The very best summer reads

Just when the long summer holidays are here my fearless teenage son has gone and toppled ten feet off a Warwickshire hill on his mountain bike. As well as his wounded pride, he’s broken his collarbone in three places and is now out of action for the entire summer. No sailing. No skateboarding. Certainly no biking. As the lovely staff nurse in the children’s ward told him: “Well, you could always try and get ahead with your GCSE coursework.” He wasn’t impressed.

As well as watching DVDs and playing on the Xbox, he’s got plenty of time on his hands for reading. I’ve just reviewed some of the summer’s best fiction for a newspaper – so while he lies with his right shoulder strapped up in a sling he’s got some cracking books at his bedside. Here are my top three.

It’s eight years since Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s million-selling novel The Shadow of the Wind was first published. But his new book, The Angel’s Game (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £18.99), is here at last. And well worth the wait. In a spooky, abandoned mansion in the heart of 1920s Barcelona, David Martin earns his living writing sensationalist novels. Zafón is a fantastic storyteller and this stylish novel, half romance, half literary thriller, is completely gripping.

For a bitter-sweet love story, try David Nicholls’ One Day (Hodder & Stoughton, £12.99). Nicholls trained as an actor before switching to writing - his first novel, Starter for Ten, was made into a film starring James McAvoy and Rebecca Hall. His third book is a funny “will they, won’t they?” romance tracing the relationship between university friends Emma and Dexter on the same day each year for 20 years. I read this book in one go and it’s a joy.

Paolo Giordano sounds like a complete genius. He’s 27, a high-powered Italian physicist and a writer to boot. His debut novel, The Solitude of Prime Numbers (Doubleday, £12.99), has sold more than a million copies worldwide and won a clutch of literary awards along the way. His book tells the intertwining stories of Alice and Mattia, two children whose lives have been scarred by tragedy.

I’ve got a feeling though that my action-mad teenager is more likely to choose Sandstealers (HarperPress, £6.99) by Ben Brown. One of the BBC’s most experienced foreign correspondents, Brown has written a highly-autobiographical thriller. Set against the backdrop of Bosnia, Chechnya and post-liberation Iraq, it’s the story of renowned war reporter Danny Lowenstein, who gets ambushed by gunmen on the way to an interview. A fast-moving book that oozes authenticity – from the “lucky boots” Danny always wears to the intense friendships he forms with his fellow adrenalin-addicted journalists. Adrenalin-addicted? It sounds right up my son’s street.