From the tbr pile - 2

    Three more from the pile, beginning at the top there with The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht, another book which is one of Waterstone's 11 best literary debuts. Described by T.C. Boyle as "a novel of surpassing beauty, exquisitely wrought and magical", and by Ann Patchett as "a marvel of beauty and imagination", here's the beginning:

"In my earliest memory, my grandfather is as bald as a stone and he takes me to see the tigers. He puts on his hat, his big-buttoned raincoat, and I wear my lacquered shoes and velvet dress. It is autumn, and I am four years old. The certainty of this process: my grandfather's hand, the bright hiss of the trolley, the dampness of the morning, the crowded walk up the hill to the citadel park. Always in my grandfather's breast pocket: The Jungle Book, with its gold-leaf cover and old yellow pages. I am not allowed to hold it, but it will stay open on his knee all afternoon while he recites the passages to me."

    Esther Freud (and excuse the digression, but those of us who watched the recent television adaptation of South Riding may like to know, if they don't already, that she is married to David Morrissey, who played Robert Carne ...) has a new book out soon: Lucky Break draws on her time at drama school, before she became a novelist. Billed as "a modern day Cinderella story with a twist [that] is an absolute joy to read", this is about a group of young actors in pursuit of success, and struck Michael Holroyd as being "completely authentic and enthralling."

    Also coming out soon is The Proof of Love by Catherine Hall who made her debut last year with Days of Grace. The new book is set in the Lake District during the sweltering summer of 1976, when Spencer Little, a shy and awkward Cambridge mathematician, takes a job as a farm labourer. He makes friends with ten-year-old Alice, and when he has to come to her rescue, he begins to feel accepted by the community, but deeper intimacy leads to too much knowledge, perhaps, and as the heatwave intensifies "a web of complicity tightens around him, and Spencer will be forced to choose: between passion and logic, between loyalty and truth."