Toby’s Room – Pat Barker

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Toby's Room - Pat BarkerToby’s Room
Pat Barker

When Toby is reported ‘Missing, Believed Killed’, another secret casts a lengthening shadow over Elinor’s world: how exactly did Toby die – and why? Elinor determines to uncover the truth. Only then can she finally close the door to Toby’s room.

Moving from the Slade School of Art to Queen Mary’s Hospital, where surgery and art intersect in the rebuilding of the shattered faces of the wounded, Toby’s Room is a riveting drama of identity, damage, intimacy and loss. Toby’s Room is Pat Barker’s most powerful novel yet.

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The Secret Supper Club – Dana Bate

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The Secret Supper Club - Dana BateThe Secret Supper Club
Dana Bate

Starter: If twenty-six-year-old Hannah Sugarman had her way, she’d be whipping up carrot cakes and running her culinary empire. Instead, she spends her hours cooking up papers on the financial crisis. It doesn’t help that no one in her life takes her passion seriously – not even her boyfriend.

Main: When her relationship implodes, Hannah decides to jump-start her life by hosting a secret supper club out of her landlord’s flat. Her underground operation presents some problems. Running an unlicensed restaurant out of someone’s home is not, technically speaking, legal.

Dessert: As the success of Hannah’s supper club grows, so do the number of secrets she is forced to keep. Can Hannah keep her pop-up restaurant underground? When mysterious guests turn up for dinner, can she handle the heat? Or will she have to step out of the kitchen? A charming romantic comedy, The Secret Supper Club is a story about finding yourself, fulfilling your dreams, and falling in love along the way.

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Good Reef! – Z. E. Marchant

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Good Reef! - Z. E. Marchant
Good Reef!
Z. E. Marchant

A humorous adventure story about the not-quite end of the world where a bard tries to get home to his wife after deserting from the army, and travels with a pair of suspiciously well-spoken mercenaries in tow.

A general escorts her king to ‘gods know where’ (he’ll know it when he gets there) while a witch and a wizard attempt to solve an age-old magical mystery.

A young girl with the gift of Sight discovers a race of empathic sea people, and their reappearance from behind a mysterious barrier dividing land and sea is coinciding with impending doom.

Together they all trip over history while trying to keep it from repeating itself.

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Gone Girl – Gillian Flynn

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Gone Girl - Gillian FlynnGone Girl
Gillian Flynn

‘What are you thinking, Amy?’

The question I’ve asked most often during our marriage, if not out loud, if not to the person who could answer. I suppose these questions stormcloud over every marriage: ‘What are you thinking? How are you feeling? Who are you? What have we done to each other? What will we do?’

Just how well can you ever know the person you love? This is the question that Nick Dunne must ask himself on the morning of his fifth wedding anniversary when his wife Amy suddenly disappears. The police immediately suspect Nick. Amy’s friends reveal that she was afraid of him, that she kept secrets from him. He swears it isn’t true. A police examination of his computer shows strange searches. He says they aren’t his. And then there are the persistent calls on his mobile phone. So what really did happen to Nick’s beautiful wife? And what was in that half-wrapped box left so casually on their marital bed?

In this novel, marriage truly is the art of war…

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The Fault In Our Stars – John Green

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The Fault In Our Stars - John GreenThe Fault in Our Stars
John Green

“I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, then all at once.”

Despite the tumour-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel’s story is about to be completely rewritten.

Insightful, bold, irreverent, and raw, The Fault in Our Stars is award-winning author John Green’s most ambitious and heartbreaking work yet, brilliantly exploring the funny, thrilling, and tragic business of being alive and in love.

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With or Without You – Domenica Ruta

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With or Without You - Domenica RutaWith or Without You
Domenica Ruta

Domenica Ruta grew up in Danvers, Massachusetts, in a ramshackle, rundown, trash-filled house with her mother, a drug dealer and user who raised Domenica on a steady diet of Oxycontin. Growing up, Domenica knew she didn’t fit in -she was far smarter and worse dressed than everyone else she knew, and she clearly had the most flamboyant mother of anyone in town – but she found solace in writing and reading. As she grew older, though, and as her mother’s behavior grew increasingly outrageous and her home life increasingly untenable, Domenica fled Danvers only to become ensared by the demons of addiction.

A thoroughly textured and masterfully written book, layered with wildly colorful characters, a biting sense of humor, and penetrating, deeply sympathetic insights, With or Without You finally ends with Domenica’s increasing awareness that she must leave the life she grew up with in order to survive.

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