Writers Write – Our Book Reviews – January 2016

Our reviewers rate books from 1–5

1. For use as a doorstop only
2. Keep for publishers’ and booksellers’ strikes
3. A great holiday read
4. You’ll remember this with enthusiasm a month later
5. Unforgettable

1. 100 Things They Don’t Want You to Know by Daniel Smith (Quercus)
2. Black Ops by Stephen Leather (Hodder & Stoughton)
3. Blackout – The Eskom Crisis by James-Brent Styan (Jonathan Ball
4. Brief Candle in the Dark by Richard Dawkins (Bantam Press)
5. Detonator by Andy McNab (Penguin)
6. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Old School by Jeff Kinney (Penguin)
7. Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff (William Heinemann)
8. From Playground To Prostitute by Elanie Kruger with Jaco Hough-Coetzee (Delta)
9. Golden Age by Jane Smiley (Pan Macmillan)
10. Gruesome  by De Wet Potgieter (Zebra Press)
11. Innovation: Shaping South Africa Through Science by Sarah Wild (Pan Macmillan)
12. Into The Fire by Manda Scott (Bantam Press)
13. Island of Dreams by Dan Boothby (Picador)
14. Katy by Jacqueline Wilson (Puffin Books)
15. Let’s Talk Frankly – Letters to influential South Africans by Onkgopotse JJ Tabane (Pan Macmillan)
16. Liar Liar – A DI Helen Grace Thriller by M.J. Arlidge (Penguin)
17. Magicians Of The Gods by Graham Hancock (Coronet)
18. Magnus Chase And The Sword Of Summer by Rick Riordan (Puffin Books)
19. Me And Earl And The Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews (Allen & Unwin)
20. Precious Gifts by Danielle Steel (Transworld)
21. Pretending to Dance by Diane Chamberlain (Pan Macmillan)
22. Private Vegas by James Patterson & Maxine Paetro (Century)
23. Royal Wedding by Meg Cabot (Macmillan)
24. Saint Anything by Sarah Dessen (Penguin)
25. Satin Island by Tom McCarthy (Jonathan Cape)
26. Shopaholic To The Rescue by Sophie Kinsella (Bantam Press)
27. The Akimbo Adventures by Alexander McCall Smith (Edmont)
28. The Book Of Human Emotions by Tiffany Watt Smith (Welcome collection)
29. The Death Of Rex Nhongo by C.B George (Quercus)
30. The Forgetting Time by Sharon Guskin (Mantle)
31. The Guilty by David Baldacci  (MacMillan)
32. The House On Cold Hill by Peter James (Macmillan)
33. The Melody Lingers On by Mary Higgins Clark (Simon and Schuster)
34. The Road to Rangoon by Lucy Cruickshanks (Heron)
35. The Secret Society – Cecil John Rhodes’s Plan for a new World Order by Robin Brown (Penguin Books)
36. The Shepherd’s Crown by Terry Pratchett (DoubleDay)
37. The Way We Were by Sinead Moriarty (Penguin)
38. Two Years Eight Months And Twenty-Eight Nights by Salman Rushdie (Jonathan Cape
39. Where’s Zuma? by Kobus Galloway (Zebra Press)
40. Wine, Women and Good Hope – A History of Scandalous Behaviour at the Cape by June McKinnon (Zebra Press)