Eleanor Tucker is an author, screenwriter, journalist and speaker who began her career as a beauty journalist before expanding into parenting and lifestyle. Her new novel Turn Back Time is about a Gen X beauty journalist given the chance to look 20 years younger, with hilarious and dramatic consequences. She shares her three favourite holiday reads.

Here are her three must-pack holiday reads:

Wherever I travel, I’m always on the lookout for birds and using my Merlin app to identify them, while at the same time looking for fiction that’s page-turning enough to make me forget about day-to-day life. These three books do both jobs perfectly.

The Life-Affirming Magic of Birds by Charlie Bingham

I grew up in a family of birdwatchers and have come back to it in middle age. Charlie is quite right, they are life-affirming and this book captures exactly why. Part memoir, part nature guide, it follows her around the UK, weaving in life lessons from 12 different species along the way. The perfect holiday read: it will make you put your phone down and look up.

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

This could well be my favourite book of all time. It follows Ursula Todd, born on a snowy night in 1910, as she dies and is reborn across the sweep of 20th-century history. I love books that play around with timelines, and my next novel does just that (watch this space!). Kate does it so well and this is a book you think about long after the last page. 

Yellowface by R.F. Kuang

This book was very close to home, in the best possible way. As an author and journalist who is active on social media, there is a lot of familiar territory in here. It’s about a white author who steals her Asian friend’s unpublished manuscript and publishes it as her own. It’s funny, uncomfortable and razor sharp. I couldn’t put it down.

Eleanor’s latest fiction book Turn Back Time is out now.