The Hand That First Held Mine – Maggie O’Farrell
The Hand That First Held Mine
Maggie O’Farrell
Fresh out of university and in disgrace, Lexie Sinclair is waiting for life to begin. When the bohemian, sophisticated Innes Kent turns up by chance on her doorstep in rural Devon, she realises that she can wait no longer, and leaves for London. There, at the heart of the 1950s Soho art scene, Lexie carves out a new life for herself with Innes at her side.
In the present day, Elina and Ted are reeling from the difficult birth of their first child. As Elina struggles to reconcile the demands of motherhood with her sense of herself as an artist, Ted is disturbed by memories of his own childhood – memories that don’t tally with his parents’ version of events.
As Ted begins to search for answers, so an extraordinary portrait of two women is revealed. Separated by fifty years, Lexie and Elina are connected in ways that neither of them could ever have expected?
New York Valentine – Carmen Reid
New York Valentine
Carmen Reid
Annie Valentine has a dream job in the heart of fabulous Manhattan.
Daughter Lana is lost in the heat of first love, but has she fallen for a heart-breaker?
In London, husband Ed faces a scandal at work and knows, in his heart, he needs Annie back.
What’s a girl to do when her true love is in London but her new love is New York?
Does it have to be fashion or family, or can Annie Valentine have it all?
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay – Michael Chabon
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
Michael Chabon
Like the comic books that animate and inspire it, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is both larger than life and of it too. Complete with golems and magic and miraculous escapes and evil nemeses, even hand-to-hand Antarctic battle, it pursues the most important questions of love and war, dreams and art, across pages lurid with longing and hope.
Samuel Klayman – self-described little man, city boy and Jew – first meets Josef Kavalier when his mother shoves him aside in his own bed, telling him to make room for their cousin, a refugee from Nazi-occupied Prague. It’s the beginning, however unlikely, of a beautiful friendship. In short order, Sam’s talent for pulp plotting meets Joe’s faultless, academy-trained line, and a comic-book superhero is born. A sort of lantern-jawed equaliser clad in dark blue long underwear, the Escapist “roams the globe, performing amazing feats and coming to the aid of those who languish in tyranny’s chains”. Before they know it, Kavalier and Clay (as Sam Klayman has come to be known) find themselves at the epicentre of comics’ golden age.
Falling Leaves: The Memoir of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter – Adeline Yen Mah
Falling Leaves: The Memoir of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter
Adeline Yen Mah
Snow White’s stepmother looks like a pussycat compared to the monster under which Adeline Yen Mah suffered. The author’s memoir of life in mainland China and – after the 1949 revolution – Hong Kong is a gruesome chronicle of nonstop emotional abuse from her wealthy father and his beautiful, cruel second wife. Chinese proverbs scattered throughout the text pithily convey the traditional world view that prompted Adeline’s subservience… Falling Leaves is an Asian Mommie Dearest.
Dear Me: A Letter to My Sixteen-Year-Old Self – Joseph Galliano
Dear Me: A Letter to My Sixteen-Year-Old Self
Joseph Galliano
If you were to write a letter to your 16-year-old self, what would it say?
In Dear Me, some of the world’s best loved personalities have written just such a letter. Dear Me includes letters from three knights, a handful of Oscar winners, a bevy of Baftas, an intrepid explorer, a few teenage pop stars, an avid horticulturalist, pages and pages of bestselling authors, a dishy doctor, a full credit of film directors, a lovey of top actors, a giggle of comedians and an Archbishop!
The letters range from the compassionate to the shocking via hilarity and heartbreak, but they all have one thing in common: they offer a unique insight into the teenager who would grow up to be…. Stephen Fry, Annie Lennox, Paul O’Grady, Jackie Collins, Fay Weldon, Alan Carr, Peter Kay, Debbie Harry, Brenda Blethyn , Jonathan Ross, Liz Smith, Will Young, Alison Moyet, Rosanne Cash, Sir Ranulph Fiennes, Yoko Ono, Emma Thompson… to name but a few.
Fingersmith – Sarah Waters
Fingersmith
Sarah Waters
London, 1862. Sue Trinder, orphaned at birth, grows up among petty thieves – fingersmiths – under the rough but loving care of Mrs Sucksby and her ‘family’.
But from the moment she draws breath, Sue’s fate is linked to that of another orphan growing up in a gloomy mansion not too many miles away…
One Moment, One Morning – Sarah Rayner
One Moment, One Morning
Sarah Rayner
The Brighton to London line. The 07:44 train. Carriages packed with commuters.
A woman applies her make-up. Another occupies her time observing the people around her. A husband and wife share an affectionate gesture. Further along, a woman flicks through a glossy magazine.
Then, abruptly, everything changes: a man has a heart attack, and can’t be resuscitated; the train is stopped, an ambulance called.
For at least three passengers on the 07:44 on that particular morning, life will never be the same again.
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A Girl Like You – Gemma Burgess
A Girl Like You
Gemma Burgess
“I’ve discovered the secret to successful singledom. I’m acting like a man. And it’s working.”
After breaking up with her boyfriend of, well, forever, Abigail Wood must learn how to be single from scratch.
Her dating skills are abysmal, and she ricochets from disaster to disaster – until Robert, one of London’s most notorious lotharios, agrees to coach her.
With his advice, she learns to navigate the bastard-infested waters of the bar scene and practices the art of being bulletproof. The new Abigail is cocky, calm, composed… but what happens when she meets her match?
the basement – Stephen Leather
the basement
Stephen Leather
A serial killer is torturing and killing women in New York. And two detectives are sure that a writer is behind the murders.
But as they close in on their suspect, a woman is being held captive in a basement somewhere in the city.
Can they find the killer before the latest victim is killed?
Handle with Care – Jodi Picoult
Handle with Care
Jodi Picoult
Charlotte O’Keefe’s beautiful, much-longed-for, adored daughter Willow is born with Osteogenesis Imperfecta – a very severe form of brittle bone disease. If she slips on a crisp packet she could break both her legs, and spend six months in a half body cast.
After years of caring for Willow, her family faces financial disaster. Then Charlotte is offered a lifeline. She could sue her obstetrician for wrongful birth – for not having diagnosed Willow’s condition early enough in the pregnancy to be able to abort the child. The payout could secure Willow’s future. But to get it would mean Charlotte suing her best friend. And standing up in court to declare that she would have prefered that Willow had never been born…
L.A. Candy – Lauren Conrad
L.A. Candy
Lauren Conrad
In L.A. Candy, 19-year-old Jane Roberts moves to L.A. and unexpectedly becomes the star of a reality TV show.
With fame comes wealth, hot clothes, and even hotter love interests – and Jane’s lapping it all up, with her eclectic entourage of pals who are always up for a wild night out and the chance to get a piece of her spotlight. But soon Jane realises everyone wants something from her, and nothing is what it seems to be.
L.A. Candy is a fast-paced, honest, and entertaining fictional account of what it’s like to come of age in Hollywood while starring in a reality TV show, written by a girl who has experienced it all firsthand: Lauren Conrad.
The Bone Collector – Jeffery Deaver
The Bone Collector
Jeffery Deaver
Lincoln Rhyme is strapped in his bed and actually planning his suicide when he gets a call he can’t ignore from his old partner in the force.
A single human hand has been found, buried on a deserted railway track on New York’s West Side – the hand belonging to a man who got in a cab at the airport and never got out. And the driver was the Bone Collector.
The Bone Collector, a killer and kidnapper obsessed with old New York, leaves clues that only Lincoln Rhyme can decipher. As the minutes count down towards each successive death of an innocent, Rhyme and the female police officer acting as his arms and legs race to locate the victims by unravelling the Bone Collector’s clues.
Slowly the criminalist begins to narrow the noose around the kidnapper. But it appears the Bone Collector has his own plans, and is narrowing his own noose – around Lincoln Rhyme.
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo – Stieg Larsson
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
Stieg Larsson
Forty years ago, Harriet Vanger disappeared from a family gathering on the island owned and inhabited by the powerful Vanger clan. Her body was never found, yet her uncle is convinced it was murder – and that the killer is a member of his own tightly knit but dysfunctional family.
He employs disgraced financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist, and the tattooed, truculent computer hacker Lisbeth Salander to investigate. When the pair link Harriet’s disappearance to a number of grotesque murders from forty years ago, they begin to unravel a dark and appalling family history. But the Vangers are a secretive clan, and Blomkvist and Salander are about to find out just how far they are prepared to go to protect themselves.
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