Women's fiction, biographies and the best children's books: Must-reads of the season

Sophia: Princess, Suffragette, Revolutionary by Anita Anand (Bloomsbury, £20) 

Sophia Duleep Singh was an Indian princess, goddaughter of Queen Victoria, socialite, suffragette, fighter for the rights of Indian soldiers and all in all an interesting subject whose story has been told for the first time by BBC radio and TV presenter Anita Anand in this splendid new biography. 

However, Sophia herself is comprehensively overshadowed by one of the other characters in the story – her father, Maharajah Duleep Singh, whose life is so utterly fascinating that everything else pales in comparison.

He was born in 1838, the son of Maharajah Ranjit Singh who founded the Sikh empire in India and was known as the Lion of Punjab. Duleep succeeded him when he was five (his four predecessors having been assassinated) and his mother ruled as regent before the bad guys came on the scene, namely us Brits. 

We took over the Punjab, appropriated the Koh-i-noor diamond and sent little Duleep into exile in the UK, where he became a favourite of Queen Victoria. As an adult, he was a womanising spendthrift, transformed an English estate in Suffolk into a kind of Mogul palace and finally turned against the British, ending up in Paris as a failed revolutionary.

How do you top that? You don’t, which is why the story of Sophia gets markedly less interesting after page 123, when her father dies aged 55 and she takes centre stage. 

Sophia was an educated woman who went from being a self-centred socialite to being genuinely concerned with the poorer members of society and championing many causes, including women’s suffrage. But worthiness doesn’t make as good a read as dissolution. Also, I was more interested in Sophia’s sister Catherine who, unusually for the time, lived in an openly lesbian relationship with their German governess.

This book has been beautifully researched – almost too much, as no character can enter without having their full back story established. Sometimes I suspected there was not quite enough about Sophia to make up the book. 

All that said, this conjures up a picture of a world long gone, of society, suffragettes and seditionaries, and of a British aristocracy that was fascinated by its Indian counterpart and vice versa. 

But one thing remains the same: we still own the Koh-i-noor.

VERDICT: 4/5

Virginia Blackburn

Etta and Otto and Russell and James  by Emma Hooper(Fig Tree, £12.99)

A glimpse at Emma Hooper’s CV will give you clues to what to expect from this luminous debut. As well as writing and working as a lecturer-researcher at Bath Spa University, she’s in a band and has a fondness for glockenspiels, accordions and the viola. Fittingly, there’s a lovely musicality to her prose – care and attention have been spent on the rhythms and melody of her words. 

The book begins with 82-year-old Etta leaving her home in the prairie lands of Canada and setting off on foot for a 2,000-mile journey to view the sea, which she’s never seen. She’s accompanied by her faltering memory, a talking coyote called James and a little folded piece of paper to remind her who she is. 

Her husband Otto wakes to find her gone. To contend with the loneliness, he attempts to recreate the recipes she’s left behind and find a use for the mountain of newspapers he’s collected, all of which feature Ella walking through wild grass looking “a little crazy maybe, but good, as in, healthy” as journalists track her pilgrimage. Their friend Russell, also melancholy at the loss of Ella, sets out to bring her home. 

Interspersed with the progress of Etta’s journey are stories from the trio’s early days. 

Etta was a teacher in a one-room school and her pupils included Otto and Russell. 

But the war changed their lives for ever when Otto headed into battle and Etta and Russell stayed behind.

This wonderfully tender debut is all about taking chances and fulfilling promises, whatever age you may be. As Etta says in one of her hopeful missives: “We’re all scared, most of the time. Life would be lifeless if we weren’t. 

Be scared, and then jump into that fear.” 

VERDICT: 4/5

Eithne Farry 

Women’s fiction picks

From runaway wives to racial tensions in 1930s America, Deborah Stone selects some of this month’s best reads

The Girl in the Photograph by Kate Riordan (Penguin, £6.99) 

Grammar school girl Alice starts her first job in 1932 but is sent away when she becomes pregnant by her married lover. Looked after by her mother’s old school friend in a centuries-old manor house, Alice is haunted by past events in the mysterious valley. With chapters alternating between Alice and Elizabeth, the former lady of the manor, Kate Riordan creates a prickly story full of tension. But while there are admirable themes about the treatment of pregnant women and how pregnancy can affect the mind, at times the pace is so slow that I felt I was going mad myself. 

VERDICT: 3/5 

Now That I’ve Found Youby Ciara Geraghty (Hodder & Stoughton, £6.99) 

Every time there is a knock at the door, Vinnie hopes his runaway wife Paula has come home. In the meantime, he drives a taxi so he can fit his work around his children: Finn, seven, who has nightmares, and Kerry, 14, who is in trouble at school. Then there is Ellen, one of Vinnie’s regular fares, who you can’t help hoping he’ll realise he’s in love with. Ciara Geraghty’s characters are so well drawn they seem totally real and now that I’ve found this writer, I’ll be looking out for her again.

VERDICT: 5/5

A Place for Us by Harriet Evans (Headline Review, £7.99)

Martha and David Winter’s family is a bohemian mix of creative types and geniuses who have grown up in an idyllic country house full of sunshine and happiness. So why does Martha decide to tear the family apart by telling the truth about her eldest daughter Daisy? The twists and turns of this story are so unexpected that it is a hard novel to put down but, towards the end, 

I couldn’t help feeling there were a few too many threads to the story and not enough explanation of why Daisy was such a malicious child. 

VERDICT: 4/5 

Lost & Found by Brooke Davis (Hutchinson, £12.99)

This is an unexpectedly uplifting book about death, grief and growing old. It starts with seven-year-old Millie Bird waiting for her mother beside the “ginormous women’s underwear” in a department store. Bored, she wanders off and ends up hiding out in the store for several nights waiting for her mum. In the café, she meets 87-year-old Karl who is hiding from a care home and together with widow Agatha, who is hiding from life, they set off to look for Millie’s mum. Although at times sad – and even depressing – Lost & Found is an off-kilter glimpse of Australia that builds to a life-affirming climax. 

VERDICT: 5/5

Summertimeby Vanessa Lafaye (Orion, £12.99)

Many returning American First World War veterans, jobless because of the Depression, 

were forced to join public works programmes. Vanessa Lafaye’s tumultuous story, set in 1935 Florida Keys, is a fictional account of real events centred on veterans building a bridge in the tropical heat of racially segregated Florida.

Tension mounts when a Fourth of July barbecue ends with a white woman having been attacked, the sheriff looking for a black culprit and the most destructive hurricane in American history heading in their direction. This is a fascinating insight into American social history.

VERDICT: 3/5

Top five fiction

1. Lamentationby CJ Sansom(Mantle, £20)

2. Die Againby Tess Gerritsen (Bantam, £18.99)

3. The Eye of Heaven by Clive Cussler (Michael Joseph, £18.99)

4. Private Vegasby James Patterson(Century, £18.99)

5. The World of Ice & Fireby George RR Martin, Linda Antonsson and Elio M Garcia(Harper Voyager, £30)

Top five non-fiction

1. Guinness World Records 2015 (GWR, £20)

2. There’s Something I’ve Been Dying to Tell Youby Lynda Bellingham (Coronet, £16.99) 

3. Guy Martin: My Autobiography(Virgin, £20) 

4. Jamie’s Comfort Foodby Jamie Oliver(Michael Joseph, £30) 

5. Ripley’s Believe it or Not! 2015 by Robert LeRoy Ripley (Random House, £20) 

Top five children’s

1. Girl Online by Zoe Sugg(Penguin, £12.99)

2. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul by Jeff Kinney (Puffin, £12.99)

3. Awful Auntieby David Walliams (HarperCollins, £12.99)

4. Minecraft: The Official Construction Handbook(Egmont, £7.99)

5. Minecraft: The Official Combat Handbook(Egmont, £7.99)

To order the title, see Express Bookshop (expressbookshop.co.uk)