Recent Books

We all want impossible things (February 2023) – Athenaeum Book Club 2023

By Catherine Newman

February 28, 2023

Edi wants an obscure Italian lemon cake.

Ash wants hot sex in a cupboard.

Edi wants to see the stars.

They both want the woman down the hallway to stop singing Fiddler on the Roof.

Edi wants time to go backwards.

And Ash?
Ash just wants a miracle…

Edi and Ash have been best friends for over forty years.  Since childhood they have seen each other through life’s milestones: stealing vodka from their parents, the Madonna phase, REM concerts, unexpected wakes, marriage, children, break-ups and breakdowns.  As Ash notes, ‘Edi’s memory is like the back-up hard drive for mine.’

So when Edi is diagnosed with terminal cancer, Ash’s world reshapes around the rhythms of Edi’s care, from chipped ice and watermelon cubes to weird music therapy; from snack smuggling to impromptu excursions into the frozen winter night.  Because life is about squeezing the joy out of every moment, about building a powerhouse of memories, about learning when to hold on, and when to let go.

Long Shadows (December 2022)

By David Baldacci

December 6, 2022

Memory man FBI agent Amos Decker returns in this action-packed thriller to investigate the mysterious and brutal murder of a federal judge and her bodyguard at her home in an exclusive gated community in Florida.

Things are changing for Decker.  He’s in crisis following the suicide of a close friend and the receipt of a letter concerning a personal issue which could change his life forever.  Together with the prospect of working with a new partner, Frederica White, Amos knows that this case will take all of his special skills to solve.

As darkness falls, evil comes to light…

Judge Julia Cummins seemingly had no enemies, and there was no forced entry to her property.  Close friends and neighbours in the community apparently heard nothing, and Cummins’s distraught ex-husband, Barry, and teenage son, Tyler, both have strong alibis.  Decker must first find the answer to why the judge felt the need for a bodyguard, and the meaning behind the strange calling card left by the killer.

The Pain Tourist (December 2022)

By Paul Cleave

December 6, 2022

This dream doesn’t feel like a dream.  He tries to lift his head.  Can’t do it.  There is a doorway to his left, and beyond it a brightly lit corridor.  Somebody walks past – a nurse…

James Garrett was critically injured when he was shot following his parents’ murder, and no one expected him to waken from a deep, traumatic coma.  When he does, nine years later, Detective Inspector Rebecca Kent is tasked with closing the case.

But between that, and hunting for a murderer on a spree, she’ll need the help of Theodore Tate … especially when they learn that James has lived out another life in his nine-year coma, and there are things he couldn’t possibly know.

Dawnlands (December 2022)

By Philippa Gregory

December 6, 2022

In a divided country, power and loyalty conquer all…

Ned Ferryman, inspired by news of a rebellion against the Stuart kings, returns from America with his Pokanoket servant to join the uprising against Roman Catholic King James.  As Ned swears loyalty to the charismatic Duke of Monmount, he discovers a new and unexpected love.

Meanwhile, Queen Mary summons her friend Livia to a terrified court.  Recklessly, Livia drags her son Matthew and his foster mothers Alinor and Alys into a plot to save the queen form Monmouth’s invasion, and Matthew is rewarded with the manor of Foulmire: on the tidelands where Ned, Alinor and Alys had once scraped a poor living.

Suddenly, Alinor is lady of the manor, as Ned marches into the last battle between the royalists and commoners, hoping for a new dawn for freedom.

Bad Actors (December 2022)

By Mick Herron

December 6, 2022

In MI5 a scandal is brewing and there are bad actors everywhere.

A key member of a Downing Street think tank has disappeared without trace.  Claude Whelan, one-time First Desk of MI5’s Regent Park, is tasked with tracking her down.  But the trail leads straight back to Regent’s Park HQ itself, with its chief, Diana Taverner, as prime suspect.  Meanwhile her Russian counterpart has unexpectedly shown up in London but has slipped under MI5’s radar.

Over at Slough House, the home for demoted and embittered spies, the slow horses are doing what they do best: adding a little bit of chaos to an already unstable situation.

In a world where lying, cheating and back-stabbing are the norm, bad actors are bending the rules for their own gain.  If the slow horses want to change the script, they’ll need to get their own act together before the final curtain.

Act of Oblivion (December 2022)

By Robert Harris

December 6, 2022

1660

Colonel Edward Whalley and his son-in-law, Colonel William Goffe, cross the Atlantic.  They are on the run and wanted for the murder of Charles I.  Under the provisions of the Act of Oblivion, they have been found guilty in absentia of high treason.

In London, Richard Nayler, secretary of the regicide committee of the Privy Council, is tasked with tracking down the fugitives.  He’ll stop at nothing until the two men are brought to justice.  A reward hangs over their heads – for their capture, dead or alive.

The Tilt (December 2022)

By Chris Hammer

December 6, 2022

A man runs for his life in a forest.  A woman plans sabotage.  A body is unearthed.

Newly-minted homicide detective Nell Buchanan returns to her home town, annoyed at being assigned a decades-old murder – a ‘file and forget’.

But this is no ordinary case, as the discovery of more bodies triggers a chain of escalating events in the present day.  As Nell starts to join the pieces together, she begins to question how well she truly knows those closest to her.  Could her own family be implicated in the crimes?

The nearer Nell comes to uncovering the secrets of the past, the more dangerous the present becomes for her, as she battles shadowy assailants and sinister forces.  Can she survive this harrowing investigation and what price will she have to pay for the truth?

A World of Curiosities (December 2022)

By Louise Penny

December 6, 2022

A Chief Inspector Gamache mystery

It’s spring and Three Pines is re-emerging after the harsh winter.  But not everything buried should come alive again.  Not everything lying dormant should return.

But something has.

As the villagers prepare for a special celebration, Armand Gamache and Jean-Guy Beauvoir find themselves increasingly worried.  A young man and woman have reappeared in the Surete du Quebec investigators’ lives after many years.  The two were young children when their troubled mother was murdered, leaving them damaged, shattered.  Now they’ve arrived in the village of Three Pines.

But to what end?

Gamache and Beauvoir’s memories of that tragic case, the one that first brought them together, come rushing back.  Did their mother’s murder hurt them beyond repair?  Have those terrible wounds, buried for decades, festered and are now about to erupt?

As Chief Inspector Gamache works to uncover answers, his alarm grows when a letter written by a long dead stonemason is discovered.  In it the man describes his terror when bricking up an attic room somewhere in the village.  Every word of the 150-year-old letter is filled with dread.  When the room is found, the villagers decide to open it up.

As the bricks are removed, Gamache, Beauvoir and the villagers discover a world of curiosities.  But the head of homicide soon realizes there’s more in that room than meets the eye.  There are puzzles within puzzles, and hidden messages warning of mayhem and revenge.

In unsealing that room, an old enemy is released into their world.  Into their lives.  And into the very heart of Armand Gamache’s home.

Not Dark Yet (December 2022)

By Peter Robinson

December 6, 2022

The gruesome double murder at a property developer’s luxury home, with its clear link to the vicious Albanian mafia, should be an open and shut case for Banks and his detectives.  But when they find a cache of spy-cam videos hidden in the house, the investigation pivots to the assault on a young girl that could cast the murders in an entirely different light.

Banks friend Zelda, increasingly uncertain of her future in Britian’s hostile environment, thinks she will be safer in Moldova hunting the men who abducted, raped and enslaved her than she is in the UK.  Her search takes her back to the orphanage where it all began – stirring up the murky waters of the past, and with them danger for everyone.

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo (December 2022)

By Taylor Jenkins Reid

December 6, 2022

Reclusive Hollywood movie icon Evelyn Hugo is finally ready to tell the truth about her glamorous and scandalous life.  But when she chooses unknown magazine reporter Monique Grant for the job, no one is more astounded than Monique herself: Why her? Why now?

Summoned to Evelyn’s luxurious apartment, Monique listens in fascination as the actress tells her story.  From making her way to Los Angeles in the 1950s, to her decision to leave show business in the ’80s, and, of course, the seven husbands along the way, Evelyn unspools a tale of ruthless ambition, unexpected friendship and a great forbidden love.

Monique begins to feel a very real connection to the legendary star, but as Evelyn’s story nears its conclusion, it becomes clear that her life intersects with Monique’s own in tragic and irreversible ways.