What a selection of books we have in our latest Book Recommendation List  – Choose 1, Choose 2…Choose them all 🙂
Whichever you choose, remember what Harper Lee famously quoted, and I hope you enjoy the variety.
All these books have come with 4* and 5* recommendations. There is quite a selection and I hope, something for everyone.
(All book overviews courtesy of Goodreads)
Trust by Mike Bullen (Pub 2015)
Trust wasn’t something you could have in degrees; it was all or nothing...’
Greg and Amanda are happy. They’ve been together thirteen years and have two young daughters. They’re very much in love.
Dan and Sarah aren’t so fortunate. Their marriage is going through the motions and they’re just staying together for the sake of their son.
When one bad decision sends a happy couple into turmoil and turns an unhappy couple into love’s young dream, there’s only one thing that can keep everything from falling apart: trust.
Another Love by Amanda Prowse (Pub 2016)
The new gritty, emotional bestseller from Amanda Prowse.
In the early years of their love affair, Romilly was happy. She had worked hard for her stunning, modern house in one of Bristol’s most fashionable suburbs. She adored her gorgeous, gap-toothed daughter and her handsome, kind husband. Sure, life was sometimes exhausting – but nothing that a large glass of wine at the end of the day couldn’t fix.
And then a new neighbour arrived and everything unravelled. A glass of wine became a bottle; one bottle became two. Romilly’s family were once everything to her. Now, after years of hiding the drinking, she must finally admit that she has found another love…
Â
Mums@Home by Sophie King (Pub 2006)
Calling all mums! What would you do if your husband had a fling? Have you ever had to keep a terrible secret from your kids? Do you sometimes wish you had a life outside being a mum? Are you pregnant and alone? Caroline, Mark, Susan and Lisa are as different as the parenting problems they face and each has their own reasons for logging on to the Mums@Home website for the very first time. At first they are cynical about the site – how can faceless people possibly help or understand what they are going through? But as the weeks pass and their family problems escalate, each of them begins to realise that Mums@Home has become a lifeline – somewhere to go for advice, to be heard, to escape, or to belong…Sophie King captures the zeitgeist once again with this warm, moving and engaging look at modern parenting and finding friends.
The Immigrant by Manju Kapur (Pub 2008)
Nina, at thirty, sees herself as increasingly off the shelf. But then unexpectedly, a proposal arrives. Ananda is a dentist in Halifax, Canada. The two marry and she leaves her home and her country to build a new life with him. But there is always more to marriage than courtship. And as Nina discovers truths about her husband both sexual and emotional her fragile new life in Canada begins to unravel. The Immigrant is another mesmerizing saga about the complexities of arranged marriage and NRI life from this most beloved of novelists.
A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson (Pub 2015)
In Life After Life Ursula Todd lived through the turbulent events of the last century again and again. In A God in Ruins, Atkinson turns her focus on Ursula’s beloved younger brother Teddy – would-be poet, RAF bomber pilot, husband and father – as he navigates the perils and progress of the 20th century. For all Teddy endures in battle, his greatest challenge will be to face living in a future he never expected to have.
The Last Days of Rabbit Hayes by Anna McPartlin (Pub 2014)
Rabbit Hayes loves her life, ordinary as it is, and the extraordinary people in it.
She loves her spirited daughter, Juliet; her colourful, unruly family; the only man in her big heart, Johnny Faye.
But it turns out the world has other plans for Rabbit, and she’s OK with that. Because she has plans for the world too, and only a handful of days left to make them happen.
Here is a truth that won’t be forgotten: this is a story about laughing through life’s surprises and finding the joy in every moment.
The Perfect Gift by Emma Hannigan (Pub 2016)
Happy Birthday, darling girl…
Ever since she can remember, Roisin has received a birthday card in the post. Signed with love from the birth mother she has never met.
Brought up by her adoptive parents, Keeley and Doug, Roisin has wanted for nothing. But on her thirtieth birthday a letter comes that shakes her world.
For Keeley, who’s raised Roisin as her own, the letter reminds her of a guilty secret she’s been hiding for thirty years.
And for Nell, keeping watch in the lighthouse, the past is a place she dare not go. Until a young runaway arrives seeking shelter, and unwraps the gift of hope for them all…
Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty (Pub 2014)
Big Little Lies follows three women, each at a crossroads:
Madeline is a force to be reckoned with. She’s funny and biting, passionate, she remembers everything and forgives no one. Her ex-husband and his yogi new wife have moved into her beloved beachside community, and their daughter is in the same kindergarten class as Madeline’s youngest (how is this possible?). And to top it all off, Madeline’s teenage daughter seems to be choosing Madeline’s ex-husband over her. (How. Is. This. Possible?).
Celeste is the kind of beautiful woman who makes the world stop and stare. While she may seem a bit flustered at times, who wouldn’t be, with those rambunctious twin boys? Now that the boys are starting school, Celeste and her husband look set to become the king and queen of the school parent body. But royalty often comes at a price, and Celeste is grappling with how much more she is willing to pay.
New to town, single mom Jane is so young that another mother mistakes her for the nanny. Jane is sad beyond her years and harbors secret doubts about her son. But why? While Madeline and Celeste soon take Jane under their wing, none of them realizes how the arrival of Jane and her inscrutable little boy will affect them all.
Big Little Lies is a brilliant take on ex-husbands and second wives, mothers and daughters, schoolyard scandal, and the dangerous little lies we tell ourselves just to survive.
I am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes (Pub 2013)
A breakneck race against time…and an implacable enemy.
An anonymous young woman murdered in a run-down hotel, all identifying characteristics dissolved by acid.
A father publicly beheaded in the blistering heat of a Saudi Arabian public square.
A notorious Syrian biotech expert found eyeless in a Damascus junkyard.
Smoldering human remains on a remote mountainside in Afghanistan.
A flawless plot to commit an appalling crime against humanity.
One path links them all, and only one man can make the journey. Pilgrim.
The Drivers Seat by Murial Spark (Pub 2006)
Lise is thin, neither good-looking nor bad-looking. One day she walks out of her office, acquires a gaudy new outfit, adopts a girlier tone of voice, and heads to the airport to fly south. On the plane she takes a seat between two men. One is delighted with her company, the other is deeply perturbed. So begins an unnerving journey into the darker recesses of human nature.
The Widow by Fiona Barton (Pub 2016)
THE NEW YORK TIMESÂ BESTSELLER
For fans of Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train, an electrifying thriller that will take you into the dark spaces that exist between a husband and a wife.
When the police started asking questions, Jean Taylor turned into a different woman. One who enabled her and her husband to carry on, when more bad things began to happen…
But that woman’s husband died last week. And Jean doesn’t have to be her anymore.
There’s a lot Jean hasn’t said over the years about the crime her husband was suspected of committing. She was too busy being the perfect wife, standing by her man while living with the accusing glares and the anonymous harassment.
Now there’s no reason to stay quiet. There are people who want to hear her story. They want to know what it was like living with that man. She can tell them that there were secrets. There always are in a marriage.
The truth—that’s all anyone wants. But the one lesson Jean has learned in the last few years is that she can make people believe anything…
Black Eyed Susans by Julia Heaberlin (Pub 2015)
For fans of Laura Lippman and Gillian Flynn comes an electrifying novel of stunning psychological suspense.
I am the star of screaming headlines and campfire ghost stories.
I am one of the four Black-Eyed Susans.
The lucky one.
As a sixteen-year-old, Tessa Cartwright was found in a Texas field, barely alive amid a scattering of bones, with only fragments of memory as to how she got there. Ever since, the press has pursued her as the lone surviving “Black-Eyed Susan,” the nickname given to the murder victims because of the yellow carpet of wildflowers that flourished above their shared grave. Tessa’s testimony about those tragic hours put a man on death row.
Now, almost two decades later, Tessa is an artist and single mother. In the desolate cold of February, she is shocked to discover a freshly planted patch of black-eyed susans—a summertime bloom—just outside her bedroom window. Terrified at the implications—that she sent the wrong man to prison and the real killer remains at large—Tessa turns to the lawyers working to exonerate the man awaiting execution. But the flowers alone are not proof enough, and the forensic investigation of the still-unidentified bones is progressing too slowly. An innocent life hangs in the balance. The legal team appeals to Tessa to undergo hypnosis to retrieve lost memories—and to share the drawings she produced as part of an experimental therapy shortly after her rescue.
What they don’t know is that Tessa and the scared, fragile girl she was have built a fortress of secrets. As the clock ticks toward the execution, Tessa fears for her sanity, but even more for the safety of her teenaged daughter. Is a serial killer still roaming free, taunting Tessa with a trail of clues? She has no choice but to confront old ghosts and lingering nightmares to finally discover what really happened that night.
Shocking, intense, and utterly original, Black-Eyed Susans is a dazzling psychological thriller, seamlessly weaving past and present in a searing tale of a young woman whose harrowing memories remain in a field of flowers—as a killer makes a chilling return to his garden.
Early One Morning by Virginia Bailey (Pub 2015)
Two women’s decision to save a child during WWII will have powerful reverberations over the years.
Chiara Ravello is about to flee occupied Rome when she locks eyes with a woman being herded on to a truck with her family.
Claiming the woman’s son, Daniele, as her own nephew, Chiara demands his return; only as the trucks depart does she realize what she has done. She is twenty-seven, with a sister who needs her constant care, a hazardous journey ahead, and now a child in her charge.
Several decades later, Chiara lives alone in Rome, a self-contained woman working as a translator. Always in the background is the shadow of Daniele, whose absence and the havoc he wrought on Chiara’s world haunt her. Then she receives a phone call from a teenager claiming to be his daughter, and Chiara knows it is time to face up to the past.
The Turning Point by Freya North (Pub 2015)
Over one short weekend, when Canadian musician Scott Emerson and British children’s author Frankie Shaw meet by chance, a profound connection is made. Their homes are thousands of miles apart: Frankie and her children live by the coast of North Norfolk while Scott’s roots lie deep in the mountains of British Columbia. Against all advice, they decide to see where this might go.
Over oceans and time zones, they make sacrifices and take risks, discovering along the way new truths about love and family. For the first time in a long while, it seems life could be very good. But fate has a tragic twist in store, one that could destroy all that was hoped for.
Poignant, engrossing and moving, The Turning Point is a novel about the importance of seizing happiness and trusting that love will always find a way.
Mothering Sunday by Graham Swift (Pub 2016)
From the Booker Award winner: a luminous, profoundly moving work of fiction that begins with an afternoon tryst in 1924 between a servant girl and the young man of the neighboring house, but then opens to reveal the whole life of a remarkable woman.
Twenty-two year old Jane Fairchild, orphaned at birth, has worked as a maid at one English country estate since she was sixteen. And for almost all of those years she has been the secret lover to Paul Sheringham, the scion of the estate next door. On an unseasonably warm March afternoon, Jane and Paul will make love for the last time–though not, as Jane believes, because Paul is about to be married–and the events of the day will alter Jane’s life forever. As the narrative moves back and forth from 1924 to the end of the century, what we know and understand about Jane–about the way she loves, thinks, feels, sees, remembers–deepens with every beautifully wrought moment. Her story is one of profound self-discovery and through her, Graham Swift has created an emotionally soaring and deeply affecting work of fiction.
At the Edge of the Orchard by Tracy Chevalier (Pub 2016)
From internationally bestselling author Tracy Chevalier, a riveting drama of a pioneer family on the American frontier
1838: James and Sadie Goodenough have settled where their wagon got stuck – in the muddy, stagnant swamps of northwest Ohio. They and their five children work relentlessly to tame their patch of land, buying saplings from a local tree man known as John Appleseed so they can cultivate the fifty apple trees required to stake their claim on the property. But the orchard they plant sows the seeds of a long battle. James loves the apples, reminders of an easier life back in Connecticut; while Sadie prefers the applejack they make, an alcoholic refuge from brutal frontier life.
1853: Their youngest child Robert is wandering through Gold Rush California. Restless and haunted by the broken family he left behind, he has made his way alone across the country. In the redwood and giant sequoia groves he finds some solace, collecting seeds for a naturalist who sells plants from the new world to the gardeners of England. But you can run only so far, even in America, and when Robert’s past makes an unexpected appearance he must decide whether to strike out again or stake his own claim to a home at last.
Chevalier tells a fierce, beautifully crafted story in At the Edge of the Orchard, her most graceful and richly imagined work yet.
As you can see, the selection is brilliant with a range of both new and older books. I personally haven’t read any of these but three of them are now sitting in my TBR (To-be-Read) shelf – Early One Morning, Trust &  Another Love. I’ll keep ye posted 🙂 Please let me know which, if any, you picked. I’d love to hear from you.
Til next time.
Mairéad
xx
