These are the books our books editor, Meneesha Govender, received recently. They may be reviewed later
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Orphan X
by Gregg Hurwitz (Michael joseph)
Twelve-year-old Evan was chosen and taken away from the orphanage in which he grew up.
Raised and trained in a top secret programme, Evan goes on to carry out missions in the worst parts of the world – missions his government denies any knowledge of.
But, using everything he learned, Evan disappears from the programme to start a new life. His aim is to help the desperate and the deserving. These people call him when they have nowhere else to turn.
Now someone is on his tail. This person has issues with his past and knows he was once known as Orphan X.
Tess Gerritsen says of the novel: “The most gripping thriller I’ve read in a long, long time.”
And David Baldacci says: “Brilliantly conceived and plotted, Orphan X blows the doors off most of the thrillers I’ve read.”
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Fool Me Once
by Harlan Coben (Penguin Random House)
Former special ops pilot Maya, returns from the war, to find an image on her nanny cam (caught while she was at work): her 2-year-old daughter playing with Maya’s husband Joe.
Only problem is, Maya’s husband was brutally murdered two weeks earlier.
How does Maya explain what she saw? She thought she trusted Joe, now she can’t even trust herself.
To find the answer, Maya must come to terms with dark secrets in her own past before she can face the truth about Joe and herself.
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Switched at Birth
by Jessica Pitchford (Jonathan Ball)
In 1990, two mothers discovered that their sons had been switched after being born at an East Rand hospital.
Facing a dilemma I cannot even begin to imagine, the women had to decide whether to swop the boys back or keep the boys they loved as their own.
In the end, Megs Clinton-Parker and Sandy Dawkins chose nurture over nature. They decided to make their bizarre relationship work, even though they lived in different cities and in different worlds.
The boys, Robin Dawkins and Gavin Clinton-Parker, grew up aware they were living each other’s lives as well as the fact that both their moms were deeply torn.
At the age of 15, Robin decided to claim what was his – almost destroying two families in the process.