Galaxy ® British Book Awards

David and Norah's first child should have been an ordinary birth. But when the longed-for son turns out to be twins, a son and daughter, one healthy, the other with Down's Syndrome, David makes a shocking decision. He tells his wife their daughter died, while secretly entrusting her care to a nurse, Caroline, who raises Phoebe as her own - a secret that remains unspoken for a quarter of a century. But nothing is ever as simple as it might at first seem and, as grief tears the family apart, a little girl grows up unaware of the turmoil her existence has caused. This was thebestselling novel of 2007, a Richard & Judypick, selling over 700,000 copies in the UK alone.
Penguin, paperback, £7.99

When you're asked to ghost-write the former prime minister's memoirs because your predecessor has died in suspicious circumstances, you're bound to think twice. Especially if you have no interest in politics anyway. But Harris's narrator, used to working with fading rock stars and minor celebrities, can't resist the chance to take on this high-profile project, especially as it means working in the luxurious surroundings of Martha's Vineyard on America's East Coast. His subject, Adam Lang, was the bright young party hopeful whose long reign at the top turned many of his supporters against him, including the narrator's own journalist girlfriend. As his ghost writer discovers, Lang has secrets in his past that are returning to haunt him - secrets with the power to kill. The Times called Harris “the leading current exponent of the intelligent literary thriller”.
Hutchinson, paperback, £12.99

A good year for this title, also on the Richard & Judy Best Read shortlist, while Hosseini makes the Author of the Year shortlist. A Thousand Splendid Suns is a gripping story of family, friendship and the salvation to be found in love, set in Afghanistan. Mariam is just fifteen when she is shipped off to Kabul to marry a troubled man thirty years her senior. Twenty years later, the teenage Laila is orphaned in a bomb blast and forced to join that same unhappy household with childless Mariam and the bitter husband they share; in time the pair form a close friendship as they face tests of endurance. Hosseini captures beautifully how a woman's love for her family can move her to shocking and heroic acts of self-sacrifice.
Bloomsbury, paperback, £11.99

In the summer of 1924, on the eve of a society party at a grand English country house, a young poet takes his life by the lake. The two witnesses, sisters Hannah and Emmeline Hartford, will never speak to each other again. Seventy-five years later, a young director visits Grace Bradley, the surviving housemaid from Riverton Manor, now a frail ninety-eight-year-old. The director is making a film about the poet's suicide, and in the process awakens ghosts and old memories, long consigned to the reaches of Grace's mind. A shocking secret threatens to emerge, something history has forgotten but Grace has not - and cannot. The House at Riverton is a thrilling mystery and a compelling love story - and the winner of Richard & Judy's Summer Read 2007.
Pan Macmillan, paperback, £7.99

Vincenzi takes on Lloyds in this hefty, door-stopping tome, looking at what happens when rich people lose all their money, a reality for many at the tail-end of the Eighties. For Nigel Cowper, the one thing he clings to throughout is his beautiful young wife, Lucinda - but she's on the verge of an affair with someone most unsuitable. Simon Beaumont can't bring himself to admit failure to his superwoman wife Elizabeth. For financial journalist Joel Strickland, life is sweet: he's writing a great story, and one that will lead to a wonderful love affair. But within a year of the Lloyds scandal, someone will be dead. Who? And why? This is Vincenzi's thirteenth novel; her storytelling skills are widely respected - and hugely addictive.
Headline Review, paperback, £7.99