Some of my favourites were .............
Kristin Hannah - The Nightingale. This is such a well written story about what it was like to be a woman in France during WWII. Vianne and Isabelle Mauriac are two sisters, separated by years and experiences, each on their own path to survival through their occupied Nation...... The film of this book will be released in this country in February....Hope it shows locally.
Evie Woods - The Story Collector. Fiction (Published 2024) In 1911 Ireland, Anna, a young farm girl, volunteers to help an intriguing American visitor translate the old stories of the fairy world for his university studies. In 2011 Sarah Harper boards a plane for the west coast of Ireland, she was supposed to be heading to her parents home in Boston - running away from sadness and a failed marriage.
Robert Peston - The Whistle Blower. Crime Fiction/Thriller (Published 2021) It is 1997 and a desperate government clings to power in the run-up to the General Election. The opposition are just as desperate to win and political journalist Gil Peck watches. He is a respected commentator on politics and thinks he knows all the rules. But when his estranged older sister dies in a hit in run he begins to believe it was no accident because Clare knew some of the more sensitive secrets in government and one of them might have got her killed.
Tracy Chevalier- The Glass Maker. Fiction (Published 2024) Venice 1486, Across the lagoon lies Murano. Time flows differently here - like the glass the islands maestros spend their lives learning to handle. Women are not meant to work with glass, but Orsola Rosso flouts convention to save her family from ruin. She works in secret, knowing her creations must be perfect to be accepted by men. But perfection may take a lifetime. Skimming like a stone over water through the centuries, we follow Orsola as she hones her craft through war and plague, tragedy and triumph, love and loss. Very unusual book - difficult to explain as the people stay the same through 600 years - but it works beautifully.
Elif Shafak - There are Rivers in the Sky. Fiction (Published 2024) A magical story that brings together different times in history all linked by water. In ancient Ninevah hidden in the sand are fragments of a long lost poem. In Victorian London, an extraordinary child is born on the mud banks of the Thames. In Turkey in 2014 Narin, a Yazidi girl living by the Tigris and her grandmother travel through war torn lands to reach the sacred valley of their people. In London in 2018, Zaleekhah, a hydrologist, moves to a houseboat on the Thames after the break up of her marriage.
Nevil Shute - The Far Country. Fiction. (Published 1952) Out in Australia the Dorman family have had an excellent pay check for the years wool production. Jane Dorman had moved away from England several years previously when she met her Australian husband-to-be after the war. Jane writes regularly to her Aunt, the only person who had supported her move. When she realises her Aunt is very poor she sends money. The money arrives too late to help, but Aunt Ethel gives the money to her granddaughter Jennifer . When Jennifer is left the money specifically to visit Australia she has the chance to leave drab post-war London. The comparisons between dull England and bright new Australia are so interesting to read about.
Susie Dent - Guilty by Definition. Crime Fiction (Published 2024) This is such a clever and well written story set in the offices of the Clarendon English Dictionary offices in Oxford, ( No doubt based on her work at the Oxford English Dictionary).In this story, her first novel, a cryptic anonymous coded letter arrives at the offices and seems to have a connection to Dictionary compiler Martha's sister Charlie who disappeared from Oxford 10 years earlier. Martha has just returned to Oxford after working in Berlin. More letters and postcards arrive sent to anyone who knew Charlie and even some who didn't. The team use their knowledge of the history of words to decipher the letters to find out exactly what happened.The book mentions all sorts of unusual and unknown words and their origins and makes for a really good story.
Evelyn Shillington - Eve's war. Non Fiction. (Published 2017) In 1935 Evelyn Shillington started a diary which she continued for the next 12 years. Eve was an army wife and with no children was able to accompany her husband Rex where ever he was posted. He was a career soldier working in army ordnance, and retiring eventually as a Brigadier. The diaries were left to a cousin, passed to the cousin's daughter and then ultimately bought at auction and recognised as worth publishing. They are a really good insight into army life in barracks, at home and abroad through the abdication crisis and right through the war and in Italy just after war ended.
