Armada by Ernest Cline
“I was staring out of the classroom window and daydreaming of adventure when I spotted the flying saucer.” Zack is only weeks away from leaving school, and he can’t wait. He’s disturbed, however, that nobody else saw the flying saucer. Strangest of all, it’s a saucer he recognises. “I was looking at a Sobrukai Glaive, one of the fighter ships piloted by the alien bad guys in Armada, my favourite videogame.” Zack revisits the journals left by his dead father, another gaming nerd, who had a wild theory that the entire videogame industry was secretly under the control of the US military. Cline’s last novel, Ready Player One, was snapped up by Steven Spielberg (the movie equivalent of a royal warrant). Yes, this is an entire novel about videogames and their players. Hard work if this is not your thing.
Century, 345pp, £12.99. To buy this book for £11.69, visit thetimes.co.uk/bookshop or call 0845 2712134
The Seed Collectors by Scarlett Thomas
Bryony, Fleur and Clem are cousins, united by the strange fact that their mothers were botanists who mysteriously disappeared while searching for a miracle plant. At the beginning of this delightful compound of fantasy and traditional family saga they are drawn together again, by the death of Great Aunt Oleander (all family members have botanical names). Oleander was once a guru to troubled celebrities; now that she has gone, Fleur is left to run her sanctuary, Namaste House. Bryony is an estate agent, borderline alcoholic, mother of two, and married to James, who writes a newspaper column, “Natural Dad”. To everyone in her unhappy extended family, Oleander has bequeathed a seed pod — what does this portend? It’s a modern fairy-tale, with flashes that are savagely funny.
Canongate, 417pp, £14.99. To buy this book for £13.49, visit thetimes.co.uk/bookshop or call 0845 2712134
The Looking Glass House by Vanessa Tait
Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland is 150 years old this year and the history of how it came to be is now almost as famous as the novel itself. The book was inspired by Alice Liddell, the ten-year-old daughter of the Dean of Christ Church, Oxford. Was Charles Dodgson (Carroll’s real name) in love with the child? Vanessa Tait is the great-granddaughter of the real Alice, and her moving and original novel is partly informed by family tradition. It is told from the point of view of that most typically Victorian figure, the governess. Mary Prickett is dazzled by the glamour of life in the Liddell’s house in Oxford, but horribly aware that she is poor and plain, and struggling with the fact that she doesn’t like little Alice. The only person to pay Mary any attention is the kindly, eccentric Mr Dodgson, and she begins to dream of him as her passport to a new life.
Bantam, 320pp, £20. To buy this book for £13.49, visit thetimes.co.uk/bookshop or call 0845 2712134