the emptiness of leaving such intensity - in love and in life - behind. Told with the immediacy and grace so characteristic of Tim Winton, "Breath" is a mesmeric novel by a writer at the height of his powers."

Another Life by Peter Anghelides

Another Torchwood book this one much better written, I felt like I was watching the tv show in my head. AZ: "A terror hides at the bottom of Cardiff Bay - waiting, feeding, controlling"

Amazon by Bruce Parry

Tie in to the BBC TV series, Parry's journey from the springs of the Amazon in the Andes to the mouth, meeting the people and tribes along the way. Beautiful photographs and interesting too. A Pengin Books challenge read

The Savage Garden by Mark Mills

This was a book group book but I was really glad I read it, it's one of those books that inspires you, in my case to read Dante's Divine Comedy as this is the second text I've read that has its roots in Dante. An intriguing mystery sewing together distant past, recent past and present in the atmosphere of Tuscany

AZ: "A haunting tale of murder, love and innocence lost set in post-war Tuscany from the award winning author of 'The Whaleboat House'. Behind a villa in the heart of Tuscany lies a Renaissance garden of enchanting beauty. Its grottoes, pagan statues and classical inscriptions seem to have a secret life of their own -- and a secret message, too, for those with eyes to read it. Young scholar Adam Strickland is just such a person. Arriving in 1958, he finds the Docci family, their house and the unique garden as seductive as each other. But post-War Italy is still a strange, even dangerous place, and the Doccis have some dark skeletons hidden away which Adam finds himself compelled to investigate. Before this mysterious and beautiful summer ends, Adam will uncover two stories of love, revenge and murder, separated by 400 years! but is another tragedy about to be added to the villa's cursed past?"

The Whaleboat House by Mark Mills

The follow up to The Savage Garden, more thriller than mystery but equally well written, AZ: "enthralling literary crime novel set in post World War II Long Island. In the small town of Amagansett, perched on Long Island's windswept coast, generations have followed the same calling as their forefathers, fishing the dangerous Atlantic waters. Little has changed in the three centuries since white settlers drove the Montaukett Indians from the land. But for Conrad Labarde, a second-generation Basque immigrant recently returned from the Second World War, and his fellow fisherman Rollo Kemp, this stability is shattered when a beautiful New York socialite turns up dead in their nets. On the face of it, her death was accidental, but deputy police chief Tom Hollis -- an incomer from New York -- is convinced the truth lies in the intricate histories and family secrets of Amagansett's inhabitants. Meanwhile the enigmatic Labarde is pursuing his own investigation"

An Anthropologist on Mars

A really entertaining read that makes neuroscience accessible, I especially loved the case study of the artist: AZ: "This collection of essays are mainly casebook studies. Neurological patients, Oliver Sacks once wrote, are travellers to unimaginable lands. This book offers portraits of seven such travellers, including a surgeon consumed by the compulsive tics of Tourette's syndrome unless he is operating, an artist who loses all sense of colour in a car accident, but finds a new sensibility and creative power in black and white, and an autistic professor who cannot decipher the simplest social exchange between humans, but has built a career out of her intuitive understanding of animal behaviour. These are paradoxical tales, for neurological disease can conduct one or other modes of being which - however abnormal they may be to our way of thinking - may develop beauties and virtues of their own. Thus one young man, Stephen Wiltshire, who is both retarded and autistic, none-the-less has produced thousands of astonishing drawings. The exploration of these individual lives is not one that can be conducted in a consulting room or office, and Sacks has taken off his white coat and deserted the hospital, by and large, to join his subjects in their own environments."

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat

Not as well written as Anthropologist but still more that a little fascinating: AZ: "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" is populated by a cast as strange as that of the most fantastic fiction. The subject of this strange and wonderful book is what happens when things go wrong with parts of the brain most of us don't know exist ...Dr Sacks shows the awesome powers of our mind and just how delicately balanced they have to be' - "Sunday Times". 'Who is this book for? Who is it not for? It is for everybody who has felt from time to time that certain twinge of self-identity and sensed how easily, at any moment, one might lose it' - "The Times". 'This is, in the best sense, a serious book. It is, indeed, a wonderful book, by which I mean not only that it is excellent (which it is) but also that it is full of wonder, wonders and wondering. He brings to these often unhappy people understanding, sympathy and respect. Sacks is always learning from his patients, marvelling at them, widening his own understanding and ours"