Top 10 Fruity Fiction books – with Flawsome! Drinks

James Henry Trotter lives with two ghastly hags.

Aunt Sponge is enormously fat with a face that looks boiled and Aunt Spiker is bony and screeching.
He’s very lonely until one day something peculiar happens…
At the end of the garden, a peach starts to grow and GROW AND GROW. Inside that peach are seven very unusual insects – all waiting to take James on a magical adventure.
But where will they go in their GIANT PEACH, and what will happen to the horrible aunts if they stand in their way?
There’s only one way to find out…

Fifteen-year-old Alex doesn’t just like ultra-violence – he also enjoys rape, drugs and Beethoven’s ninth. He and his gang of droogs rampage through a dystopian future, hunting for terrible thrills. But when Alex finds himself at the mercy of the state and subject to the ministrations of Dr Brodsky and the mind-altering treatment of the Ludovico Technique, he discovers that fun is no longer the order of the day.

The basis for Stanley Kubrick’s notorious 1971 film, A Clockwork Orange is both a virtuoso performance from an electrifying prose stylist and a serious exploration of the morality of free will.

On the eve of her ninth birthday, Rose Edelstein bites into her mother’s homemade lemon-chocolate cake and discovers she has a magical gift: she can taste her mother’s emotions in the slice. All at once her cheerful, can-do mother tastes of despair and desperation. Suddenly, and for the rest of her life, food becomes perilous. Anything can be revealed at any meal.

Rose’s gift forces her to confront the truth behind her family’s emotions – her mother’s sadness, her father’s detachment and her brother’s clash with the world. But as Rose grows up, she learns that there are some secrets even her taste buds cannot discern.

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake is about the pain of loving those whom you know too much about, and the secrets that exist within every family. At once profound, funny, wise and sad, this is a novel to savour.

This is the story of Jeanette, adopted and brought up by her mother as one of God’s elect. Zealous and passionate, she seems destined for life as a missionary, but then she falls for one of her converts.

At sixteen, Jeanette decides to leave the church, her home and her family, for the young woman she loves. Innovative, punchy and tender, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is a few days ride into the bizarre outposts of religious excess and human obsession.

Faith. Secret. Magic. Murder…?

Vianne Rocher has settled down. Lansquenet-sous-Tannes, the place that once rejected her, has finally become her home. With Rosette, her youngest child, she runs her chocolate shop in the square, talks to her friends on the river, is part of the community. Even Reynaud, the priest, has become a friend.

But when old Narcisse, the florist, dies, leaving a parcel of land to Rosette and a written confession to Reynaud, the life of the sleepy village is once more thrown into disarray. Then the opening of a mysterious new shop in the place of the florist’s across the square – one that mirrors the chocolaterie, and has a strange appeal of its own – seems to herald a change: a confrontation, a turbulence – even, perhaps, a murder…

What will the wind blow in today?

Industrial sabotage spills over into murder. Bruno, chief of police must balance tradition and progress while bringing a killer to justice in the second instalment in this mouthwatering series of mysteries. Just before dawn one summer morning, Bruno is summoned by the wail of the siren in the little town of St Denis in the Perigord. A fire is raging in a local barn and spreading to the surrounding fields. When Bruno arrives at the scene, the smell of petrol leaves no doubt: it was arson. The barn belongs to an agricultural research company experimenting with genetically modified crops – an unpopular move in deeply traditional St Denis. Meanwhile, a Californian producer wants to set up a wine-making business in the valley.

Despite the money and jobs this would bring, many fear it would destroy their town. When a violent death follows the crop burning, it looks as though someone is prepared to do anything to stop the scheme. Bruno will have to draw on all his local knowledge to reach the truth.Show less

When she is given a murder case to solve, it seems fairly straightforward. The client admits she killed her husband and wants to plead guilty. Despite this, there is something about her story that doesn’t quite add up. As Alison digs deeper and gets closer to the truth her own secrets and past come back to haunt her.

She is threatened by someone who wants her to face up to what she has done and wants to make sure she loses everything as a consequence.

The bestselling psychological thriller from Louise Doughty Yvonne Carmichael has a high-flying career, a beautiful home and a good marriage. But when she meets a stranger she is drawn into a passionate affair. Keeping the two halves of her life separate seems easy at first. But she can’t control what happens next.

Faith Jackson fixes herself up with a great job in TV and the perfect flatshare. But neither is that perfect – and nor are her relations with her overbearing, though always loving family.

Furious and perplexed when her parents announce their intention to retire back home to Jamaica, Faith makes her own journey there, where she is immediately welcomed by her Aunt Coral, keeper of a rich cargo of family history.

Through the weave of her aunt’s storytelling a cast of characters unfolds stretching back to Cuba and Panama, Harlem and Scotland, a story that passes through London and sweeps through continents.

Spanning her last five collections and bringing together her finest work from the past fifteen years, this new selection of Alice Munro’s stories infuses everyday lives with a wealth of nuance and insight.
Beautifully observed and remarkably crafted, written with emotion and empathy, these stories are nothing short of perfection.

A masterclass in the genre, from an author who deservedly lays claim to being one of the major fiction writers of our time.