The Great Alone
Kristin Hannah
Cora Allbright and her husband Ernt – a recently-returned Vietnam veteran scarred by the war – uproot their 13-year-old daughter, Leni, to start a new life in Alaska. Utterly unprepared for the weather and the isolation, but welcomed by the close-knit community, they fight to build a home in this harsh, beautiful wilderness. At once an epic story of human survival and love, and an intimate portrait of a family tested beyond endurance, ‘The Great Alone’ offers a glimpse into a vanishing way of life in America.
What a Way to Go
Bella Mackie
Anthony Wistern is wealthy beyond imagination. Fragrant wife, gaggle of photogenic children, French chateau, Cotswold manor, plethora of mistresses, penchant for cutting moral corners, tick tick tick tick tick tick. Unfortunately for him, he’s also dead. Suddenly poised to inherit his fortune, each member of the family falls under suspicion. And that’s when everything comes crashing down.
French Braid
Anne Tyler
When the kids are grown and Mercy Garrett gradually moves herself out of the family home, everyone determines not to notice. Over at her studio, she wants space and silence. She won’t allow any family clutter. Not even their cat, Desmond. Yet it is a clutter of untidy moments that forms the Garretts’ family life over the decades, from giving a child a ride to a painstaking Easter lunch, a fateful train journey to an unexpected homecoming. And it all begins in 1959, with a family holiday to a cabin by a lake. It’s the only one the Garretts will ever take, but its effects will ripple through the generations.
Cloud Cuckoo Land
Anthony Doerr
‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’ follows three storylines: Anna and Omeir, on opposite sides of the formidable city wall during the 1453 siege of Constantinople; teenage idealist Seymour and gentle octogenarian Zeno, in an attack on a public library in present day Idaho; and Konstance, on an interstellar ship bound for a distant exoplanet, decades from now. A single copy of an ancient text – the story of Aethon, who longs to be turned into a bird so that he can fly to the paradise of Cloud Cuckoo Land – provides solace, mystery and the most profound human connection to these five unforgettable characters.
Hello Beautiful
Ann Napolitano
Best friends and sisters, the four Padavano girls are seen as inseparable by everyone in their close-knit Italian-American neighbourhood. From childhood, the four sisters complete each other. When Julia falls in love with William Waters, a history student and college sports star, she’s delighted by the way her plans for adulthood are coming to fruition: a husband, a house, a family of her own. But when darkness from William’s past begins to block the light of his future, it is Sylvie, not Julia, who becomes his closest confidante – and the ensuing betrayal tears the sisters apart.
The Beach Hut
Leah Pitt
July, 1997. Matilda is killed in a tragic accident on the Dorset rocks, leaving her best friend Sophie alone, wracked with guilt. Decades later, Sophie is back for the first time since that terrible summer, to sell her family’s old beach hut and bury the memories forever. But on clearing out the hut, she finds evidence that Matilda’s death was no accident. What really happened the night she died? As Sophie edges closer to the truth, the past starts to close in on the present. Because the close-knit community is still home to a killer, and they want Sophie gone.
The Examiner
Janice Hallett
The mature students of Royal Hastings University’s new art course have been trouble from day one. From acclaimed artist Alyson who seems oddly overqualified, to hapless Patrick who can barely operate design software, and city boy Cameron who blusters his way through assignments. Not to mention Jem, who’s a gifted young sculptor – but cross her at your peril. The year-long course is blighted by students setting fire to one another’s artwork, a rumoured extra-marital affair and a disastrous road trip. But finally they are given their last assignment: to build an art installation for a local manufacturer. With six students who have nothing in common except their clashing personal agendas, what could possibly go wrong? The answer is: murder.
The Book of Beginnings
Sally Page
Jo Sorsby knows she is hiding from her past when she agrees to look after her uncle’s stationery shop. Spending her days glimpsing the lives of her customers as they experiment with what’s on offer is a welcome distraction from the life she has left behind. Yet far from home, Jo feels adrift. But when she meets Ruth, a vicar running from a secret, and Malcolm, a septuagenarian struggling to write his first book, she realises that she isn’t alone. It’s the beginning of a friendship that can transform Jo’s life – if only she can let them in.
Day One
Abigail Dean
A village hall, a primary school play, a beautiful Lake District town. Into this idyllic scene steps a lone gunman whose actions set off a train of events that will have devastating consequences for the close-knit community of Stonesmere. At the epicentre of the tragedy is Marty, the daughter of the teacher who dies trying to protect her pupils. Marty told reporters that she saw it happen. She saw the gunman enter the hall. But what did Marty really see? And why would she lie?
The Island
Victoria Hislop
This was not the start of a short trip to deliver supplies. It was the beginning of a one-way journey to start a new life. Life on a leper colony. Life on Spinalonga.
Fifty years later, making a life-changing journey of her own, Alexis Fielding feels the pull of the abandoned island. A distant shadow off the coast of Crete, she knows it holds the secrets of her mother’s past, buried for so long but surely not forgotten…
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