PICTURES: GETTY IMAGES, PENGUIN, RANDOM HOUSE Water Moon ...

Our books editor Zoe West’s favourite picks for the month

by Harriet Lane (£20, HB, Orion) What lies beneath the image we construct of ourselves? Ruth, newly divorced and drifting as her daughter leaves home, feels invisible – until Sookie, her dazzling form

Literary news andreviews with alocal flavour

AS Ellie bent to pick up an old trainer laying half buried in a pile of seaweed, she screamed. “Aargh, there’s a leg attached to this!” For a moment she thought she’d stumbled across a gruesome crime

Our lives, your lives... that’s life!