Books Archive

Whatever it Takes (August 2019)

By Paul Cleave

August 14, 2019

When Alyssa Stone goes missing, Deputy Noah Harper knows he’s going to cross some lines to find the young girl – lines there are no coming back from.  Saving her costs him his wife, his job, and he’s kicked out of Acacia Pines with the promise that if he ever returns he’ll be thrown into jail and left there to rot.

Twelve years later and Noah has moved on.  He owns a bar.  He has a nice place.  A nice life.  He’s happy.  Then there’s a phone call … Alyssa has disappeared, and Noah is asked the question: how far is he willing to go to find her?  It would mean heading back to Acacia Pines.  It would mean coming face to face with the past.

It would mean doing whatever it takes.

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State of the Union: A Marriage in Ten Parts (August 2019)

By Nick Hornby

August 14, 2019

Each week, Tom and Louise meet for a quick drink in the pub before they go to meet their marriage counsellor.  Married for years and with two children, a recent incident has exposed the fault lines in their relationship in a way that Tom, for one, does not wish to think about.

In the ten minutes in the pub they talk about the agenda for the session, what they talked about last week, what they will definitely not talk about with the counsellor, and how much better off they are than the couple whose counselling slot immediately precedes their own.

Over the ten weeks that follow, Tom and Louise begin to wonder: what if marriage is like a computer?  When you take it apart to see how it works you might just be left with a million pieces you can’t put back together…

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Lilac Girls (August 2019)

By Martha Hall Kelly

August 14, 2019

Based on the real-life story of a New York socialite who championed a group of concentration camp survivors known as the Rabbits, this acclaimed debut novel reveals a story of love, redemption, and terrible secrets that were hidden for decades.

Caroline Ferriday is a former Broadway actress and liaisons to the French consulate whose life is forever changed when Hitler’s army invades Poland in September 1939 – and then sets its sights on France.  An ocean away from Caroline, Kasia Kuzmerick, a Polish teenager, sinks deeper into her role as a courier for the underground resistance movement.  In Germany, Herta Oberheuser, a young doctor, answers an ad for a government medical position – only to find herself trapped in a male-dominated realm of Nazi secrets and power.

The lives of those three women are set on a collision course when the unthinkable happens and Kasia is sent to Ravensbruck, the notorious Nazi concentration camp for women

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Sweet Sorrow (August 2019)

By David Nicholls

August 14, 2019

Sixteen-year-old Charlie Lewis is the kind of boy you don’t remember in the school photograph.  His exams have not gone well.  At home he is looking after his father, when surely it should be the other way round, and if he thinks about the future at all, it is with a kind of dread.

Then Fran Fisher bursts into his life and despite himself, Charlie begins to hope.

But if Charlie wants to be with Fran, he must take on a challenge that could lose him the respect of his friends and require him to become a different person.  He must join the Company.  And if the Company sounds like a cult, the truth is even more appalling:

The price of hope, it seems, is Shakespeare.

Poignant, funny, enchanting, devastating, Sweet Sorrow is a tragicomedy about the rocky path to adulthood and the confusion of family life, a celebration of the reviving power of friendship and that brief, searing explosion of first love that can only be looked at directly after it has burned out.

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Good Girl Bad Girl (August 2019)

By Michael Robotham

August 14, 2019

The girl with no past.

Six years ago, Evie Cormac was discovered, filthy and half-starved, hiding in a secret room in the aftermath of a shocking crime.  Now approaching adulthood, Evie is damaged, self-destructive and has never revealed her true identity.

The boy who survived.

Forensic psychologist Cyrus Haven a man haunted by his own past, is investigating the death of champion figure-skater Jodie Sheehan.  When Cyrus is called upon to assess Evie, she threatens to disrupt the case and destroy his ordered life.  Because Evie has a unique and dangerous gift – she knows when someone is lying.  And nobody is telling the truth.

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The New Girl (August 2019)

By Daniel Silva

August 14, 2019

Now You See Her  Now You Don’t  The New Girl

At an exclusive school in Switzerland, mystery surrounds the identity of the beautiful girl who arrives each morning in a motorcade fit for a head of state.  In truth, her father is Khalid bin Mohammed, the controversial crown prince of Saudi Arabia.  And when his only child is brutally kidnapped, he turns to the one man he can trust to find her before it is too late.

What’s done cannot be undone …

Gabriel Allon, the legendary chief of Israeli intelligence, regards Khalid as a valuable if flawed partner in the fight against terror.  The prince has pledged to break the bond between Saudi Arabia and radical Islam.  Together they will become unlikely allies in a deadly secret war for control of the Middle East.  Both men have made their share of enemies.  And both have everything to lose.

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The Burgess Boys (August 2019)

By Elizabeth Strout

August 14, 2019

Haunted by a freak accident that killed their father when they were children.  Jim and Bob Burgess escaped from their Maine hometown of Shirley Falls for New York City as soon as they possibly could.  Jim has belittled his bighearted brother their whole lives, and Bob, who idolizes Jim, has always taken it in his stride.

But their long-standing dynamic is upended when their sister, Susan – the sibling who stayed behind – urgently calls them home.  Her teenage son, Zach, has landed in a world of trouble and Susan desperately needs help.  And so the Burgess brothers return to the landscape of their childhood, where the long-buried tensions that have shaped and shadowed their relationship begin to surface in unexpected ways that will change them forever.

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