Seesaw by Deborah Moggach (Vintage)

by Patrick O'Connor

DEBORAH Moggach has quite an impressive catalogue. She received a BAFTA nomination for her screenplay Pride & Prejudice and her novel These Foolish Things was made into the hit film, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.

This book starts off as if it is going to be another kidnap caper but Moggach, being the talented writer that she is, serves up a much more interesting and fascinating offering.

The One Plus One by Jojo Moyes (Penguin)

by Patrick O'Connor

BE warned – this British road rom-com is as soppy as hell. But it's a delight, a lovely, heart-warming, life-enhancing love story which will captivate you from beginning to end.

The plot is relatively simple. Single mum Jess Thomas is struggling to keep her head above water; her teenage stepson Nicky is a loner who is being bullied at school and daughter Tanzie is a maths prodigy who is offered the chance to compete in a Math Olympiad at the other end of the country.

The Woman Who Went To Bed For A Year by Sue Townsend (Penguin)

by Patrick O'Connor

SUE Townsend, who died last year, was regarded as one of Britain's best comic writers. She was best known for her Adrian Mole books, chronicling the diaries of a schoolboy through to his mature years.

This was her last novel and in it, Townsend explores an emotion many of us may have experienced at some time or other – 'sod it, I'm fed up with all this, I'm going to stay in bed.'

A Commonplace Killing by Sian Busby (Short Books)

by Patrick O'Connor

IN a moving forward to this marvellous novel, the BBC's economic editor Robert Peston pays tribute to his wife Sian Busby who died shortly before it was published.

Peston transcribed the final pages of her manuscript from a notebook he found after her death so that the book could be completed and anyone who reads it will be eternally grateful.

Missing Persons by Nicci Gerrard (Penguin)

by Patrick O'Connor

THE Hopkins are a typical middle class family who live in sleepy East Anglia.

They enjoy a normal life with three teenage children, two girls and a boy and their existence seems to be easy, respectable and normal.

What Will Survive by Mark Gartside (Macmillan)

by Patrick O'Connor

IT would be all too easy for this story about a man coping with becoming a single parent to become over-sentimental and predictable.

But in the hands of author Mark Gartside, What Will Survive, will warm even the coldest of hearts.