The Sixth World Book Night, to take place on 23 April, describes the fifteen featured titles as ‘a sensational and diverse lineup of crime, poetry, nonfiction, quick reads, YA, historical fiction and fiction in translation’.
Titles to be given away as part of the annual event span the gamut of war and peace, from Band of Brothers by Stephen E Ambrose to Love Poems by Carol Ann Duffy.
However, to quote the title of the volume featured by Ann Cleeves, it may all be Too Good to be True. As Nikesh Shukla wrote in The Bookseller, ‘much as World Book Night has bravely decided to diversify the types of books offered for its lists... it seems to have left off any Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic writers in 2016. Which is, in my eyes, a sadly wasted opportunity to be truly diverse.’