What ails the Great British reading public this month? Matt wonders:

I am soon to be a father for the first time – can the Book Doctor recommend anything that will help me know what to expect?

Firstly, glad to hear that you are perpetuating your line – we hope your offspring values books as much as you do, and we hope that you can put all them out of reach until that point is reached, as no-one likes rogue crayon on their lovely library. Anyway, the serious answer would be to turn to the ‘What to Expect’ series, which is perfect for your needs – I am thinking What to Expect – the First Year would be a logical point to start, one of a series that culminates in the much-loved What to Expect – when your twenty-four year old layabout refuses to leave home (OK, so that’s not available… yet).

When you need some light relief, then turn to Night of the Living Dad, by Sam Delaney – and take consolation from the fact that however chaotic your parenting, it can’t be worse than his.

NEXT! Vic cables us to say:

I have just finished re-reading Life of Pi and am in search of something similarly fantastical – any ideas?

Hmmm, a wide-ranging brief, that, but I am sure we can come up with something, though I can’t promise actual tigers. How about a monkey instead? In Red Earth and Pouring Rain, by Vikram Chandra, the gods of poetry and death descend on a house in India to vie for the soul of a wounded monkey. A bargain is struck: the monkey must tell a story, and if he can keep his audience entertained, he shall live. The Sunday Times said of it: ‘A dazzling first novel written with such originality and intensity as to be not merely drawing on myth but making it.’

Also with a hint of the simian about it we have Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard. It’s the delightful story of Sampath Chawla, bored post-office clerk and dreamer, who takes to the branches of a secluded guava tree in search of the contemplative life – only to find something rather different . . . (hopefully a monkey).

Now, if re-incarnation is your bag, with liberal doses of hellish visions, you could check out the Richard and Judy-selected The Gargoyle, by Andrew Davidson. The nameless and beautiful narrator is driving along a dark road when he is distracted by what seems to be a flight of arrows. He crashes into a ravine and wakes up in a burns ward, undergoing the tortures of the damned. His life is over – he is now a monster. But in fact it is only just beginning. One day, Marianne Engel, a wild and compelling sculptress of gargoyles, enters his life and tells him that they were once lovers in medieval Germany. In her telling, he was a badly burned mercenary and she was a nun and a scribe who nursed him back to health in the famed monastery of Engelthal. As she spins her tale, and relates equally mesmerising stories of deathless love in Japan, Greenland, Italy and England, he finds himself drawn back to life – and, finally, to love. Read a review over at Bookgeeks

Lastly, there’s the cleverly titled The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall. Eric Sanderson wakes up in a place he doesn’t recognise, unable to remember who he is. All he has left are journal entries recalling Clio, a perfect love now gone. So begins a thrilling adventure that will send Eric and his cynical cat Ian on a search for the Ludovician, the force that is threatening his life, and Dr Trey Fidorus, the only man who knows its secrets.

So, we hope gargoyles, monkeys, cynical cats, gods and devils satisfy your need for the fantastical. If they don’t, we’re not sure what that says about you.

NEXT! Sally, thinking ahead to her hols:

Before I head off on holiday in the middle of nowhere, can The Book Doctor recommend anything lively to keep me company?

I infer from this you are vacationing in some bland, featureless expanse, necessitating much mental stimulation. How about a lively thriller? Both Child 44, by Tom Rob Smith, and Free Agent, Jeremy Duns are books which will keep you entertained to the very last page.

For a different kind of stimulation, you could turn to the puzzles of Scarlett Thomas in The End of Mr. Y and PopCo – these are ingenious, engaging books that will exercise all your mental muscles with codes and ciphers, ancient mysteries and modern conspiracies. Read a review of PopCo on Bookgeeks.

You can’t get much livelier than the kerfuffle that kicks off in Booker-prize winning Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre – the riotous adventures of Vernon Gregory Little in small town Texas and beachfront Mexico mark one of the most spectacular, irreverent and bizarre débuts of the 21st century so far. For some more gentle escapism, you could check out Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon, of which Liberty is the most recent.

NEXT! Bella is getting geared up for Nu Yawk and needs some appropriate reading matter:

I’m off to New York and hoping you can recommend some reading before I go? Have already had Richard Yates, the new Edward Rutherford, Safran-Foer and Paul Auster and Maynard and Jennica suggested. Can you think of anything else?

Before you hit the Big Apple, you might also condsider John Wray’s Lowboy: in the tunnels beneath New York a young man is missing. With each passing minute he heads deeper underground, further from the world of light and reason and closer to the moment of his great surrender. Above ground Ali Lateef of the NYPD is assigned the case. The boy’s mother Violet is reluctant to help and Emily, Lowboy’s girlfriend and only confidante, appears to have vanished too. Can Lateef find Lowboy before it’s too late? Read a review on Bookgeeks, as well as an interview with author John Wray.

Lastly, set in New York, we have Either Side of Winter, by Benjamin Markovits – in Fall we see the tentative beginnings of an unlikely romance – between schoolteacher Amy and drifting former graduate, Charles. In Winter we hear how her colleague Howard learns, seventeen years too late, that he has a daughter following a brief fling with collegemate Annie. Spring and Summer tell the story of his daughter’s friend Rachel’s relationships with her literature teacher, Stuart, and her dying father Reuben.

Bon voyage, Bella – this is the Book Doctor signing off…

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