Like Father, Like Son? 12 stories about boys and their dads – Edited by Tony Bradman

This unique short story collection explores the relationship between fathers and sons with comedy, wisdom and page-turning entertainment.  You will find devoted dads, loving sons, dads with dark secrets and sons with dilemmas of their own.  There is even a digital dad from the future.  Featuring twelve brand-new stories from the best contemporary writers such as Farrukh Dhondy, Ron Koertge, Terence Blcker, Tim Wynne-Jones and Francis McCrickard, this superb collection will give you much to recognise, enjoy and think about, whether you are a son or the father of one!

The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penny

Mrs. Ross, the narrator, is a Scottish pioneer and ex-asylum inmate who discovers the body of a French trapper, murdered and scalped in his house near Dove river. Her beautiful, adopted 17 year old son Francis has disappeared, and so has the victim's money and a piece of bone which may prove the "Indians" had a written culture. A half-breed Cherokee trapper is arrested and beaten up to try nad force a confession out of him, but the magistrate has more compassion than the fur-trading company to whom all are in thrall, and releases him. Mrs Ross and Parker embark on an epic journey, tracking her son and another, fainter set of footprints, across snow and ice. In their wake are more Company hunters, bent on tracking them down...
It's about racial prejudice, mother love, greed, illicit passion and what happens to people when they spend too much time alone. Whether you like detective novels or literary fiction it's unmissable.

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

This is an absolutely brilliant book depicting the lives of two extraordinary Afghani women who are thrown together under highly unusual circumstances. The book follows their struggle against extreme evil, hardship and victimisation. Mariam and Laila show incredible strength as women in a country torn apart by vicious war, and the untoward cruelty suffered by them at the hands of a shared husband whom both were forced to marry, is heartbreaking. It is almost impossible to imagine that this amazing story was set, for the most part of it, in the 1990s. It is such an insight into the country of Afghanistan and this is a book that will stay with you long after you read the last page. Truly one of a kind.