QUICK READS  | Daily Mail Online

This year is the 15th anniversary of the Quick Reads literacy initiative which targets the nearly nine million people in this country who find reading difficult, feel too busy to read a full-length novel or have difficulty accessing books.

Generously supported by novelist Jojo Moyes, this year’s specially published collection of short reads, all priced at £1 or available through public libraries, has a stellar round-up of authors and subjects.

Oyinkan Braithwaite, whose bestselling My Sister, The Serial Killer thrilled and shocked in equal measure, contributes another blackly funny and original drama in The Baby Is Mine (Atlantic).

In Lagos, Nigeria, an unfaithful young man, thrown out by his lover, ends up back at his aunt’s where he becomes dragged into a dispute about who is the real mother of a baby boy.

Louise Candlish confirms her talent for domestic noir with The Skylight (Simon & Schuster), a creepy account of Simone, a paranoid woman spying on her love rival neighbour and taking drastic action to keep her man.

Saving The Day (Arrow) by Katie Fforde is the uplifting story of Allie, at a low point in her work and love life, who gets a job in a cafe that’s in danger of closing. Will Allie’s attempts to save it also prove the tonic she needs to kick-start her own life? Another delicately balanced, touching tale from bestselling Fforde.

We’re in tougher territory with Khurrum Rahman’s The Motive (Harper Collins) where we are introduced to his Hounslow dope dealer Jay Qasim who senses rich pickings at a student party, but is compromised when his best friend and policeman, Idris, arrives to investigate an act of violence.

Detective Roy Grace, recently the star of his own TV series, holds centre stage in Peter James’s Wish You Were Dead (Macmillan), in which the policeman and his family leave their familiar Brighton streets to holiday in a remote French chateau where they find their lives in danger — but why? Could make an episode in itself.

And finally, an abridged edition of Caitlin Moran’s feminist manifesto How To Be A Woman (Ebury) is a welcome reminder of her taboo-busting, no-holds-barred discussion of growing up in a chaotic home in the West Midlands and establishing herself as a successful and distinctive writer.

For more information visit readingagency.org.uk