Books Archive

A Refiner’s Fire (June 2024)

By Donna Leon

June 18, 2024

When two teenage gangs are arrested after clashing violently in one of Venice’s campi, the son of a local hero is implicated. But when Commissario Guido Brunetti is asked by a wealthy foreigner to vet this man, Dario Monforte, for a job, he discovers that he might not be such a hero after all.

This seeming contradiction, and a brutal attack on one of Brunetti’s colleagues by a possible gang member, concentrate Brunetti’s attentions. Soon, he discovers the sordid hypocrisy surrounding Moforte’s past, culminating in a fiery meeting of two gangs and a final opportunity for redemption.

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48 Clues into the Disappearance of My Sister (June 2024)

By Joyce Carol Oates

June 18, 2024

Sculptor Marguerite has disappeared from her small town in upstate New York. But was foul play involved? Did she merely get away for some fun? Or did she finally decide to leave behind her claustrophobic life of limited opportunities?

Younger sister Gigi wonders if the clues left in Marguerite’s wake – the flimsy silk Dior dress, so casually abandoned; the footprints made by her Ferragamo boots, which end abruptly close to home – are really clues at all.

Bit by bit, revelations about both women are uncovered, together with Gigi’s true feelings about the much-loved Marguerite. The fate of the missing beauty slowly and subtly comes to light in this suspenseful story about the complex relationship between two sisters.

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The Divorcées (June 2024)

By Rowan Beaird

June 17, 2024

In 1951, unhappiness is hardly grounds for divorce – except at the divorce ranches of Reno, Nevada. Here women from different backgrounds live together for the six weeks it will take to earn their freedom. Six weeks of fun, friendship, casinos and flirting with cowboys.

Six weeks to discover who they could become.

And if their new friends are who they say they are . . .

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Day (June 2024)

By Michael Cunningham

June 17, 2024

From Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Hours , Day is a searing, exquisitely crafted meditation on love and loss, the struggles and limitations of family life – and how we must learn to live together and apart. Set on the same day over the course of three years.

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You are Here (June2024)

By David Nicholls

June 17, 2024

Marnie is stuck. Stuck working alone in her London flat, stuck battling the long afternoons and a life that often feels like it’s passing her by.

Michael is coming undone. Reeling from his wife’s departure, increasingly reclusive, taking himself on long, solitary walks across the moors and fells.

When a persistent mutual friend and some very English weather conspire to bring them together, Marnie and Michael suddenly find themselves alone on the most epic of walks and on the precipice of a new friendship.

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Bark Skins (May 2024)

By Annie Proulx

June 5, 2024

In the late seventeenth century two penniless young Frenchmen, René Sel and Charles Duquet, arrive in New France. Bound to a feudal lord, a ‘seigneur’, for three years in exchange for land, they become wood-cutters- barkskins. René suffers extraordinary hardship, oppressed by the forest he is charged with clearing. He is forced to marry a Mi’kmaw woman and their descendants live trapped between two inimical cultures. But Duquet, crafty and ruthless, runs away from the seigneur, becomes a fur trader, then sets up a timber business. Proulex tells the stories of the descendants of Sel and Duquet over three hundred years – their travels across North America, to Europe, China and New Zealand, stunningly brutal conditions; the revenge of rivals; accidents; pestilence; Indian attacks; and cultural annihilation.

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The Secret Life of Sunflowers (May 2024)

By Marta Molnar

June 4, 2024

When Hollywood auctioneer Emsley Wilson finds her famous grandmother’s diary while cleaning out her New York brownstone, the pages are full of surprises. The first surprise is, the diary isn’t her grandmother’s. It belongs to Johanna Bonger, Vincent van Gogh’s sister-in- law.

Johanna inherited Vincent van Gogh’s paintings. They were all she had, and they weren’t worth anything. She was a 28 year old widow with a baby in the 1800s, without any means of supporting herself, living in Paris where she barely spoke the language. Yet she managed to introduce Vincent’s legacy to the world.

The inspiration couldn’t come at a better time for Emsley. With her business failing, an unexpected love turning up in her life, and family secrets unraveling, can she find answers in the past?

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A History of Silence (May 2024)

By Lloyd Jones

June 4, 2024

A Memoir

As Christchurch lies in ruins after the catastrophic earthquake of February 2011, Lloyd Jones begins a search that takes him through childhood memories of puzzling events to Pembroke Dock in Wales, and finally to the discovery of a devastating court transcript.

On this extraordinary journey, he pieces together the fragments of a story that has been buried in his family for a lifetime. A mother who gave up her daughter, a naval captain drowned at sea, a marriage to save a child.

And a truth that changes everything.

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Oh Miriam! (May2024)

By Miriam Margolyes

June 4, 2024

Oh Miriam! has been a constant refrain in my life, said in all kinds of tones- laughs, surprised gasps and orgasmic sighs (I’m hoping for all of those from you as you read on!) – that it had to be the title of the book. And with a cast list that stretches from Churchill to DiCaprico, Dahl to Dietrich, Princess Margaret to Maggie Smith, I’ve so much more to tell you and so much more to say.

My chapters range from ‘How to Stay Married’ to ‘Don’t let the Bastards Get You Down’. Discover how to break the thickest conversational ice; why swearing is actually good for you (though not on the Today programme); the unexpected things I learned at school and what my Spice Girl name would be. Not to mention my Tale of the Unexpected and my very own Vagina Monologue.

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