The Other Half of Augusta Hope – Joanna Glen

What, or who, is her other half? It could be her twin with a different birthday. The Hope sisters are born either side of midnight on 31 July, which is reflected in their names - Julia and Augusta.

The twins are as alike as chalk and cheese, Julia pretty and content, Augusta plain and questioning. Julia is into dolls, clothes and pets; Augusta’s passions are books and words. She has her favourites words, like Burundi, the country’s name rolling off the tongue evocatively. It piques her interest, and she researches the country’s history.

Unknown to her, half a world away, a boy named Parfait Nduwimana is growing up in Burundi, living with the legacy of that history and experiencing a present not much better. But his outlook is positive, and after talking to his friend, the local Spanish priest, he develops a plan to walk north to Morocco and from there go by boat to Spain. He will take his younger brother with him.

Back in England, Augusta also has the wanderlust. A family holiday and her study of Spanish literature feeds a dream of life in the sun there; she visits regularly and eventually she makes the move and gets a job in the south of Spain. Parfait makes it there too, against the odds. But for each, happiness is tainted by family tragedies.

Their paths cross once or twice early on, near misses only, but it would be rubbish if they did not meet up eventually. Could it turn out that the other half of Augusta is a soul mate in the form of boy from Burundi?

The twin narratives of Augusta and Parfait move their respective stories on rapidly. Augusta’s relationship with her twin and parents is particularly well-observed, and Parfait’s optimistic response to the hand life has dealt him is uplifting. While their destiny may seem clear, their journeys have enough twists and turns to keep the reader unsure to the end.

The Uninvited Guests – Sadie Jones

In late Victorian England, the Torrington family’s stately home of Sterne is under threat from the creditors. Edward Swift, who has married the widow Charlotte, is off to Manchester for the weekend to secure a new loan, leaving behind Charlotte and three stepchildren – Clovis, Emerald and young Imogen. It is unfortunate timing; he will miss Emerald’s eighteenth birthday dinner.

Only a couple of guests are invited, Emerald’s childhood friend, Patience Sutton and her mother. But circumstances intervene and Patience’s brother, Earnest, turns up instead of the mother; and when nouveau riche neighbour John Buchanan calls with a present, he gets added to the guest list too. Dealing with the revised catering falls to housekeeper Florence Trieves, aided by one maid.

When Clovis goes to collect the Suttons from the station, he returns with startling news. There has been a dreadful accident on the branch line and passengers are in need of somewhere to shelter until the railway can make arrangements for their journey to continue. They have been directed to Sterne.

When they turn up, they are a raggle-taggle bunch from the third class carriage, plus one gentleman from first who goes by the name Charlie Traversham-Beecham. While the rabble are herded into the morning room to be plied with cups of tea, the gentleman (and a very forward one too) is invited to the perpetually disrupted birthday dinner.

The evening gradually descends into confusion, chaos and madness. The rabble seem to multiply, Traversham-Beecham exerts a malevolent control over proceedings, a storm breaks, past truths emerge, and suppressed opinions are aired. Will relationships and guests, invited and otherwise, survive the stormy night?

The narrative and characters draw the reader in and forward quickly; the slide from normality through strangeness into the supernatural is gradual and well handled, so by the end, the events of the weekend, as explained to the returning Edward Swift, seem perfectly natural.

Conviction – Denise Mina

It is a conventional start to a thriller. Anna is up to enjoy an hour of peace and quiet, listening to a podcast in the kitchen, before Hamish and the girls come down. The marriage is off the boil and, frankly, Anna lacks the will to put it right. However, Hamish’s solution is more nuclear; he is leaving this morning with Anna’s best friend, Estelle, and he is taking the girls with him. That leaves Anna stunned and in no mood to welcome the subsequent arrival of Estelle’s now ex, Fin. He is a bit of a celebrity and somewhat needy.

Anna’s turbulence is exacerbated as the podcast she was listening to concerns a true crime and miscarriage of justice involving the death of an old acquaintance, Leon Parker. Unable to cope mentally with her own family break-up, she re-immerses herself in the podcast and determines to find out the truth behind the facts. The facts are that Leon Parker and his two children (by different ex-wives) died at sea, poisoned while alone on board the luxury yacht, Dana, which was then scuttled.

Fin goes along for the ride, using their quest to fuel his sagging social media presence. What he does not know yet is that Anna has another connection to the case, via Parker’s new wife, Gretchen Teigler. Fin’s exposure of them on social media could, and does, unleash forces too unpleasant to contemplate.

Cue a helter-skelter dash across Europe as Anna and Fin seek answers to the Dana killings and flee pursuing would-be assassins.

It all feels very modern with podcasts and the power social media to the fore. Some suspension of credibility is needed in the David and Goliath struggle of Anna and Fin versus the all-seeing and all-powerful Gretchen Teigler.

No spoilers in saying the outcome is as conventional as the start; but what is sandwiched in between is anything but.

Born to Run – Christopher McDougall

The book starts off as a bit of a travelogue with the author delving into the Copper Canyons (Barrancas del Cobre) of Mexico’s Sierra Madre, where few strangers go and even fewer come back. Two reason for that – getting lost and dying of thirst, and getting found and dying of a drug baron’s bullet.

McDougall risks it in search of the Tarahumara, an indigenous group renowned for their long distance running prowess, first glimpsed in the 1990’s when someone persuaded a small group to travel to the States to compete in an ultra-marathon – the Leadville 100 mile run through mountains at altitude.

But McDougall’s motive is more personal. He has suffered running injuries for years and wants to find out how the Tarahumara can run vast distances, in sandals, in severe conditions, well into their fifties and sixties, without damage.

When he finally makes contact, it is through an American gone native who goes by the name of Caballo Blanco (the white horse). He is as enthusiastic about the Tarahumara as McDougall and shares his dream of putting on a race in the Barrancas between the Tarahumara and the best of the current US ultrarunners.

Interspersed with the narrative are pen portraits of some of those ultrarunners and their incredible feats of running endurance and the crazy events at which they compete. Then there is an investigative theme on the issue of running shoes that concludes, convincingly, they promote rather than prevent injury. The message is barefoot, or as close to it as possible, is best. In addition, history, anthropology, and physiology is delved into to theorise that man’s unique ability to run vast distances without stopping to rest, enabling pursuit hunting, was an evolutionary advantage that proved significant. Man was indeed born to run.

The narrative climaxes with the great race in the barrancas, and it does not disappoint. Fitting, for a book that gets more interesting and satisfying, page by page, as the themes develop and combine in a winning formula.