MUST READS  | Daily Mail Online

NORMANY ’44  

by James Holland (Penguin £9.99, 864 pp)

On June 6, 1944, Britain and the United States launched Operation Overlord, for which land, air and naval forces combined on the French coast in the largest ever amphibious invasion. 

D-Day has inspired innumerable films, which often sanitise the true horror of warfare.

James Holland’s powerful account of the D-Day landings, and the 76 days of bitter fighting that followed, draws on eye-witness testimony of the men and women who were there, to create a vivid image of the conflict: ‘Chaos, noise, flame, smoke, grilling sunshine, stinking sweat, searing fear, billowing blast,’ recalled Lance Corporal Ken Tout of the atmosphere within his tank as it traversed the Normandy landscape.

‘Yet out of this tragedy, a better world did emerge. We must look after it,’ Holland concludes.

THE FOUNDLING  

by Stacey Halls (Manilla £8.99. 384 pp)

On a winter’s day in 1747, Bess Bright waits to hear if London’s Foundling Hospital will take care of her day-old daughter, Clara, the child of a fleeting encounter with a dashing merchant named Daniel Callard who has since died. 

Six years later Bess returns to the hospital to reclaim her daughter, only to find that a woman who gave Bess’s name took Clara away just a day after Bess parted with her.

Refusing to abandon hope, Bess finds a job as a nursemaid for Daniel Callard’s widow, whose daughter, Charlotte is just the age that Clara would have been.

The bestselling second novel from the author of The Familiars is a compelling story of love lost and found in the vividly described setting of Georgian London.

ROUGH MAGIC  

by Lara Prior-Palmer (Ebury £9.99, 274 pp)

When 19-year-old Lara Prior-Palmer decided on a whim to enter the world’s longest horse race, the 1,000km Mongol Derby, she didn’t expect to become the first woman (and youngest ever competitor) to win.

She had left her entry too late to put in the recommended six months’ training or even assemble the proper kit.

Her aunt, the Olympic eventer Lucinda Green, predicted that ‘you won’t make it past day three’.

Lara had been around horses since childhood, but her award-winning memoir explores territory far beyond her epic ride across the Mongolian steppes. 

It is also a funny, beautifully written and bracingly down-to-earth exploration of her own restless nature.