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Great Reads You May Have Missed 2012 Great Reads You May Have Missed

2012 was a fantastic year for new title publishing. So many good books were published it’s quite possible even the most dedicated of readers missed a few. Below are favourites chosen by our book experts. We hope you enjoy the selection.

Featured Books
A Monster Calls
Patrick Ness
One of our Great Reads You May Have Missed in 2012. Prize-winning Patrick Ness displays brilliant new skills of sensitivity in this hauntingly touching story of how a boy deals with the looming threat of his mother’s death from cancer....
Format: Paperback - Released: 07/05/2015
     
The Man Who Forgot His Wife
John O'farrell
October 2012 Book of the Month. One of our Great Reads You May Have Missed in 2012. John O’Farrell’s novels are consistently funny, poking a stick at middle class angst and embarrassing...
Format: Paperback - Released: 11/10/2012
     
Between a Mother and Her Child
Elizabeth Noble
September 2012 Book of the Month. One of our Great Reads You May Have Missed in 2012. A novel concentrating on the terrible effect of the death of a teenage boy on...
Format: Paperback - Released: 30/08/2012
     
Sacrilege
S. J. Parris
August 2012 Book of the Month. One of our Great Reads You May Have Missed in 2012. We loved her debut Heresy, with the ex-monk turned secret agent Giordano Bruno and...
Format: Paperback - Released: 16/08/2012
     
Care of Wooden Floors
Will Wiles
Winner of a Betty Trask Award 2013. Shortlisted for the Specsavers National Book Awards 'New Writer of the Year' 2012. One of our Great Reads You May Have Missed in...
Format: Paperback - Released: 30/08/2012
     
The Thread
Victoria Hislop
This is an enthralling novel from the million-copy bestselling author of The Island and The Return. Victoria Hislop is brilliant at setting the scene so you, the reader, really believe you're right there amongst the characters in a...
Format: Paperback - Released: 24/05/2012
     
Chocolate Shoes and Wedding Blues
Trisha Ashley
One of our Great Reads You May Have Missed in 2012. Witty, down to earth, heart-warming and, if it's your thing, absolutely irresistible. When she inherits a shoe shop in the rural backwater of Sticklepond, Tansy Poole runs away from...
Format: Paperback - Released: 10/05/2012
     
A Rural Affair
Catherine Alliott
One of our Great Reads You May Have Missed in 2012. Catherine Alliott is at her sparkling and brilliant best in this her latest feel-good read. Full of her trademark wit and characters you feel instantly drawn to. Perfect to...
Format: Paperback - Released: 10/05/2012
     
At Last
Edward St. Aubyn
April 2012 Book of the Month. One of our Great Reads You May Have Missed in 2012. At Last is a masterpiece of glittering dark comedy and profound emotional truth. If you...
Format: Paperback - Released: 06/04/2012
     
The Kashmir Shawl
Rosie Thomas
March 2012 Book of the Month. One of our Great Reads You May Have Missed in 2012. Winner of the RNA Epic Romantic Novel Award 2012. Characters and settings are beautifully portrayed...
Format: Paperback - Released: 01/03/2012
     
Splinter
Sebastian Fitzek
One of our Great Reads You May Have Missed in 2012. An insanely fast-paced, utterly unputdownable psychological thriller from a German bestseller. What if we could permanently erase our most terrifying experiences from memory? And what could go wrong? ...
Format: Paperback - Released: 01/10/2011
     
Reader Reviewed Tom-All-Alone's
Lynn Shepherd
One of our Great Reads You May Have Missed in 2012. Described by the author as an homage to Charles Dickens but also an incredibly well researched and re-imagined, gripping Victorian murder mystery based on his classic Bleak House....
Format: Paperback - Released: 06/09/2012
     
Secrets of the Tides
Hannah Richell
One of our Great Reads You May Have Missed in 2012. A sensitive, convincing and beautifully written novel. Full of descriptive power, it defines the beginnings and consequences of a family tragedy - from love and guilt to the difference...
Format: Paperback - Released: 30/08/2012
     
Friends and Rivals
Tilly Bagshawe
One of our Great Reads You May Have Missed in 2012. Third in her glitzy ‘bonk-buster’ series and like the first two, Fame and Scandalous, Friends and Rivals is a fantastic escapist read full of impossibly beautiful people,...
Format: Paperback - Released: 27/09/2012
     
Split Second
Cath Staincliffe
One of our Great Reads You May Have Missed in 2012. A group of rowdy kids on a bus, things sound nasty, they turn on a black boy, chase him off, a stranger intervenes and two boys are injured. This...
Format: Paperback - Released: 19/07/2012
     
The Virgin Cure
Ami McKay
One of our Great Reads You May Have Missed in 2012. A beguiling and disturbing story set in 1871 New York where poverty and decadence are unhappy, but necessary bedfellows. Moth, the 12 year old central character, is sold into...
Format: Paperback - Released: 27/09/2012
     
Solace
Belinda McKeon
One of our Great Reads You May Have Missed in 2012. With some absolutely stunning rave reviews from established authors Solace is as tender as it is heartbreaking and a brilliant debut from an exciting new voice in Irish fiction....
Format: Paperback - Released: 26/04/2012
     
The Perfect Location
Kate Forster
One of our Great Reads You May Have Missed in 2012. Three glamorous actresses gliding through a life lived on the silver screen. One Hollywood Blockbuster. An intricate web of passionate pasts, addictions, lovers and secrets, perfect for fans of...
Format: Paperback - Released: 10/05/2012
     
The Absolutist
John Boyne
One of our Great Reads You May Have Missed in 2012. From the hugely successful author of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas comes The Absolutist, a novel that examines the events of the Great War from the perspective...
Format: Paperback - Released: 05/07/2012
     
The Chaperone
Laura Moriarty
One of our Great Reads You May Have Missed in 2012. I am reminded of the 20s musical number "Anything Goes" here, for in "The Chaperone" it certainly does. This is 20s New York, the girl being chaperoned is the...
Format: Paperback - Released: 26/04/2012
     
15 Seconds
Andrew Gross
One of our Great Reads You May Have Missed in 2012. If you love fast-paced, topical thrillers that you simply can't put down, then Andrew Gross and especially 15 Seconds is a great place to go. Pulled over by a...
Format: Paperback - Released: 26/04/2012
     
The Secrets Between Us
Louise Douglas
One of our Great Reads You May Have Missed in 2012. Louise's books (this is her third) go from strength to strength. The Secrets Between Us is an exciting modern day gothic story full of drama, suspense, romance and quite...
Format: Paperback - Released: 24/05/2012
     
A Place Called Armageddon
C. C. Humphreys
One of our Great Reads You May Have Missed in 2012. Meticulous research, brilliant characterisation, compelling storytelling and stunning battle sequences bring this epic novel about one of Western civilisation's most traumatic events, the Fall of Constantinople, to life. From...
Format: Paperback - Released: 29/03/2012
     
Two Cows and a Vanful of Smoke
Peter Benson
One of our Great Reads You May Have Missed in 2012. Sarah Broadhurst is waxing lyrical about this haunting and mysterious coming of age story from an award winning author. It is a tale of adventure with as many...
Format: Paperback - Released: 29/03/2012
     
The Chill of Night
James Hayman
One of our Great Reads You May Have Missed in 2012. Hayman's first novel, 'The Cutting', introduced us to detective Michael McCabe, recently moved to Portland, Maine, with his young daughter. It was a good read but very much...
Format: Paperback - Released: 29/03/2012
     
Women of a Dangerous Age
Fanny Blake
One of our Great Reads You May Have Missed in 2012. Publisher turned author Fanny Blake has written another insightful, funny, addictive read that women will totally understand and men would do well to read in order to learn more...
Format: Paperback - Released: 26/04/2012
     
Absolution
Patrick Flanery
One of our Great Reads You May Have Missed in 2012. Longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award 2012. This is a very confident debut novel that manages to be literary yet a page-turner at the same time. The...
Format: Hardback - Released: 01/03/2012
     
The End of the Wasp Season
Denise Mina
Winner of the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award 2012. One of our Great Reads You May Have Missed in 2012. Barry Forshaw on Denise Mina and P. M. Hubbard... The parallels between...
Format: Paperback - Released: 13/02/2014
     
Last Man in Tower
Aravind Adiga
One of our Great Reads You May Have Missed in 2012. The compelling, complex and multi-layered novel from Aravind Adiga is his first after The White Tiger which won the Booker in 2008. A suspense-filled story of money and...
Format: Paperback - Released: 01/02/2012
     
Life, Death and Vanilla Slices
Jenny Eclair
One of our Great Reads You May Have Missed in 2012. With rave reviews from authors and comedians alike Life, Death and Vanilla Slices from Jenny Eclair, the ultimate Grumpy Old Woman,is a brilliant black comedy. A compelling family drama...
Format: Paperback - Released: 15/08/2013
     
The Thoughts & Happenings of Wilfred Price, Purveyor of Superior Funerals
Wendy Jones
One of our Great Reads You May Have Missed in 2012. This charming and beautifully told debut novel, set in 1920s rural Wales, follows Wilfred Price, a young and emotionally confused undertaker! Strange as the choice of setting and characters...
Format: Paperback - Released: 21/06/2012
     
A Foreign Country
Charles Cumming
One of our Great Reads You May Have Missed in 2012. This is another first-rate crime novel, perfect for fans of John le Carre, from an author who is establishing himself as the pre-eminent writer of the modern spy...
Format: Hardback - Released: 29/03/2012
     
A Perfectly Good Man
Patrick Gale
One of our Great Reads You May Have Missed in 2012. The perfectly good man of the title is a Cornish vicar who is asked, by a wheelchair-bound young man, to witness his suicide. We then follow the vicar's life,...
Format: Paperback - Released: 24/05/2012
     
The House of Silk The New Sherlock Holmes Novel
Anthony Horowitz
One of our Great Reads You May Have Missed in 2012. Shortlisted for the Specsavers National Book Awards 'Crime & Thriller of the Year' 2012. Shortlisted for the Specsavers Bestseller Dagger 2012. The first official new Sherlock Holmes mystery, written...
Format: Paperback - Released: 30/08/2012
     
Birthdays for the Dead
Stuart MacBride
One of our Great Reads You May Have Missed in 2012. Shortlisted for the Specsavers Bestseller Dagger 2012. Grim, gritty and totally compelling, Stuart MacBride draws you in then you are up all night! In this stand alone novel dark...
Format: Paperback - Released: 30/08/2012
     
By Light Alone
Adam Roberts
One of our Great Reads You May Have Missed in 2012. Adam Roberts' new novel is yet another amazing melding of startling ideas and beautiful prose. Set in a New York of the future it nevertheless has echoes of a...
Format: Paperback - Released: 14/06/2012
     
The Somnambulist
Essie Fox
One of our Great Reads You May Have Missed in 2012. Shortlisted for the Specsavers National Book Awards 'New Writer of the Year' 2012. Featured on The TV Book Club on More4 on 12 February 2012. This debut novelist's coming...
Format: Paperback - Released: 05/01/2012
     
Catching the Sun
Tony Parsons
One of our Great Reads You May Have Missed in 2012. A new start for a family in the seedy beauty of Phuket in Thailand, set against man-made and natural disasters. Full of trademark Parsons characters that are fully formed,...
Format: Paperback - Released: 07/06/2012
     
Brighton Belle A Mirabelle Bevan Mystery
Sara Sheridan
One of our Great Reads You May Have Missed in 2012. Brighton Rock mixed with Charlotte Gray and a twist of Agatha Christie make for the perfect recipe in this new post WW2 crime series. Mirabelle Bevan worked...
Format: Paperback - Released: 18/06/2012
     
The Last Summer
Judith Kinghorn
May 2012 MEGA Debut of the Month. One of our Great Reads You May Have Missed in 2012. An enchanting, sweeping debut of big storytelling, of social and political change spanning the...
Format: Paperback - Released: 26/04/2012
     
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See ALL Featured Books (with opening extracts) in this category
  

Each year thousands of new titles are published and each month we select around 60 that we feel our members and browsers will enjoy as much as we do.

More often than not they are not the obvious bestsellers but bubbling under and debuts.

Below, after much debate in the office, and the help of our resident book experts Sarah Broadhurst and Sue Baker, are the ones we think are the best of the year.

Almost all of them are available in a selection of formats including eBooks for both kindle and iPad.

So, browse away and make sure you haven't missed out on our 'must reads' of 2012.

Don't forget too, that it's worth checking out other areas of the Lovereading site for little gems that we've featured over the last year.

As well as our unrivalled selections of fiction, over 2012 we have added non fiction expert reviews to make Lovereading the one stop shop for finding your next read in whatever format you choose. Here are some suggestions to take a peek at: For armchair sports books there’s nowhere better than our Sports Books selection, if it's topicality you're looking for then take a look at The Real World or if it's History or Popular Science then we can guide you in those areas too.

For Home birds we have Cookery and Gardening. Finally, if you're still stuck then our most visited area of the site is a must for you to look at - Book Awards - it's positively choking with stunning reads.

John O'Farrell 
Wendy Jones 
Judith Kinghorn 
Rosie Thomas 
James Hayman 
S. J. Parris 
Aravind Adiga 
Tony Parsons 
Will Wiles 
Sara Sheridan 
Elizabeth Noble 
Edward St. Aubyn 
Fanny Blake 
Peter Benson 
Lynn Shepherd 
Ami McKay 
Victoria Hislop 
Louise Douglas 
Kate Forster 
Laura Moriarty 
John Boyne 
Cath Staincliffe 
Sebastian Fitzek 
Belinda McKeon 
Hannah Richell 
Tilly Bagshawe 
Trisha Ashley 
Patrick Flanery 
Catherine Alliott 
C. C. Humphreys 
Patrick Ness 
Andrew Gross 
Charles Cumming 
Denise Mina 
Patrick Gale 
Essie Fox 
Anthony Horowitz 
Adam Roberts 
Stuart MacBride 
http://www.lovereading.co.uk/genre/y12/2012-Great-Reads-.html
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