The proof copy I read of this novel is packaged in a cover stating "If you only read one book in 2025, make it this one". With a recommendation that high, it had better be good, right? Fortunately, it is. It's a debut novel, by a Wellington-based writer, set over one summer on the Kapiti Coast, and is a classic coming-of-age story, in which the reader comes to understand events in a way that the 10-year-old narrator doesn't. This is a tricky technique to pull off, but this is never less than convincing, and the pages flow by effortlessly.

This is the first novel of Yoshida's to be published in English. It's not really a novel, more a set of closely linked short stories, with a cast of recurring characters. Each tale begins at 1 a.m, and there are 10 intersecting stories featuring characters such as a taxi driver, all night diner staff, an eccentric detective, and their overlapping lives, at night. Reminiscent of the Jim Jarmusch movie Night On Earth, it also evokes Murakami. It's compelling, strange, and satisfying.

Mavis Gallant was better known for her short stories, but she wrote two longer pieces of which this was the first, originally published in 1959. In only 150 pages, this intense novel comprises 4 linked episodes concerning a group of the 'Smart Set', mostly Americans, who spent their days travelling Europe, having affairs, and being largely bored. It's a mid-Century masterpiece of shifting perspectives and timelines, a brilliant exploration of disaffection and exile.

South Korea is a fascinating country, always in the news, and this collection of journalism attempts to get to grips with the contradictions of Korean life and culture. It's beautifully produced, stylish, and the writing is of a very high standard. It will enhance your understanding of this country, and its critical strategic role in the modern world.

An epic 750 page history of modern pop music, from the 1950s establishment of a British Hit Parade, to around the end of the Century, this book is massively comprehensive, tremendously well researched, and chatty and amusing. Stanley is a pop enthusiast, cynical about the motivations of music executives and some musicians, but always entertaining. He's listened to everything, and has a charming way of describing music and trends and developments, but he seems to have a blind spot regarding Van Morrison, who only appears as the lead singer of Them, not as a solo artist.

This is a terrific, well-controlled, extremely sinister novel from good writer who just keeps getting better and better. Set in an alternative 1979, in Britain, it follows thirteen year old triplets who are the last residents of a care home at which they are required to take daily medicine to protect them from a mysterious illness, and are promised that they will eventually move to a big house in Margate at which their life will be perfect. The novel gradually reveals its secrets, and later in the book there are shocking revelations.