Kia ora and welcome to the Reading Doctor! Each week, literary critic and devoted reader Dr Louise recommends books to us on a particular theme, or responds to reader questions.

Send us your questions for her by emailing: communications@read-nz.org

Our third prescription for 2022 features novels that feature brothers - a companion to last week's list of novels that explore the special relationship that is sisterhood.

Brothers

- Upon his release from a juvenile work farm, Emmett returns home to pick up his younger brother on the way to California and a new life, in The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles, until two friends knock them off course.

- A dark and comic Western by Patrick De Witt, The Sisters Brothers describes the misadventures of two assassins, Charlie and Eli, as they track down a prospector accused of stealing from their fearsome boss.

- Walter is eclipsed by his golden-boy brother, Daniel, until a turning point during the summer of 1972 when he’s 15 and his brother faces a cruel death, in The Short History of a Prince by Jane Hamilton.

- After feeling the intimations of mortality, a notoriously reclusive author gathers his three estranged sons together in & Sons by David Gilbert, in an effort to account for the past and craft a legacy for the future.

- The last novel written by Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov is a philosophical novel set in 19^th-century Russia, hinging on an act of patricide.

- Born in Ethiopia in 1954, conjoined twins Marion and Shiva are left alone when their mother dies in childbirth, in Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese; the changing political environment of Ethiopia and the practice of medicine will shape their lives.

- A semi-autobiographical coming of age story, Family Love by Akhil Sharma describes 8-year-old Ajay, a recent immigrant to New York, and the effects of the life-changing accident which befalls his older brother.

- A novel about three brothers, set in contemporary Scotland, East Fortune by James Runcie begins when a young man steps in front of a car in a deliberate act of suicide, leaving behind a driver wracked with guilt.