The Skeleton Key: A family reunion ends in murder; the Sunday Times top ten bestseller

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Especially for Nell, who is an obsession for a whole community of people who are enthralled with treasure hunts. Erin Kelly is the Sunday Times bestselling author of The Poison Tree, The Sick Rose, The Burning Air, The Ties That Bind, He Said/She Said, Stone Mothers and Broadchurch: The Novel, inspired by the mega-hit TV series. I was compelled at first but then things just seemed to get bogged down and I lost interest quite a bit.

As obsessions and conspiracy theories went, the idea that Eleanor’s pelvic bone was actually Elinor’s pelvic bone wasn’t that far a stretch. The prize of The Golden Bones was a literal set of golden bones which were worth lots of money to motivated – or crazed – Bonehunters. Indeed Kafka blamed his writing – “the imminent possibility of great moments which would tear me open” – for his sleeplessness. I was intrigued by the premise of the story and the title but in halfway through it changed direction and the storyline wasn’t what I was expecting. If you enjoy books drenched in suspense with characters you can never quite be certain of, you're going to love reading The Skeleton Key.A book, whose success is now being honoured with a documentary film and a special edition release which has prompted the resurgence of all the crazed obsessive fans, also known as the “bone hunters” who are determined to discover all of the bones scattered across England, led to all the family members being reunited under one roof in a very long time, and caused all the secrets and skeletons that have been buried under lies and deception for many years to finally be unearthed and uncovered. Normally, this might have been a DNF title for me because it's much more about family dynamics than about a book and the magic it creates, but Kelly kept me hooked. The Churchers and the Lallys are not putting the fun in dysfunctional, but there’s plenty of dysfunction to go around. It also didn't help that there was Eleanor who was sometimes Nell who was sometimes a child and sometimes not (depending on timeline) and there was Elinore who is NOT Eleanor and who is sometimes a fictional character and sometimes a golden skeleton.

Everyone is dreadful and especially everyone in the art world is dreadful: it's wonderfully full of suppressed rage and resentment. Part picture book, part treasure hunt, Sir Frank Churcher created a fairy story about Elinore, a murdered woman whose skeleton was scattered all over England. Joanna Quinn, a creative writing teacher, has gone big with her first novel, following the fortunes of the Seagraves from 1919 to 1945. There was a real, worldwide craze for armchair treasure hunt books in the 1980s, kicked off by the publication of the massively illustrated puzzle/story book Masqueradeby Kit Williams in 1979.The Whalebone Theatre is a grand story, sensitively told; Quinn is surely capable of so much more, if she can only bring herself to break a few more bones on her stage. Her best friend, Jay, is devoted to the art of flamenco but his teacher is almost completely blind, and thus can’t help him with the fact that his dancing is an embarrassing mess. In this new digital age there will be a new challenge via an app of clues that will lead to skeleton keys. For Darrieussecq, Kafka is the “patron saint of insomnia” and his claustrophobic waking nightmares communicate the horror of lying awake at 4 am every night, your mind teeming with thoughts and words, while others sleep.

Vince is optimistic about our chances of successfully managing the massive dislocation caused by warming of 4C, and does not dwell on the alternative: a world that does not cope with the displacement of billions of people.Xavier Marx and the Missing Masterpieces by Hilary Genga and Sean Cronin is the latest in a long line of treasure hunt picture books.