Godchildren by Nicholas Coleridge (Orion, £6.99)
A stunning novel of wealth, power and revenge this begins in the mid-1960s and ends in 2000, following, through more than 700 pages, the lives of the six Brand godchildren.
It is their godfather, Marcus, the tycoon, who controls the action and, unknown to them, their actions.
Over the years, the six have their lives tangled in a web of sex, glamour and business that Marcus secretly and intricately creates.
He weaves a web that is hard for them to disentangle and harder still for them to break. All the time the reader is given the impression that he is testing them to find a successor.
At first the children feel sorry for Marcus, a bereaved, childless husband who was left a fortune when his first wife was killed in a mysterious road accident.
Then, it appears that the accident was as dodgy as the way in which he built his huge international empire.
As the godchildren become hooked on a life fuelled by wine, cigars, decadent parties and sexual frolicking, Coleridge hooks the reader with fun, intrigue and beautifully-written plot, which has a wicked twist at the very end.
Beverly Abbs
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