Book hooked

Rodney Root couldn't wait for the next series of Chart Throb. He only existed to have water thrown over him by Calvin and Beryl and everyone ignored him the other nine months of the year.

And Rodney Root isn't the only one. Welcome to Chart Throb – the ultimate pop quest. Ninety five thousand hopefuls. Three judges. Just one winner. And that last guy is always the same – Colin Simms, the genius behind the show. Colin always wins because Colin writes the rules. But this year, as he sits smugly in judgment upon the mingers, clingers and blingers whom he has pre-selected in his carefully scripted 'search' for a star, he has no idea that the rules are changing.

The 'real' is about to be put back into 'reality' television and Colin and his fellow judges (the nation's favourite mum and the other bloke) are about to become ex-factors themselves. With echoes of Americal Idol and a hundred other reality shows echoing through the novel, there's plenty to keep you turning the pages. With Chart Throb Ben Elton, author of Popcorn and Dead Famous returns to blistering comic satire with a savagely hilarious deconstruction of the world of modern television talent shows.

On August 17, 1988, Pak One, the airplane carrying Pakistani dictator General Zia and several top generals, crashed, killing all on board – and despite continued investigation, a smoking gun-mechanical or conspiratorial – has yet to be found.

Mohammed Hanif's outrageous debut novel, A Case of Exploding Mangoes, tracks at least two (and as many as a half-dozen) assassination vectors to their convergence in the plane crash, incorporating elements as diverse as venom-tipped sabres, poison gas, the curses of a scorned First Lady, and a crow impaired by an overindulgence of ripe mangoes. Recent events pushing Pakistan into the worst kind of headlines make A Case of Exploding Mangoes a timely and entertaining read.

Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is abandoned on the filthy streets of eighteenth-century Paris as a baby but grows up to discover that he has an extraordinary gift: a sense of smell more powerful than any other human's. Gradually he learns how to exploit this gift in the art of creating the most sublime perfumes in France.

However there is one perfume he cannot capture: the scent of an innocent young woman. In order to perfect his experiments, he must have this final ingredient – at any cost.

A cult international bestseller, Perfume is a bewitching, darkly humorous fable of desire, obsession and death.

Set in the small Southern town of Maycomb, Alabama, during the Depression, To Kill a Mockingbird follows three years in the life of eight-year-old Scout Finch, her brother Jem, and their father Atticus – three years punctuated by the arrest and eventual trial of a young black man accused of raping a white woman.

Though her story explores big themes, Harper Lee chooses to tell it through the eyes of a child.

The result is a tough and tender novel of race, class, justice, and the pain of growing up. The novel became both an instant bestseller and a critical success when it was first published in 1960. It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1961.

By turns funny, wise, and heartbreaking, To Kill a Mockingbird is one classic that continues to speak to new generations, and deserves to be reread often. All titles available at Vijitha Yapa Bookshop on request.