Peter Cunningham's new novel, Consequences of the Heart, will be published in October

Because choosing a summer holidays book for a 12-year-old child can be a problem, it's a pleasure to come across Michael Smith's After The Darkness (adlib, £6.99 in UK). Set in wartime France, the story tells of a Jewish family fleeing to Paris in 1942 and heading south. The events in which they are enmeshed still reverberate two generations later. Smith's natural gift for storytelling is delivered in clear and often sensuous prose. The moving plight of children caught up in the nightmare world created by adults is memorable.