Recent Books

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.

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.

Dream Count

By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

April 24, 2024

Chiamaka is a Nigerian travel writer living in America. Alone in the midst of the pandemic, she recalls her past lovers and grapples with her choices and regrets. Zikora, her best friend, is a lawyer who has been successful at everything until — betrayed and brokenhearted — she must turn to the person she thought she needed least. Omelogor, Chiamaka’s bold, outspoken cousin, is a financial powerhouse in Nigeria who begins to question how well she knows herself. And Kadiatou, Chiamaka’s housekeeper, is proudly raising her daughter in America – but faces an unthinkable hardship that threatens all she has worked to achieve.

In Dream Count, Adichie trains her fierce eye on these women in a sparkling, transcendent novel that takes up the very nature of love itself. Is true happiness ever attainable or is it just a fleeting state? And how honest must we be with ourselves in order to love, and to be loved? A trenchant reflection on the choices we make and those made for us, on daughters and mothers, on our interconnected world, Dream Count pulses with emotional urgency and poignant, unflinching observations on the human heart, in language that soars with beauty and power. It confirms Adichie’s status as one of the most exciting and dynamic writers on the literary landscape.

A Bird in Winter (April 2024)

By Louise Doughty

April 24, 2024

One minute, she’s in a meeting in her office in Birmingham- the next, she’s walking out on her job, her home, her life. It’s a day she thought might come, and one she’s prepared for – but nothing could have prepared her for what happen next. As she flees north using multiple disguises, Bird has to work out who exactly is on her trail, and who- if anyone- she can trust.

Like many people, Bird has fantasised about escape for a long time, but now it’s actually happening if her greatest fear that she will be hunted down, or that she will never be found?

Wavewalker (April 2024)

By Suzanne Heywood

April 24, 2024

Aged just seven, Suzanne Heywood set sail with her parents and brother on a three-year voyage around the world.  What followed turned into a decade-long way of life, through storms, shipwrecks, reefs and isolation, with little formal schooling. No one else knew where they were most of the time and no state showed any interest in what was happening to the children.

Suzanne fought her parents, longing to return to England and to education and stability. This memoir covers her astonishing upbringing, a survival story of a child deprived of safety, friendships, schooling

and occasionally drinking water. . . At seventeen Suzanne earned an interview at Oxford University and returned to the UK.

Landed (April 2024)

By Sue McCauley

April 24, 2024

It’s the late 1980’s, in Timaru, and Brewer Howland has killed himself.  His wife, Briar, is left stranded in a rapidly changing world.  The future she took for granted has been obliterated and she must invent a new one.  But how does a sixty-something widow go about creating a future for herself in a world she struggles to comprehend?

The government has taken a sharp turn into unfamiliar territory, and everything seems to be rapidly changing; values, language, telephones, families, race relations, gadgets.  Amid this tsunami of ‘progress’ Briar must decide how and where to live out her life. If her children and grandchildren had turned out to be lovingly bonded family cluster she’d hoped to raise, they might have been future enough.  But her children are scattered and disputatious. . . .

Everyone on this Train is a Suspect (April 2024)

By Benjamin Stevenson

April 24, 2024

When the Australian Mystery Writers’ Society invited me to their crime-writing festival aboard the Ghan, the famous train between Darwin and Adelaide, I was hoping for some inspiration for my second book.  Fiction, this time: I needed a break from real people killing each other.  Obviously, that didn’t pan out.

The program is a who’s who of crime-writing royalty:

The debut writer [me!]

The forensic science writer

The blockbuster writer

The legal thriller writer

The literary writer

The psychological suspense writer

But when one of us is murdered, six authors quickly turn into five detectives.  Together, we should know how to solve a crime.

Or commit one.

Written in Bone (March 2024)

By Sue Black

March 15, 2024

Our bones are the silent witness to the lives we lead.  Our stories are marbled into their marrow.

Drawing upon her years of research and remarkable experience, the world-renowned forensic anthropologist Professor Dame Sue Black takes us on a journey of revelation.  From skull to toe, via the teeth, spine, chest, arms, hands, pelvis and legs, she shows that each part of us has a tale to tell.  What we eat, where we go, the things we do – all these leave a trace, a message waiting for a forensic anthropologist to decipher it.

Limb by limb, case by case – some criminal, some historical, some unaccountably bizarre – Sue Black reconstructs with intimate sensitivity and compassion the stories hidden in what we leave behind.

Actress (March 2024)

By Anne Enright

March 14, 2024

From the Man Booker-winning Irish author, a brilliant and moving novel about fame, sexual power, and a daughter’s search to understand her mother’s hidden truths.

This is the story of Irish theatre legend, Katerine O’Dell, as written by her daughter Norah.  It tells of early stardom in Hollywood, of highs and lows on the stages of Dublin and London’s West End.  Katherine’s life is a grand performance, with young Norah watching from the wings.

But this romance between mother and daughter cannot survive Katherine’s past, or the world’s damage.  In the declining years of her middle age, Norah’s mother commits a senseless crime.  Actress is about a daughter’s search for the truth: the dark secret in the bright star, and what drove Katherine finally mad.

Brilliantly capturing the glamour of post-war America and the shabbiness of 1970s Dublin, Actress is an intensely moving, disturbing novel about mothers and daughters and the men in their lives.  A scintillating examination of the corrosive nature of celebrity, it is also a sad and triumphant tale of freedom from bad love, and from the avid gaze of the crowd.

Silver Tears (March 2024)

By Camilla Lackberg

March 14, 2024

She is safe…

Faye Adelheim deserves the life she has.  After fleeing from a violent marriage, she has built her business into a global brand and is living in a beautiful villa in Italy with her daughter.

Or so she thought…

But Faye’s life is turned upside down when her murderous ex-husband escapes from prison.  Faye has no choice but to return home to confront him.

This will be the fight of her life…

Faye will do anything to keep her family safe.  But when the dark secrets of her childhood come back to haunt her, she will have to battle like never before to stop her deepest fears from coming true…