MUST READS  | Daily Mail Online

SHE SAID

by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey (Bloomsbury £9.99, 320pp)

In 2017, two investigative reporters from the New York Times began researching a story about Harvey Weinstein.

Rumours had long been circulating about his treatment of women when Kantor contacted Rose McGowan about a tweet in which she accused an unnamed producer of raping her. More victims came forward, but most felt unable to speak on the record, terrified of Weinstein’s power or silenced by restrictive non-disclosure agreements.

She Said is a gripping account of Kantor and Twohey’s patient digging to build the case against Weinstein, who was convicted of rape earlier this year.

The story was culture-changing, ‘pushing women all over the world to speak up about similar experiences’.

THE NICKEL BOYS 

by Colson Whitehead (Fleet £8.99, 224pp)

Colson White-head’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Underground Railroad, told the story of Cora, a 15-year-old enslaved girl. The Nickel Boys, awarded a second Pulitzer, tackles a subject more recent than slavery but just as heart-wrenching. Growing up in Tallahassee, in the Sixties, Elwood Curtis is a bookish boy, inspired by the speeches of Martin Luther King.

A cruel stroke of fate finds him convicted for a crime he did not commit and he is sent to Nickel, a sadistic reform school whose terrible history is revealed decades later by an archaeology student excavating a development site.

Based on a true story, The Nickel Boys is a haunting account of young lives whose promise was cut cruelly short.

FLEISHMAN IS IN TROUBLE 

by Taffy Brodesser- Akner (Wildfire £8.99, 384pp)

When Toby Fleishman married Rachel, he thought it was for life. Rachel, a Manhattan talent agent, earns vastly more than Toby, a hepatologist who puts his own career on the back burner to support her.

When divorce comes, Toby discovers that there is an upside, in the form of innumerable women on dating apps.

But his sexual odyssey comes to an abrupt end when Rachel suddenly vanishes, leaving him in charge of their two children, Hannah and Solly.

Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s bestselling debut novel is an irresistibly perceptive portrait of mid-life marriage — bittersweet, funny and fiercely observant