Words worth

To misquote Martha and the Vandellas: summer's here and the time is right for reading on the beach. Publishers everywhere are ready to sell books perfect to be smeared with suntan lotion and gritted with sand. Here are some suggestions for your holiday mini-library. Some titles are new, others slightly older. You will plunge into some and emerge a fortnight later. Others suit the occasional dip. All should help you survive sunburn. Or, if you lose yourself in the books, they might even be the cause of it.

The Lifeboat by Charlotte Rogan (Virago)

It's been a year of extraordinary debuts such as The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and Patrick Flanery's Absolution, which should be on a Man Booker longlist soon. Arguably the most extraordinary is Rogan's story of an over-packed lifeboat which ferries 39 passengers from a sinking ship. Narrated by the slippery Grace just before the first world war, it traces the relief, fear, and gradual disintegration of the survivors. Thrilling and chilling, The Lifeboat is a page-turner and a thought-provoking meditation on faith, death and love.

The Red Chamber by Pauline A. Chen (Virago)

Pauline Chen has re-imagined Cao Xueqin's epic of 18th-century Chinese literature, Dream of the Red Chamber. Having cut Cao's 2,500 pages down to size (496), Chen focuses her attention on Lin Daiyu, a young girl transplanted from her home in southern China to her mother's wealthy relatives in Beijing. There she falls for her charismatic cousin Baoyu, learns to survive in the highly competitive female society and finds her own identity. Chen has fashioned an enthralling new narrative out of classic material.

Five on a Treasure Island by Enid Blyton (Hodder and Stoughton)