It’s the beginning of the month and time to look at this month’s offerings from Bookchoice. Described as “the digital book service in your pocket” Bookchoice select eight e-books and audiobooks  for £3.99 a month. Yes, you read that correctly £3.99 a month (payable annually in advance). Every month the Bookchoice team selects a range of titles  – from bestsellers and award-winners to the latest literary hits and sends them direct to your email inbox.  Where books are offered in e-book and audiobook format, the offer isn’t for one or the other – it’s for both!! I subscribed in January and here are the titles for this month.

 E-book only titles

 

The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris

32407. No name, no identity, just a number.

Arriving at Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1942, Lale Sokolov had little idea of the horrors he would encounter in the concentration camp. One of the stronger prisoners, Lale is offered the job of tattooing his fellow captives with numbers, just like his own, wiping away their identity and their humanity.

But even in the darkest of circumstances, light can break through. When a group of young women are transferred to the camp, Lale is charged with redoing their numbers. And with that, he finds his reason to fight for survival – Gita.

 

The Other Half of Happiness by Ayisha Malik

Sofia is having a traditional Muslim wedding, according to her mother. There’s going to be henna, hair oil, and countless aunties drawn into existance by the promise of biryani.

There are, however, a couple of small problems:
1. She’s already married.
2. She’s married to her Irish next-door-neighbour, not the polite Muslim boy her mother had envisioned.
3. He’s not coming to the wedding.

A warm, funny and touching novel, for anyone that’s ever found themselves stuck between the life they want, and the life their family wanted for them.

 

Someone is Watching by Joy Fielding

Private investigator Bailey Carpenter appears to have it all – until one night while on a stakeout she is brutally attacked and violated. Suddenly her everyday life is engulfed in the paranoia that someone is watching. Her attacker could be anyone… including the man inhabiting the apartment across from her whom she has a habit of spying on.

As Bailey struggles to cope with her ordeal, the police make little headway in her case. Taking matters into her own hands, she begins a feverish quest to find the perpetrator and bring him to justice – even if it claims her sanity.

 

Titles in both e-book and audio-book format. 

 

Ma’am Darling by Craig Brown

In the ’50s and ’60s, Princess Margaret was regarded as one of the most elegant and alluring women in the world. Gore Vidal thought she was ‘real royalty’. Pablo Picasso admired her beauty. Peter Sellers was besotted with her.

But over the next twenty years, Margaret became known as a rude, narcissistic, arrogant snob, with whom a dinner party could become a ghastly ordeal. What happened?

Richly detailed and chock-full of laughs, Ma’am Darling is a blistering portrait of Britain’s most infamous royal by its best-loved satirist.

 

Assegai by Wilbur Smith

It is 1906. Leon Courtney, a former Second Lieutenant in the King’s African Rifles, has quit his army career to become a highly successful big-game hunter and safari guide.

But when his uncle – a commander of the British forces in the country – asks Leon to gather intelligence on a powerful German industrialist, he suddenly discovers a plot that could wipe out the British forces – and endanger the woman he loves.

Evocative and expertly-crafted, Assegai vividly brings to life the world of Colonial Africa by a master in his genre.

 

Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer

On an unspoiled stretch of the US coastline lies Area X – a quarantined wilderness, where nothing is as it seems.

A mysterious government agency known as the Southern Reach has sent eleven expeditions into the zone. Most who enter never return; those who do are never the same.

Now, the twelfth expedition – made up of four women – prepares to head into the unknown.

Dreamlike and disorienting, Annihilation is a stunning work of sci-fi unlike anything else you’ve ever read.

 

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

Paradise Pickles & Preserves has maintained that secret world the twins built down by their river.

That place that lies between the vats of banana jam and the frog stained road. That sinks down to the toxic river fish, and rises up to the owl in the eaves of the barn.
That place that could be shattered by their cousin, lying there in her child-sized coffin in her bright yellow bell bottoms.

Roy’s tactile, mesmerising novel, is a meditation on those moments that are preserved forever, even when the world around them turns to rubble. Read her unforgettable debut now, before turning to her long-anticipated follow-up novel, out now.

 

Miracle Brew by Pete Brown

Water – Yeast – Barley – Hops

It doesn’t seem like much.

But from four ingredients, civilization was born; whole cultures, religious practices, global industries have sprung up. From what seems like nothing at all, comes the world’s most popular drink.

Miracle Brew tells the story of beer, and those that have mastered it. It’s stoic farmers in the Maris Otter Mother Field, pubs in Bavaria that smell of smoked bacon, and chirpy, if cold, PR reps in gargantuan breweries.

Pete Brown shows us that each forgotten night in your local boozer is the result of thousands of years of personality and craft.

 

Audio book only titles

 

Stella and Margie by Glenna Thomson

Stella is busy. She’s trying to stage the play she’s spent years writing. But she also has kids, a farmer husband, a house to keep clean. The last thing she needs is her mother-in-law making demands from the guest room.

Margie isn’t as busy as she once was. Not since her fall. But she’s perfectly capable of looking after herself. So the last thing she needs is her daughter-in-law Stella, treating her like a invalid.

But they’re stuck together. And, even though they may not want to admit it, after a while, they might actually like each other.

 

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

At home, Lydia Lee is a bright and confident teenager. Her parents’ favourite child, she is the envy of her brother, Nath, and sister, Hannah. At school, she is quiet and studious. Do the friends that she talks about really exist? Or is she hiding a darker secret?

When Lydia disappears one day, the police insist that she’ll return, just like her mother did once before. But when her body is found in a lake, the Lee family are in turmoil. With secrets to be uncovered and relationships to be torn apart, Lydia’s parents are determined that someone will be held responsible, no matter the cost.

 

On the Java Ridge by Jock Serong

A young refugee and her pregnant mother struggle to stay alive on a boat of asylum seekers. Hundreds of kilometers away, the disillusioned skipper of the Java Ridge ferries thrill-seeking tourists in search of the perfect wave. A tropical storm hits, and fates collide. Meanwhile, in the face of an important Australian election, the inept Minister of Border Security announces a new hard-line policy on border security, prohibiting Australian vessels to engage with foreign vessels… even when it comes to performing rescue.

As the Java Ridge nears the Australian border, political interests clash with the devastation of the refugee crisis.

 

A pretty impressive selection for £3.99 I think. If you want to take a look at Bookchoice you can find them here.  I would like to make it clear that I have no affiliation with Bookchoice, I’m choosing to share this with you, purely because I think it’s a great subscription package.