I’m sure there will be a deserved fanfare for September novels by Stephen King, Ann Cleeves and Graham Norton, but instead I offer a hard recommend for both Kamila Shamsie’s Best of Friends (Bloomsbury), a beautiful, enchanting story about friendship, set in Pakistan and London over three decades and Kate Atkinson’s Shrines of Gaiety (Double), a compelling, intricate novel about a missing girl, set in Soho in the 1920s. In defence of the beach read: what we get wrong about holiday books.Author Sloane Crosley on nitpicking, religion, and the ‘disgusting ooze’ of social media.Books of the month: From Donal Ryan’s The Queen of Dirt Island to Audrey Schulman’s The Dolphin House.There are some cracking stories, my favourite being the one about the strange intervention of an acid-dolling fake preacher during a night in the outback cells. She also details the sexism, violence, drugs, hanky-panky and crazed fans you would expect a female roadie to have encountered in the 1970s and 1980s. In her memoir, now published in the UK after its Australian launch, she is open about her personal life, which included an abusive parent, run-ins with pimps and a bitter custody battle over her child.

“She tilted her head slightly to one side, and made what I swear was a ‘hmmmmph!’ before she moved on,” recalls Douglas in her highly entertaining memoir Loud: A Life in Rock ‘n’ Roll by the World’s First Female Roadie (HarperCollins).ĭouglas found her calling as a teenager, initially starting out lumping equipment for AC/DC, before going on to work with some of the world’s leading musicians, including Status Quo, Suzi Quatro, Leo Sayer and Neil Diamond (all nice) and the volatile Elton John (“not always gracious”). Australian roadie Tana Douglas may well be the only person ever to be formally introduced to Queen Elizabeth II while wearing Doc Martens boots.

Lessons ian