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Two boys meet as young friends and form a strong bond through their shared love of sports, in this case baseball and American football. On another continent, it could have been football and cricket or rugby. They are talented kids, cracking the minor leagues, but not quite good enough to make it to the big time. Inevitably, there is heartbreak ahead, as countless kids experience when they realise they won’t achieve their dreams.

Their parents know each other and nod, though are never close...

What a terrific book this is. It tells the story of the Russian Tatar (and yes, that is spelt correctly) dancer Rudolf Nureyev. He was purportedly born on a train, rumbling down the trans-Siberian railroad, and somehow that encapsulates his wandering life.

The story opens with the boy Rudi entertaining the mentally and physically scarred troops returning from the Nazi front. His father returns too, a political officer who takes a mighty dim view of his son's chosen career path, something that...

Lin Hong, a gentleman, is a doctor, who works in the hospital in the city. He loves Manna Wu, but can’t marry her, they can’t have children, because a while ago as a young man he pleased his parents by marrying Shuyu in the rural county from which he comes. They produced a daughter, but there is little else to bind them together.

Now Lin doesn’t see his girl or his wife often. His life and future are firmly bound up in the city, with Manna Wu.

Every year he returns home to petition for divorce,...

Jack the Ripper remains the most notorious serial killer of all time. The fact he was never caught and never identified only serves to maintain the mystery.

Here is a book that purports to reveal Jack's actual diary. According to the writer, Shirley Harrison, Jack the Ripper was, in fact, a cotton merchant from Liverpool by the name of James Maybrick. No, I am not giving away the ending. That much is revealed on the very first page. He supposedly travelled to London by train, murdered and...

This book purports to tell of a British intelligence plan to kidnap Martin Bormann and bring him out of the ashes of Berlin in 1945, just as the war was coming to a crashing end.

Indeed, the writer insists that this is precisely what he did, accompanied by the late Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond, after whom this operation was supposedly named.

You must forgive my scepticism, but the book is so full of amazing and extravagant claims that it makes it difficult to take anything seriously. Did...

Alfred Jones works for a chocolate factory in Switzerland as a translator. During the London blitz, Alfred comes across an unexploded bomb, but it didn’t remain unexploded for long, taking one of Alfred’s hands away with it. But no matter, translators don’t need two hands to earn a living.

Close to the chocolate factory is the Dentophil Bouquet toothpaste works, founded by the infamous Doctor Fischer, and the instrument that brought him great wealth, and the ability to buy a huge white mansion...

I have read almost all of John Le Carré’s books and I have to admit, the ones I really liked are the older Soviet cold war stories. They simply seemed to carry so much more menace and intrigue. So you can imagine how delighted I was when this book, “A Legacy of Spies” was announced. Here’s a chance to revisit all the old characters and places and cases and victories and defeats.

Even the legendary George Smiley was supposed to be returning, so memorably played by Sir Alec Guinness in the...

Lacy Stolz specialises in investigating corrupt judges. It keeps her surprisingly busy. In a previous John Grisham book, “The Whistler”, she went too close to the fire and got burnt to the point it almost killed her. Her partner wasn’t so lucky.

But that’s all behind her now, and it’s a new year and a new day, when out of the blue, she receives a call from a mysterious woman who also takes an interest in corrupt judges.

So begins “The Judges List”, another blockbusting novel from the king of...