New chapters:
Club Avandra asked award-winning journalist, author and columnist Polly Vernon for her three must-pack holiday reads.
‘For the last year I’ve only read Jilly Cooper. I needed a palate cleanse from all the mediocre crap out there. I’m literally doing the whole of her back catalogue from Appassionata onwards, but if I really had to choose my favourite it would be Rivals. Butthe Man Who Made Husbands Jealous and Pandora are underrated gems from the Rutshire Chronicles.
I adore the Cazalet Chronicles by Elizabeth Jane Howard (my favourite is The Light Years). Sweeping and epic – they follow the fortunes of this posh but utterly lovely family from the war, on. You really get involved with the characters and watch them grow, screw up, rehabilitate themselves, find happiness. Gorgeous stuff.
The Bryant & May books by Christopher Fowler are my absolute favourite procedural detective stories (especially Full Dark House). A couple of spectacular septuagenarian London coppers, who work through the twistiest, turniest mysteries, which are all embedded in the story of London itself.
Polly Vernon’s new book: How the Female Body Works: (In All Its Wild, Miraculous Glory) is out now.
