BOOKS OF THE MONTH

Our third novel this year is The Shifting Pools, a dark, lyrical tale by Zoë Duncan.

It tells the story of a girl called Eve whose idyllic childhood in her Middle Eastern home comes to a violent end. She grows up and makes a new life for herself in London but finds her sense of reality has been altered forever.

“This heartrending story will transport you to an imaginative new landscape that expresses the true nature of our everyday reality,” says the blogger Lonesome Reader.

Click here to read Zoë Duncan's interview with The Times about the tragic events that inspired her book.

And our final novel this summer is The Pinocchio Brief, a courtroom whodunnit from lawyer-turned-novelist Abi Silver.

It follows the trial of an unusually gifted 15-year-old who is accused of the brutal murder of his teacher. A new lie-detecting device – nicknamed Pinocchio – is to be tested in public for the first time.

The novel comes with the endorsement of Ted Childs, creator of TV's Kavanagh QC, who calls it “intelligently conceived and cleverly constructed – topical, relevant and engaging”.