Recent Books

Not Dark Yet (December 2022)

By Peter Robinson

December 6, 2022

The gruesome double murder at a property developer’s luxury home, with its clear link to the vicious Albanian mafia, should be an open and shut case for Banks and his detectives.  But when they find a cache of spy-cam videos hidden in the house, the investigation pivots to the assault on a young girl that could cast the murders in an entirely different light.

Banks friend Zelda, increasingly uncertain of her future in Britian’s hostile environment, thinks she will be safer in Moldova hunting the men who abducted, raped and enslaved her than she is in the UK.  Her search takes her back to the orphanage where it all began – stirring up the murky waters of the past, and with them danger for everyone.

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo (December 2022)

By Taylor Jenkins Reid

December 6, 2022

Reclusive Hollywood movie icon Evelyn Hugo is finally ready to tell the truth about her glamorous and scandalous life.  But when she chooses unknown magazine reporter Monique Grant for the job, no one is more astounded than Monique herself: Why her? Why now?

Summoned to Evelyn’s luxurious apartment, Monique listens in fascination as the actress tells her story.  From making her way to Los Angeles in the 1950s, to her decision to leave show business in the ’80s, and, of course, the seven husbands along the way, Evelyn unspools a tale of ruthless ambition, unexpected friendship and a great forbidden love.

Monique begins to feel a very real connection to the legendary star, but as Evelyn’s story nears its conclusion, it becomes clear that her life intersects with Monique’s own in tragic and irreversible ways.

Keeping Up Appearances (December 2022)

By Tricia Stringer

December 6, 2022

As tensions simmer in a small country town, three women are going to need more than CWA sausage rolls and can-do community spirit to put things right.

Privacy is hard to maintain in Badara, the kind of small Australian country town where everyone knows everyone else’s business.  So discovers single mum Paige when she and her three children arrive from the city seeking refuge.  Paige’s only respite from child care and loneliness is the Tuesday gym club, where she had feared the judgement of the town matriarchs, but she is met only with generosity and a plethora of baked goods.  Besides, both the brusque Marion and her polished sister-in-law Briony are too busy dealing with their own drama to examine hers.

Well-to-do farmer’s wife and proud mother Briony is in full denial of her family’s troubles, even with her eldest daughter’s marriage in ruins and her son Blake’s recent bombshell.  Suddenly Briony and husband Vince have a full house again – and the piles of laundry aren’t the only dirty linen that’s about to be aired.

For Marion, the unearthing of a time capsule – its contents to be read at the Celebrate Badara weekend – is a disaster.  She was only a teenager when she wrote down those poisonous words, but that doesn’t mean she won’t lose friends and family if they hear what she really thinks of them – especially as the letter reveals their darkest secrets to the world.

When the truth comes out for Badara, keeping up appearances may no longer be an option for anyone…

The Cat Who Caught A Killer (December 2022)

By L T Shearer

December 6, 2022

Meet Conrad.  You’ve never met a cat like him before.

Neither has Lulu Lewis when he walks into her life one summer’s day.  Mourning the recent death of her husband, the former police detective has expected a gentle retirement, quietly enjoying life on her new canal boat, The Lark, and visiting her mother-in-law Emily in a nearby care home.

But when Emily dies suddenly in suspicious circumstances, Lulu senses foul play and resolves to find out what really happened.  And a remarkable cat named Conrad will be with her every step of the way…

The Romantic (November 2022)

By William Boyd

November 27, 2022

Born in 1799, Cashel Greville Ross experiences myriad lives: joyous and devastating, years of luck and unexpected loss.

Moving from County Cork to London, from Waterloo to Zanzibar, Cashel seeks his fortune across continents in war and in peace.  He faces a terrible moral choice in a village in Sri Lanka as part of the East Indian Army.  He enters the world of the Romantic Poets in Pisa.  In Ravenna he meets a woman who will live in his heart for the rest of his days.  As he travels the world as a soldier, a farmer, a felon, a writer, a father, a lover, he experiences all the vicissitudes of life and through the accelerating turbulence of the nineteenth century, he discovers who he truly is.  This is the romance of life itself, and the beating heart of The Romantic.

No Plan B (November 2022)

By Lee Child and Andrew Child

November 27, 2022

Gerrardsville, Colorado.  One tragic event.  Two witnesses.  Two conflicting accounts.

One witness sees a woman throw herself in front of a bus – clearly suicide.

The other witness is Jack Reacher.

And he sees what really happened – a man in grey hoodie and jeans, swift and silent as a shadow, pushing the victim to her death, before grabbing her bag and walking away.

Reacher follows the killer, not knowing that this was no random act of violence.  It is part of something much bigger … a sinister, secret conspiracy, with powerful people on the take, enmeshed in an elaborate plot that leaves no room for error.

If any step is compromised, the threat will have to be quickly and permanently removed.

But when the threat is Reacher, there is no Plan B …

My Darling Daughter (November 2022)

By JP Delaney

November 27, 2022

Out of the blue, Susie Jukes is contacted on social media by Anna, the child she gave up for adoption fifteen years ago.

When they meet, Anna’s home life sounds distinctly strange to Susie, and her husband Gabe.  And when Anna’s adoptive parents seem to overreact to the fact she contacted them at all, Susie becomes convinced that Anna needs her help.

But is Anna’s own behaviour simply what you’d expect from someone recovering from a traumatic childhood?  Or are there other secrets at play here – secrets Susie has also been hiding for the last fifteen years?

Demon Copperhead (November 2022) – Athenaeum Book Club 2023

By Barbara Kingsolver

November 27, 2022

Demon’s story begins with his traumatic birth to a single mother in a single-wide trailer, looking ‘like a little blue prizefighter’.  For the life ahead of him he will need all of that fighting spirit, along with buckets of charm, a quick wit and some unexpected talents, legal and otherwise.

In the southern Appalachian Mountains of Virginia, poverty isn’t an idea, it’s natural as the grass grows.  For a generation growing up in this world, at the heart of the modern opioid crisis, addiction isn’t an abstraction, it’s neighbours, parents and friends.  ‘Family’ could mean love – or reluctant foster care.  For Demon, born on the wrong side of luck, the affection and safety he craves is as remote as the ocean he dreams of seeing one day.  The wonder is in how far he’s willing to travel to try and get there.

Suffused with truth, anger and compassion, Demon Copperhead is an epic tale of love, loss and everything in between.

1989 (November 2022)

By Val McDermid

November 27, 2022

There’s nothing like a killer story …

1989.  The world is changing, and Allie Burns is still on the front line, covering the stories that count.

Although Allie is no longer an investigative journalist, her instincts are sharper than ever.  When she discovers a lead about the exploitation of society’s most vulnerable, Allie is determined to give a voice to those who have been silenced.

As Allie edges closer to exposing the truth, she travels behind the Iron Curtain, to East Berlin on the brink of revolution.  The dark heart of the story is more shocking than she ever imagined.  And to tell it, Allie must risk her freedom and her life …

Lessons (November 2022)

By Ian McEwan

November 27, 2022

When the world is still counting the cost of the Second World War and the Iron Curtain has descended, young Roland Baines’s life is turned upside down, 2,000 miles from his mother’s protective love, stranded at an unusual boarding school, his vulnerability attracts his piano teacher, Miriam Cornell, leaving scars as well as a memory of love that will never fade.

Twenty-five years later Roland’s wife mysteriously vanishes, leaving him alone with their baby son.  He is forced to confront the reality of his rootless existence.  As the radiation from the Chernobyl disaster spreads across Europe he begins a search for answers that looks deep into his family history and will last for the rest of his life.

From the Suez and Cuban Missile crisis and the fall of the Berlin Wall to the Covid pandemic and climate change, Roland sometimes rides with the tide of history but more often struggles against it.  Haunted by lost opportunities, he seeks solace through every possible means – literature, travel, friendship, drugs, sex and politics.  A profound love is cut tragically short.  Then, in his final years, he finds love again in another form.  His journey raises important questions.  Can we take full charge of the course of our lives without damage to others?  How do global events beyond our control shape our lives and our memories?  And what can we learn from the traumas of the past?