News Blog @ Wellington City Libraries

This month’s selection of new contemporary fiction will provide some great reading. Two highly recommended novels are Ten White Geese by the award winning author Gerbrand Bakker and the most recent novel from Amelie Nothomb titled, Life Form.

Ten white geese : a novel / Gerbrand Bakker ; translated from the Dutch by David Colmer.
“A Dutch woman rents a remote farm in rural Wales. She says her name is Emilie. She has left her husband, having confessed to an affair. In Amsterdam, her stunned husband forms a strange partnership with a detective who agrees to help him trace her. They board the ferry to Hull on Christmas Eve. On the Welsh farm, a young man out walking with his dog injures himself and stays the night, then ends up staying longer with Emilie. Yet something is deeply wrong. Does he know what he is getting himself into? And what will happen when her husband and the detective arrive?” (adapted from Amazon.co.uk)

Oleander girl / Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni.
“Orphaned at birth, Korobi (Bengali for oleander ) always wondered why her mother named her after a beautiful but poisonous plant. Raised in Kolkata by her sweet if burdened grandmother and her grandfather, a famous and irascible lawyer, Korobi is a modest, smart, and unworldly college student when she meets wealthy, stylish, and jaded Rajat. Much to the surprise of his high-society friends and the horror of his mega rich ex-lover, Rajat proposes to quiet, unhip Korobi, who feels as though she has stepped into a fairy tale, cuing us to expect tragedy. But there is no anticipating the complexities and implications of the crises and obstacles Korobi and Rajat face in light of Korobi’s resolute quest for the truth about her father as she journeys across harshly xenophobic post-9/11 America.” (adapted from Syndetics summary)

I, Hogarth / Michael Dean.
“William Hogarth narrates the story of his rise from poverty in London to Sarjeant Painter to the King in language that evokes his most famous images. Along the way, the artist wins-and almost loses-the love of the gentle but keenly intelligent Jane Thornhill, the daughter of one of his artist heroes. Crammed with lovingly described sights that intoxicate the imagination, Hogarth’s London emerges as the great romance of his life. While the artist’s fall from public favor ultimately kills him, Jane’s love mollifies the cruelness of public disfavor.” (adapted from Syndetics summary)

The universe versus Alex Woods / by Gavin Extence.
“A tale of an unexpected friendship, an unlikely hero and an improbable journey. This is the story of seventeen-year-old Alex Woods, born to a clairvoyant mother and a phantom father, victim of an improbable childhood accident, who is stopped at Dover customs in possession of 113 grams of marijuana and the ashes of his best friend, Vietnam veteran Isaac Peterson. What follows is a highly original and compelling account of Alex’s life and the strange series of events that brought him here.” (adapted from Amazon.co.uk)

The palace of curiosities / Rosie Garland.
“Set in Victorian London, it follows the fortunes of Eve, the Lion-Faced Girl and Abel, the Flayed Man. Before Eve is born, her mother goes to the circus. She buys a penny twist of coloured sugar and settles down to watch the heart-stopping main attraction: a lion, billed as a monster from the savage heart of Africa. Mama swears she hears the lion sigh, just before it leaps, and nine months later when Eve is born, the story goes, she doesn’t cry, she meows and licks her paws. When Abel is pulled from the stinking Thames, the mudlarks are sure he is long dead. As they search his pockets to divvy up the treasure, his eyes crack open and he coughs up a stream of black water. But how has he survived a week in that thick stew of human waste? Cast out by Victorian society, Eve and Abel find succour from an unlikely source. They soar to fame as The Lion Faced Girl and The Flayed Man, star performers in Professor Josiah Arroner’s Palace of Curiosities. And there begins a journey that will entwine their fates forever.” (adapted from Amazon.co.uk)

The town that drowned / Riel Nason.
“Living with a weird brother in a small town can be tough enough. Having a spectacular fall through the ice at a skating party and nearly drowning are grounds for embarrassment. But having a vision and narrating it to the assembled crowd solidifies your status as an outcast. What Ruby Carson saw during that fateful day was her entire town, buildings and people floating under water. The residents of Haverton soon discover that a massive dam is being constructed and that most of their homes will be swallowed by the rising water. Suspicions mount, tempers flare, and secrets are revealed. As the town prepares for its own demise, 14-year-old Ruby Carson sees it all from a front-row seat. Set in the 1960s, The Town That Drowned evokes the awkwardness of childhood, the thrill of first love, and the importance of having a place to call home.” (adapted from Amazon.co.uk)

Life form / Amélie Nothomb ; translated from the French by Alison Anderson.
“Belgian author Amelie Nothomb receives a letter from 400 pound US Army private Melvin Mapple in December 2008. Normally she would ignore it, but something makes her respond. Amelie hates long letters and hides from fan requests, but agrees to help Melvin commit weight-gaining “body art” as a protest to the war America is fighting. Over two years the two grow to depend on each other’s letters to create a shared reality. All is well until Melvin disappears. Amelie worriedly searches and what she finds is a despairing man who has nothing “left to live for.”(adapted from Syndetics summary)

Instructions for a heatwave / Maggie O’Farrell.
“It’s July 1976. In London, it hasn’t rained for months, gardens are filled with aphids, water comes from a standpipe, and Robert Riordan tells his wife Gretta that he’s going round the corner to buy a newspaper. He doesn’t come back. The search for Robert brings Gretta’s children, two estranged sisters and a brother on the brink of divorce, back home, each with different ideas as to where their father might have gone. None of them suspects that their mother might have an explanation that even now she cannot share.” (adapted from Syndetics summary)

Don’t go / Lisa Scottoline.
“When he deployed to Afghanistan for the Army Medical Corps, Mike Scanlon left behind an enviable life, with a beautiful wife, an infant daughter, and a prospering practice as a podiatrist/orthopedic surgeon. Six months later, a freak accident changes Mike’s world forever. As Mike struggles with the aftermath and searches for answers, he soon learns that his bad luck has only just begun. Despite an overwhelming share of tragedy, betrayal, and rejection, Mike maintains his unwavering love for his daughter, Emily. After a series of bad choices, Mike finds his life spiraling deeper into a hopeless quagmire of despair, eventually learning what it’s like to lose everything.” (adapted from Syndetics summary)

The city of Devi / Manil Suri.
“Set in a futuristic India, where Hindu and Muslim factions are deeply at odds and bombing raids have been ongoing. Amid the chaos, 33-year-old Sarita armed only with a pomegranate, ventures into the streets of Mumbai, on the eve of its threatened nuclear annihilation. She is looking for her physicist husband Karun, who has been missing for over a fortnight. She is soon joined on her quest by Jaz, a cocky, handsome, Muslim, gay, and in search of his own lover. Together they traverse the surreal landscape of a dystopia rife with absurdity, and are inexorably drawn to the patron goddess Devi ma, the supposed saviour of the city.” (adapted from Amazon.co.uk)

This month’s selection of new Contemporary fiction varies in theme from modern day family life to suspenseful thrillers, from historical to horror. Highly recommended is the new novel from prize winning author J. M Coetzee, titled, The Childhood of Jesus. A glimpse of the ‘modern life’ some have to endure.

The childhood of Jesus / J. M. Coetzee.
“After crossing oceans, a man and a boy arrive in a new land. Here they are each assigned a name and an age, and held in a camp in the desert while they learn Spanish, the language of their new country. As Simón and David they make their way to the relocation centre in the city of Novilla, where officialdom treats them politely but not necessarily helpfully. Simón finds a job in a grain wharf. He must set about his task of locating the boy’s mother. Though like everyone else who arrives in this new country he seems to be washed clean of all traces of memory, he is convinced he will know her when he sees her. And indeed, while walking with the boy in the countryside Simón catches sight of a woman he is certain is the mother, and persuades her to assume the role.” (adapted from Amazon.co.uk)

The striker / Clive Cussler and Justin Scott.
“It is 1902, and Bell is a raw young detective, his keen intellect and jump-in-with-both-feet attitude un-tempered by experience. When he manages to convince his boss to let him prove that a run of sabotage in coal mines is more than the actions of some union activists, Bell soon finds himself with some very powerful and determined enemies.” (adapted from Amazon.co.uk)

The round house / Louise Erdrich.
“One Sunday in 1988, thirteen-year-old Joe Coutts learns that his mother has been the victim of a brutal attack by a man on their North Dakota reservation. Joe’s mother is traumatized and afraid. She takes to her bed, and refuses to talk to anyone, including the police; meanwhile his father, a tribal judge, endeavours to wrest justice from a situation that defies his keenest efforts. Frustrated, confused and nursing a complicated fury, Joe sets out with his best friends Cappy, Zack and Angus in search of answers that might put his mother’s attacker behind bars and set his family’s world straight again.” (adapted from Amazon.co.uk)

Villa Triste / Lucretia Grindle.
“When two sisters are forced to make impossible decisions while living under the brutal Nazi occupation of Italy, their actions set off a chain of events that ultimately impact a murder investigation sixty years later.” (adapted from Syndetics summary)

The obituary writer / Ann Hood.
“Vivien Lowe is an obituary writer in San Francisco obsessed with finding her lover, lost in the 1906 earthquake. She imagines him merely missing or suffering from amnesia because she cannot accept he might be dead; she knows that time does not heal, that grief never goes away. Meanwhile, decades into the future, privileged housewife Claire is bored with her marriage to Peter, a good provider but a demanding perfectionist, and launches an affair that Peter soon discovers. As this is 1961, she must stay in the marriage or risk losing their daughter. Claire attends the 80th birthday party of her formidable mother-in-law, Birdie. Birdie’s illness at the party unites the lives of Vivien and Claire, and their astonishing connection is revealed.” (adapted from Syndetics summary)

Fever / Mary Beth Keane.
“In the early 20th century in bustling and grimy New York City, Mary Mallon (1869-1938) became a medical first when she was identified as a healthy carrier of typhoid fever. Unknowingly, the house cook was passing the disease to families around the city. Eventually, typhoid outbreaks were traced to Mary, and she was placed in isolation. She was released three years later on the condition she would never cook again, but that promise proved hard for her to keep.This is the tragic tale of “Typhoid Mary” and the dangerous decisions she made while following her passion for cooking.“ (adapted from Synetics summary)

A tale for the time being / Ruth Ozeki.
“In Tokyo, sixteen-year-old Nao has decided there’s only one escape from her aching loneliness and her classmates’ bullying. But before she ends it all, Nao first plans to document the life of her great grandmother, a Buddhist nun who’s lived more than a century. A diary is Nao’s only solace and will touch lives in ways she can scarcely imagine.
Across the Pacific, we meet Ruth, a novelist living on a remote island who discovers a collection of artifacts washed ashore in a Hello Kitty lunchbox, possibly debris from the devastating 2011 tsunami. As the mystery of its contents unfolds, Ruth is pulled into the past, into Nao’s drama and her unknown fate, and forward into her own future.” (adapted from Amazon.com)

Light shining in the forest / Paul Torday.
“Norman Stokoe has just been appointed Children’s Czar by the new government. He sells his flat and moves up north to take up the position. However before his first salary cheque has even hit his bank account, new priorities are set for the government department for which he works. The Children’s Czar Network is put on hold but it is too late to reverse the decision to employ Norman. So he is given a P.A. and a spacious office in a new business park on the banks of the Tyne. He settles down in his new leather chair behind his new desk, to wait for the green light to begin his mission. The green light never comes. What does happen is that two children go missing. As Children’s Czar he is now faced with a campaigning journalist and a distraught mother, he is forced to become involved. The search will take him to dark places and will make him ask questions about the system he is supposed to uphold.” (adapted from Amazon.co.uk)

I remember you / Yrsa Sigurdardóttir ; translated from the Icelandic by Philip Roughton.
“In an isolated village in the Icelandic Westfjords, three friends set to work renovating a derelict house. But soon they realize they are not alone there, something wants them to leave, and it is making its presence felt.” (adapted from Syndetics summary)

The selection of new contemporary fiction this month will bring hours of reading pleasure with the latest novels by Ben Elton, Jim Crace and the very popular Jodi Picoult. Also included is the last novel by the late Bryce Courtenay.

The aviator’s wife : a novel / Melanie Benjamin.
“A star struck Anne Morrow is thrilled when Charles Lindbergh proposes marriage shortly after his famous transatlantic flight. Initially overjoyed to serve as the dashing young aviator’s “crew,” she soon discovers a dark side to her husband’s ambitions and yearns to break free of his rigid expectations for her. In the years that follow, despite her own major achievements, she becomes the first licensed female glider pilot in the United States, Anne is viewed merely as the aviator’s wife. The fairy-tale life she once longed for will bring heartbreak and hardships, ultimately pushing her to reconcile her need for love and her desire for.” (adapted from Syndetics summary)

The night ranger / Alex Berenson.
“Four young Americans, volunteers in a Kenyan refugee camp overflowing with Somalis, are kidnapped. Former CIA deep-cover operative John Wells is enjoying life in the New Hampshire woods with his lady, Anne, until his estranged son implores him to go to Africa to rescue the hostages. Reluctantly, for Wells’ expertise is the Middle East, the practicing Muslim heads for Africa as pressure mounts on the White House to invade Somalia. Another tragic war hangs on his success or failure.” (adapted from Syndetics summary)

Hit me : a Keller novel / Lawrence Block.
“Keller is married to Julia, the woman he saved from being raped. He is father to Jenny and co-owner of a small company that has done well rehabbing homes damaged by Hurricane Katrina. But the Great Recession has flattened his business, and Keller, somewhat reluctantly, returns to his lethal-but-lucrative former trade. His first assignment is to do away with the arrogant abbot of a monastery in Manhattan. Keller, however, seems to have lost his murderous mojo to the simple joys of family.” (adapted from Syndetics summary)

Jack of diamonds / Bryce Courtenay.
“Born and raised in a poor, working-class family in Toronto, Jack Spayd is the son of an unhappy marriage. But when he is given a harmonica as a young boy, he discovers a talent for music that will change his life forever.” (adapted from Syndetics summary)

Harvest / Jim Crace.
“The order and calm of a preindustrial village in England is upset by a mysterious fire and the simultaneous appearance of three strangers. The insular community strikes out against the newcomers but turns on itself in a fit, literally, of witch hunting.” (adapted from Syndetics summary)

Two brothers / Ben Elton.
“Berlin 1920 Two babies are born, two brothers, united and indivisible, sharing everything, twins in all but blood. As Germany marches into its Nazi Armageddon, the ties of family, friendship and love are tested to the very limits of endurance. And the brothers are faced with an unimaginable choice.” (adapted from Syndetics summary)

Mrs Queen takes the train / William Kuhn.
“After decades of service and years of watching her family’s troubles splashed across the tabloids, The Queen is beginning to feel her age. She needs some proper cheering up. An unexpected opportunity offers her relief: an impromptu visit to a place that holds happy memories — the former royal yacht, Britannia, now moored near Edinburgh. Hidden beneath a skull-emblazoned hoodie, the limber Elizabeth walks out of Buckingham Palace into the freedom of a rainy London day and heads for Kings Cross to catch a train to Scotland. Fortunately a colourful cast of royal attendants has discovered she’s missing.” (adapted from Syndetics summary)

The storyteller : a novel / Jodi Picoult.
“At 25, Sage Singer is scarred, both physically and mentally, by the car accident that took her mother’s life. A baker who works at night in a New Hampshire shop run by a former nun, Sage shuns almost all human contact, save for her coworkers and her funeral-director boyfriend, Adam, who is married to another woman. Sage ventures out of her comfort zone to befriend Josef Weber, an elderly retired teacher, who throws her world into chaos when he tells her that he’s a former SS officer and asks her to help him end his life.” (adapted from Syndetics summary)

Orders from Berlin / Simon Tolkien.
“It’s 1940, and Bill Trave is a Detective Constable in his early thirties working in West London. France has fallen and the capital is being bombed both day and night. Almost single-handedly Winston Churchill maintains the country’s morale, with the German enemy convinced that his removal would win them the War. Albert Morrison, a rich widower forced into early retirement by failing eyesight, is stabbed to death in his Chelsea flat. His only daughter, Ava, tells Trave that she would read the newspapers to him every evening, and the night before his death he had become suddenly excited when she read him an obscure obituary notice. At Morrison’s funeral, Ava learns from an old colleague that her father worked for MI6 before the War. The obituary notice was a coded message preparing for an assassination, although it does not specify the target. Trave realizes that there is a Nazi double agent within MI6, with a plan to assassinate Churchill and to set up another agent to take the blame. He is in a race against time to save Churchill, for if he fails, Britain’s entire war effort could be at stake.” (adapted from Amazon.co.uk)

Capital punishment / Robert Wilson.
“Charles Boxer, is a former cop turned private security professional specializing in kidnapping. When 25-year-old Alyshia D’Cruz, the daughter of a self-made Indian billionaire, is kidnapped after an evening out with her co-workers, Boxer is charged with getting Alyshia back alive. The kidnapper, who insists that the crime “is not about money,” urges the family not to involve the press or the police. A lot more than money, or Alyshia’s safety, is at stake becomes clear. They prefer a crueller, more lethal game and to have any chance of saving Alyshia, Boxer must play it out with religious fanatics, London’s home-grown crime lords and Indian mobsters, as his trail crosses paths with a terrorist plot on British soil.” (adapted from Amazon.co.uk)

A very diverse selection of new contemporary fiction this month and all will provide great reading. Highly recommended is the new novel from psychological suspense writer Frances Fyfield, titled Gold Digger.

The knot / Jane Borodale.
“1565. Across Europe, a new era of natural science is dawning. In a remote, damp corner of Somerset, an unlikely pioneer is working to change the course of English botany. Passionate, private, meticulous Henry Lyte has begun to neglect his other responsibilities in the pursuit of knowledge. This has happened before, with disastrous results. Married again after the tragic death of his first wife Anys, Henry tries to forget the past, absorbed by his scholarly translation of a Dutch ‘Herbal’ and by the intricate herb garden he is planting, with a Knot at its heart. Yet beneath the surface he is uneasy, and as the garden begins to flourish, old family troubles start to worm their way up towards the light. When the unexpected death of his father unleashes the malevolence of his stepmother Joan Young, he is not prepared for this new threat that could destroy everything he has come to love.” (adapted from Syndetics summary)

The last runaway / Tracy Chevalier.
“Forced to leave England and struggling with illness in the wake of a family tragedy, Quaker Honor Bright is forced to rely on strangers in the harsh landscape of 1850 Ohio where she is compelled to join the Underground Railroad network to help runaway slaves escape to freedom.” (adapted from Syndetics summary)

Mrs. Lincoln’s dressmaker : a novel / Jennifer Chiaverini.
“Elizabeth Keckley, born a slave who later purchased her freedom, lived a life that was charmed in many ways. Her talents as a seamstress gained her entree into the dressing rooms of the wives of the political elite in Washington. By far her most famous and long-lasting association was with Mary Todd Lincoln.The relationship between the two women quickly evolved, as Keckley was drawn into the intimate life of the Lincoln family, supporting Mary Todd Lincoln in the loss of first her son, and then her husband to the assassination that stunned the nation and the world.” (adapted from Amazon.com)

The sacrificial man / Ruth Dugdall.
“When Probation Officer Cate Austin is given her new assignment, she faces the highest-profile case of her career. Alice Mariani is charged with assisted suicide and Cate must recommend a sentence. Alice insists her story is one of misinterpreted love, forcing those around her to analyze their own lives. Who is to decide what is normal and when does loyalty turn to obsession? Investigating the loophole that lies between murder and euthanasia, Cate must now meet the woman who agreed to comply with her lover’s final request. Shocking revelations expose bitter truths that can no longer be ignored.” (adapted from Syndetics summary)

Gold digger / Frances Fyfield.
“ In a huge old school house by the sea, full of precious paintings, Thomas Porteous is dying. His much younger wife Di holds him and mourns. She knows that soon, despite her being his sole inheritor, Thomas’s relatives will descend on the collection that was the passion of both of their lives. And descend they do. The two needy daughters, who were poisoned against their father by their defecting mother, are now poisoning themselves. The family regards Thomas’s wealth as theirs by right, with the exception of young Patrick, who adored his grandfather and is torn between his parents and Di, the interloper. The family knows Di’s weaknesses, and she has to learn theirs. After all, she met Thomas when she came to his house to rob him. With the help of an unlikely collection of loners and eccentrics, she sets a trap to hoist the family members on their own greed. And on the night they are lured to the house, Di will be ready. Or will she?” (adapted from Syndetics summary)

The third bullet : a Bob Lee Swagger novel / Stephen Hunter.
“ Bob Lee Swagger is a former Vietnam sniper and when the wife of a murdered thriller writer asks Bob Lee to find her husband’s killer and mentions that the writer was working on a book about the assassination, Swagger, who has no interest in who killed JFK, says no thanks. But when the widow tells him that an overcoat that her husband found in a building across the way from the Texas Book Depository had a peculiar stain on the back, as if a bicycle had run over it, and suddenly Bob Lee is very interested indeed. As Bob investigates, the events of November 22, 1963, and the third bullet that so decisively ended the life of John F. Kennedy and set the stage for one of the most enduring controversies of our time, another voice enters the narrative: knowing, ironic, almost familiar, that of a gifted, Yale-educated veteran of the CIA Plans Division. Hugh Meachum has secrets and the means and the will to keep them buried. When weighed against his own legacy, Swagger’s life is an insignificant expense, but to blunt the threat, he’ll first have to ambush the sniper” (adapted from Amazon.com)

The fall and rise of Gordon Coppinger / David Nobbs. “Sir Gordon Coppinger, a globally-successful financier and owner of Canary Wharf’s The Coppinger Tower. A reluctant father, shameless adulterer, and devotee of all things extravagant, Gordon lives an exclusive life filled with fine wines and surrounded by servants and mistresses. It would seem to be a world without want. So when revelations about his scandalous relationships and less than honest business practices emerge, the glamorous façade begins to crumble and those around him start to fear the worst. But, much to Gordon’s surprise, all he can feel is relief. In a world that is built on the crazy principles of wealth and celebrity, and which is driven by the insatiable desire to attain more and more. Gordon Coppinger, a man going quietly sane.” (adapted from Amazon.co.nz)

War lord / David Rollins. “Returning from an enforced sabbatical after his partner Anna’s death, Special Agent Vin Cooper feels compelled to help an acquaintance of hers, Vegas showgirl, Alabama Thornton. Alabama’s boyfriend, Randy, was on a plane that’s gone down and she’s just received a gruesome ransom demand. But Vin’s favour quickly spirals into a full-blown multi-agency screw-up. Not only was Randy hiding high-level secrets, he is also connected to a stolen nuclear weapon. Vin and his straight-laced new partner Kim Petinski chase leads from Darwin to the fameless of Rio de Janeiro, and then further still into Tanzania. As their investigation hits dead ends, and dead bodies, an alarming possibility arises: the missing warhead is in the hands of Benicio von Weiss. Von Weiss is a major international arms dealer on every watch list that counts; he’s also a man of diverse tastes, including snakes and Nazi memorabilia and he has an obsession: vengeance against America.” (adapted from Amazon.co.uk)

Rook / Jane Rusbridge.
“Nora has come home to the Sussex coast where, every dawn, she runs along the creek path to the sea. In the half light, fragments of cello music crash around in her mind, but she casts them out – it’s more than a year since she performed in public. There are memories she must banish in order to survive: the charismatic teacher with gold-flecked eyes, a mistake she cannot unmake. At home her mother Ada is waiting: a fragile, bitter woman who distils for herself a glamorous past as she smokes French cigarettes in her unkempt garden. A charming young documentary maker arrives in the village to shoot a film about King Cnut and his cherished but illegitimate daughter, whose body is buried under the flagstones of the local church. As Jonny disturbs the fabric of the village, digging up tales of ancient battles and burials, the threads lead back to home, and Ada and Nora find themselves face to face with the shameful secrets they had so carefully buried.” (adapted from Syndetics summary)

The valley of unknowing / Philip Sington.
“In the twilight years of Communist East Germany, Bruno Krug, author of a single world-famous novel written twenty years earlier, falls for Theresa Aden, a music student from the West. But Theresa has also caught the eye of a cocky young scriptwriter who delights in satirizing Krug’s work. Asked to appraise a mysterious manuscript, Bruno is disturbed to find that the author is none other than his rival. Disconcertingly, the book is good–very good. But there is hope for the older man: the unwelcome masterpiece is dangerously political. Krug decides that if his affair with Theresa is to prove more than a fling, he must employ a small deception. But in the Workers’ and Peasants’ State, knowing the deceiver from the deceived, the betrayer from the betrayed, isn’t just difficult: it is a matter of life and death. Now the celebrated author and secret Stasi informer is ready to confess.” (adapted from Amazon.co.uk).

A great selection of new contemporary novels this month that includes titles from several genres, translated, historical, debut and satire. There is bound to be something that will provide much entertainment and enjoyment. The latest short read from popular author Alexander McCall Smith, titled Trains and Lovers would be one example of this.

A week in winter / Maeve Binchy.
“High on the cliffs of the west coast of Ireland, overlooking the windswept Atlantic ocean, is Stone House. Once falling into disrepair, it is now a beautiful hotel specializing in winter holidays. With a big, warm kitchen, log fires and elegant bedrooms, it provides a welcome few can resist, whatever their reasons for coming.”(adapted from Syndetics summary)

Swimming to Elba / Silvia Avallone ; translated by Antony Shugaar.
“Set in the industrial town of Piombino, whose thriving heart of Piombino is the steel plant, which simultaneously provides a livelihood for the residents and belches out toxic waste, poisoning the air they breathe. Two families linked together by their 13-year-old daughters, Anna and Francesca, who have been best friends since early childhood. While Anna is the daughter of a gambler and a criminal who has just lost his job at the steel factory, Francesca’s father is brutal and abusive, beating both Francesca and her mother. Beautiful and elusive, the girls only have eyes for each other until Anna’s head is turned by all the attention the two receive from men. When a friend of Anna’s older brother named Mattia swoops in and steals Anna’s heart just after Francesca has declared her love for her best friend, the girls’ bond is torn apart, setting them both on potentially risky paths.” (Booklist)

Stigmata / Colin Falconer. “1205AD: Philip of Vercy sails away from the roasting wasteland where he has passed the last year. As a Knight of the Realm, he has fought the infidel in the Holy Land. Now, after twelve months of savage, bloody warfare in the scorching sun, he is finally coming home to his castle, to peace, and to his beloved wife. But France offers neither comfort nor peace. His wife has died in childbirth, his young son is dying of a wasting disease and, in the south, and his Cathar countrymen are being brutally persecuted. When Philip hears rumours of a healer in the Languedoc, a young woman blessed by God and marked with Christ’s Stigmata, he rides out on a desperate quest to save his son. His journey takes him into a vision of hell that outstrips even what he saw in Outremer. Disgusted by the senseless slaughter, Philip gradually becomes embroiled in the Cathar cause. And then he finds his miracle: Fabrisse Berenger, the beautiful, loving daughter of Cathar parents. She is bewildered by her strange wounds, but Philip is fascinated by them and more fascinated by the serene goodness of Fabricia herself. Together, the pair must flee persecution under cover of darkness but they cannot hold off the Pope’s soldiers forever.” (adapted from Amazon.co.uk)

Gone : a novel / Cathi Hanauer.Gone
“For the past fourteen years, Eve Adams has worked part-time while raising her two children and emotionally supporting her sculptor husband, Eric, through his early fame and success. Now, at forty-two, she suddenly finds herself with a growing career of her own, a private nutritionist practice and a book deal, even as Eric’s career sinks deeper into the slump it lipped into a few years ago. After a dinner at a local restaurant to celebrate Eve’s success, Eric drives the babysitter home and, simply, doesn’t come back. Eve must now shift the family in possibly irreparable ways, forcing her to realize that competence in one area of life doesn’t always keep things from unravelling in another.” (adapted from Amazon.com)

Oh dear Silvia / Dawn French.
“Who is in Coma Suite Number 5? A matchless lover, a supreme egotist, a selfless martyr, a bad mother, a cherished sister, a selfish wife, or all of these. This is Silvia Shute, who has always done exactly what she wanted, until now, when her life suddenly, shockingly stops. Her past holds a terrible secret, and now that she is unconscious in a hospital bed, her constant stream of visitors is set to uncover the mystery of her broken life. Meanwhile she must lay there, victim of the beloveds, the borings, the babblings and the plain bonkers. Like it or not, the truth is about to pay Silvia a visit.” (adapted from Syndetics summary).

Black flower / Young-ha Kim ; translated from the Korean by Charles La Shure.
“In 1905, Korea was under the thumb of its powerful neighbor, Japan. The royal family was being disassembled, work was hard to come by, and uncertainty reigned. And so some 1,000 Koreans of all stripes aristocrats, thieves, scholars, ex-soldiers boarded a ship to Mexico with the promise of a new start. They were bitterly disappointed. Once in Mexico, they were parceled out to rich landowners, who had so reduced the native Mayan population that they were reaching to far Asia for new workers. This is the story of these indentured laborers as they face blistering heat, overseers with whips, and disrupted social relations. When their contract is up, each must decide where to go. Some continue as laborers, some attempt to return to Korea, and some are caught up in revolution.” (adapted from Syndetics summary)

Trains and lovers / Alexander McCall Smith. “The rocking of the train car, the sound of its wheels on the rails, there’s something special about this form of travel that makes for easy conversation. This is just what happens to the four strangers who meet in Trains and Lovers. As they travel by rail from Edinburgh to London, they entertain one another with tales of how trains have changed their lives.” (adapted from Amazon.com)

Magnificence : a novel / Lydia Millet.
“After her husband’s death, Susan Lindley seeks a new direction, which she finds unexpectedly in an inherited mansion full of taxidermy animals. Susan decides to restore the neglected, moth-eaten animal mounts, tending to “the fur and feathers, the beaks, the bones and shimmering tails. She eventually welcomes an assortment of people also in need of repair, including an unhappily married man and an elderly woman who needs to be needed and Susan’s daughter, confined to a wheelchair years before as the result of a car accident.” (adapted from Amazon.com)

The restaurant of love regained / Ito Ogawa ; translated by David Karashima. “Returning home from work, Rinko is shocked to find that her flat is totally empty. Gone are her TV set, fridge and furniture, gone are all her kitchen tools, including the old Meiji mortar she has inherited from her grandmother and the Le Creuset casserole she has bought with her first salary. Gone, above all, is her Indian boyfriend, the maitre d’ of the restaurant next door to the one she works in. She has no choice but to go back to her native village and her mother, on which she turned her back ten years ago as a fifteen-year-old girl. There she decides to open a very special restaurant, one that serves food for only one couple every day, according to their personal tastes and wishes. A concubine rediscovers her love for life, a girl is able to conquer the heart of her lover, a surly man is transformed into a loveable gentleman, all this happens at the Katatsumuri, the magic restaurant whose delicate food can heal any heartache and help its customers find love again.” (adapted from the Synetics summary)

The sea garden / Marcia Willett. “Jess Penhaligon is on her way to Devon to receive an award for her botanical painting. Hosting her will be Kate, who gladly welcomes her into her home. Jess’s own family fell apart several years ago, so she is grateful for Kate’s friendliness and her close unit of extended family and friends, who embrace Jess just as warmly. As this group begins reminiscing on their pasts and sharing their stories it becomes apparent that Jess’s family history may be linked to theirs. Long-buried secrets from past generations begin to be uncovered, but at what cost have they been kept hidden?” (adapted from the Syndetics summary)

A fabulous selection of new contemporary fiction this month — with many great, popular writers included. Two highly recommended novels for wonderful writing and narration are, May we be forgiven by A. M. Homes and The Testament of Mary by Colm Toibin.

One hundred names / Cecelia Ahern.
“Journalist Kitty Logan’s career has been destroyed by scandal, and she now faces losing the woman who guided her and taught her everything she knew. At her mentor’s bedside, Kitty asks her, what is the one story she always wanted to write? The answer lies in a file buried in Constance’s office: a list of one hundred names. There is no synopsis, no explanation, nothing else to explain what the story is or who these people are. The list is simply a mystery. But before Kitty can talk to her friend, it is too late. With everything to prove, Kitty is assigned the most important task of her life, to write the story her mentor never had the opportunity to. Kitty has to not only track down and meet the people on the list, but find out what connects them. And, in the process of hearing ordinary people’s stories, she uncovers Constance’s and starts to understand her own.” (adapted from Syndetics summary)

A hologram for the king : a novel / Dave Eggers.
“In a rising Saudi Arabian city, far from weary, recession-scarred America, a struggling businessman pursues a last-ditch attempt to stave off foreclosure, pay his daughter’s college tuition, and finally do something great.” (adapted from Syndetics summary)

May we be forgiven / A.M. Homes.
“Feeling overshadowed by his more-successful younger brother, Harold is shocked by his brother’s violent act that irrevocably changes their lives, placing Harold in the role of father figure to his brother’s adolescent children and caregiver to his aging parents.” (adapted from Syndetics summary)

Flight behaviour : a novel / Barbara Kingsolver.
“Dellarobia Turnbow is a restless farm wife who gave up her own plans when she accidentally became pregnant at seventeen. Now, after a decade of domestic disharmony on a failing farm, she has settled for permanent disappointment but seeks momentary escape through an obsessive flirtation with a younger man. As she hikes up a mountain road behind her house to a secret tryst, but instead encounters a shocking sight: a silent, forested valley filled with what looks like a lake of fire. She can only understand it as a cautionary miracle, but it sparks a raft of other explanations from scientists, religious leaders and the media. The bewildering emergency draws rural farmers into unexpected acquaintance with urbane journalists, opportunists, sightseers, and a striking biologist with his own stake in the outcome.” (adapted from Syndetics summary)

Familiar : a novel / J. Robert Lennon.
“Elisa Brown is on the long drive home after visiting her son’s grave when the crack in her windshield vanishes. She notices other changes too. Her body is curvier; her clothes and car are different. Back home, she has a new job, a sturdier marriage, and disturbingly altered sons. Has she had a psychotic break? Or entered a parallel universe? Her quest for answers hinges on seeing herself as she really is something that might be impossible for Elisa, or for anyone.” (adapted from Syndetics summary)

The jewels of paradise / Donna Leon.
“Caterina Pellegrini is a young Venetian woman who has been hired to find the truthful heir to an alleged treasure devised by a once-famous baroque composer. She can only solve the mystery by reading through the papers contained in two chests. Caterina finds herself drawn into one of the most scandalous affairs of the era.” (adapted from Syndetics summary)

The heart broke in / James Meek.
“Bec Shepherd is a malaria researcher struggling to lead a good life. Ritchie, her reprobate brother, is a rock star turned TV producer. When Bec refuses an offer of marriage from a powerful newspaper editor and Ritchie’s indiscretions catch up with him, brother and sister are forced to choose between loyalty and betrayal.” (adapted from Amazon.co.uk)

Dominion / C.J. Sansom.
“1952. Twelve years have passed since Churchill lost to the appeasers and Britain surrendered to Nazi Germany after Dunkirk. As the long German war against Russia rages on in the east, the British people find themselves under dark authoritarian rule: the press, radio and television are controlled; the streets patrolled by violent auxiliary police and British Jews face ever greater constraints. There are terrible rumours too about what is happening in the basement of the German Embassy at Senate House. Defiance, though, is growing. In Britain, Winston Churchill’s Resistance organization is increasingly a thorn in the government’s side. And in a Birmingham mental hospital an incarcerated scientist, Frank Muncaster, may hold a secret that could change the balance of the world struggle for ever.” (adapted from Amazon.co.uk)

The testament of Mary / Colm Tóibín.
“In a voice that is both tender and filled with rage, ‘The Testament of Mary’ tells the story of a cataclysmic event which led to an overpowering grief. For Mary, her son has been lost to the world, and now, living in exile and in fear, she tries to piece together the memories of the events that led to her son’s brutal death.” (adapted from Amazon.co.uk)

Back to blood : a novel / Tom Wolfe.
“A colorful cast of residents and visitors to Miami go about their daily activities, both legal and illegal. This is a big, panoramic story of the new America, as told by the author of the way we live now.” (adapted from Syndetics summary)

Some terrific new novels have been selected for this month’s new contemporary fiction. Featured is new work from popular writers such as Sebastian Faulks, Ken Follett, Marian Keyes and Val McDermid, to name a few. Highly recommended is the quirky futuristic tale, The Last Policeman by Ben H. Winters.

“A possible life : a novel in five parts / Sebastian Faulks. “Throughout the five masterpieces of fiction that make up A Possible Life, exquisitely drawn and unforgettable characters risk their bodies, hearts and minds in pursuit of the manna of human connection. Between soldier and lover, parent and child, servant and master, and artist and muse, important pleasures and pains are born of love, separations and missed opportunities. These interactions, whether successful or not also affect the long trajectories of characters’ lives.” (adapted from Amazon.com)

Winter of the World / Ken Follett.
“Berlin in 1933 is in upheaval. Eleven-year-old Carla von Ulrich struggles to understand the tensions disrupting her family as Hitler strengthens his grip on Germany. Into this turmoil steps her mother’s formidable friend and former British MP, Ethel Leckwith, and her student son, Lloyd, who soon learns for himself the brutal reality of Nazism. He also encounters a group of Germans resolved to oppose Hitler, but are they willing to go so far as to betray their country? Such people are closely watched by Volodya, a Russian with a bright future in Red Army Intelligence. The international clash of military power and personal beliefs that ensues will sweep over them all as it rages from Cable Street in London’s East End to Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, from Spain to Stalingrad, from Dresden to Hiroshima. Lives and the hopes of the world are smashed by the greatest and cruellest war in the history of the human race.” (adapted from Amazon.co.uk)

City of women / David R. Gillham.
“It is 1943, the height of the Second World War. With the men taken by the army, Berlin has become a city of women. And while her husband fights on the Eastern Front, Sigrid Schröder is, for all intents and purposes, the model soldier’s wife: she goes to work every day, does as much with her rations as she can, and dutifully cares for her meddling mother-in-law. But behind this façade is an entirely different Sigrid, a woman who dreams of her former Jewish lover, who is now lost in the chaos of the war. Sigrid’s tedious existence is turned upside-down when she finds herself hiding a mother and her two young daughters: could they be her lover’s family? She must now make terrifying choices that could cost her everything.” (adapted from Amazon.co.uk)

The mystery of Mercy Close / Marian Keyes. “Helen Walsh doesn’t believe in fear, it’s just a thing invented by men to get all the money and good jobs, and yet she’s sinking. Her work as a Private Investigator has dried up, her flat has been repossessed and now some old demons have resurfaced. Not least in the form of her charming but dodgy ex-boyfriend Jay Parker, who shows up with a missing persons case. Money is tight and Jay is awash with cash, so Helen is forced to take on the task of finding Wayne Diffney, the ‘Wacky One’ from boy band Laddz. Things ended messily with Jay, but his reappearance is stirring up all kinds of stuff she thought she’d left behind. Playing by her own rules, Helen is drawn into a dark and glamorous world, where her worst enemy is her own head and where increasingly the only person she feels connected to is Wayne, a man she’s never even met.” (adapted from Amazon.co.uk)

Swimming home / Deborah Levy ; introduced by Tom McCarthy. “As he arrives with his family at the villa in the hills above Nice, Joe sees a body in the swimming pool. But the girl is very much alive. She is Kitty Finch: a self-proclaimed botanist with green-painted fingernails, walking naked out of the water and into the heart of their holiday. Why is she there? What does she want from them all? And why does Joe’s enigmatic wife allow her to remain?” (adapted from Amazon.co.uk)

The vanishing point / Val McDermid. “Stephanie Harker is travelling through the security gates at O’Hare airport, on her way to an idyllic holiday. Five-year-old Jimmy goes through the metal detector ahead of her. But then, in panic and disbelief, Stephanie watches as a uniformed agent leads her boy away and she’s stuck the other side of Security, hysterical with worry. The authorities, unaware of Jimmy’s existence, just see a woman behaving erratically; Stephanie is brutally wrestled to the ground and blasted with a taser gun to restrain her. By the time she can tell them what has happened, Jimmy is long gone. But as Stephanie tells her story to the FBI, it becomes clear that everything is not as it seems with this seemingly normal family. What is Jimmy’s background? Why would someone want to abduct him? And, with time running out, how can Stephanie get him back?” (adapted from Amazon.co.uk)

Merivel a man of his time / Rose Tremain.
“Robert Merivel, physician and courtier to Charles II, loved for his gift to turn sorrow into laughter, now faces the agitations and anxieties of middle age. Questions crowd his mind: has he been a good father? Is he a fair master? Is he the King’s friend or the King’s slave? In search of answers, Merivel sets off for the French court. But Versailles, all glitter in front and squalor behind, leaves Merivel in despair, until a chance encounter with Madame de Flamanville, a seductive Swiss botanist, allows him to dream of an honourable future. But will that future ever be his? Back home at Bidnold Manor, his loyalty and medical skills are tested to their limits, while the captive bear he has brought back from France begins to cause unlooked-for havoc in his heart and on his estate.” (adapted from Amazon.co.uk)

The deadman’s pedal / Alan Warner. “It is the early 1970s in the Highlands of Scotland and for 16-year-old Simon Crimmons there’s really not much to do. He can hang around with his pals or his first-ever girlfriend, Nikki, he can dream about a first motorbike to get him out of the Port and among the hills, but in truth he’s going nowhere. The only local drama and romance is provided by the rural railway, and Simon ends up working on the trains by chance, thrown into a community of jaded older men. But that summer he is introduced to a world far more glamorous and strange. He meets the louche, bohemian Alex, and his dark, gorgeous sister, Varie: all that remains of ‘the doomed family’ of the great house at Broken Moan, where their father, Andrew Bultitude, is Commander of the Pass. When Simon falls in love with the otherworldly Varie he is suddenly given a freedom and mobility that is both thrilling and vertiginous.” (adapted from Amazon.co.uk)

The last policeman / by Ben H. Winters.
“When the Earth is doomed by an imminent and unavoidable asteroid collision, New Hampshire homicide detective Hank Palace considers the worth of his job in a world destined to end in six months and with society rapidly falling apart, he investigates a suspicious suicide that nobody else cares about.” (adapted from Syndetics summary)

The Daylight Gate / Jeanette Winterson. “Based on the most notorious of English witch-trials, this is a tale of magic, superstition, conscience and ruthless murder. It is set in a time when politics and religion were closely intertwined; when, following the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, every Catholic conspirator fled to a wild and untamed place far from the reach of London law.” (adapted from Amazon.co.uk)

This month’s selection of new Contemporary Fiction includes two novels short listed for this year’s Man Booker Prize, The Lighthouse by Alison Moore and The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng. Also included is this year’s winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award, Jane Rogers for her novel, The Testament of Jessie Lamb. All are highly recommended.

Toby’s room / Pat Barker.
“This indelible portrait of a family torn apart by war focuses on Toby Brooke, a medical student, and his younger sister Elinor. Enmeshed in a web of complicated family relationships, Elinor and Toby are close: some might say too close. But when World War I begins, Toby is posted to the front as a medical officer while Elinor stays in London to continue her fine art studies at the Slade, under the tutelage of Professor Henry Tonks. There, in a startling development based in actual fact, Elinor finds that her drafting skills are deployed to aid in the literal reconstruction of those maimed in combat. When Toby is reported ‘Missing, Believed Killed’, another secret casts a lengthening shadow over Elinor’s world: how exactly did Toby die and why? Elinor determines to uncover the truth. Only then can she finally close the door to Toby’s room.” (adapted from Amazon.com)

San Miguel / T. Coraghessan Boyle.
“Thirty-eight-year-old Marantha Waters arrives on San Miguel on New Year’s Day 1888 to restore her failing health. Joined by her husband, a stubborn, driven Civil War veteran who will take over the operation of the sheep ranch on the island, Marantha strives to persevere in the face of the hardships, some anticipated and some not, of living in such brutal isolation. Two years later their adopted teenage daughter, Edith, an aspiring actress, will exploit every opportunity to escape the captivity her father has imposed on her. Time closes in on them all and as the new century approaches, the ranch stands untenanted until March 1930, when Elise Lester, a librarian from New York City, settles on San Miguel with her husband, Herbie, a World War I veteran full of manic energy. As the years go on they find a measure of fulfilment and serenity; Elise gives birth to two daughters, and the family even achieves a celebrity of sorts. But will the peace and beauty of the island see them through the impending war as it had seen them through the Depression?” (adapted from Amazon.com)

The red chamber / by Pauline Chen. The Red Chamber
“When orphaned Daiyu leaves her home in the provinces to take shelter with her cousins in the Capital, she is drawn into a world of opulent splendor, presided over by the ruthless, scheming Xifeng and the prim, repressed Baochai. As she learns the secrets behind their glittering façades, she finds herself entangled in a web of intrigue and hidden passions, reaching from the petty gossip of the servants’ quarters all the way to the Imperial Palace. When a political coup overthrows the emperor and plunges the once-mighty family into grinding poverty, each woman must choose between love and duty, friendship and survival.”(adapted from Amazon.com)

The rapture of the nerds / Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross.
“Near the end of the twenty-first century, Huw Jones, an ordinary man, is called to tech jury duty (tech juries evaluate new technologies to determine if they are safe for use); he winds up in possession of or perhaps possessed by an alien entity, on the run from the authorities, and nearly killed by some backwoods religious fundamentalists; eventually, he has his consciousness translated to electronic form, where he battles another iteration of himself in a simulated landscape to save the world.” (adapted Syndetics summary)

The dinner / Herman Koch ; translated from the Dutch by Sam Garrett.
“Paul Lohman and his wife Claire are going out to dinner with Paul’s brother Serge, a charismatic and ambitious politician, and his wife Babette. Paul knows the evening will not be fun. The restaurant will be over-priced and pretentious, the head waiter will bore on about the organically certified free-range this and artisan-fed that, and almost everything about Serge, especially his success, will infuriate Paul. But as the evening wears on it becomes clear that tonight’s dinner will be even more difficult than usual. There is something the two couples have to discuss. It’s about their teenage sons and the very bad thing they have been doing. And it’s about how far two sets of parents will go to save their children from the consequences of their actions.” (adapted from Syndetics summary)

Zoo time / Howard Jacobson. “Novelist Guy Ableman is in thrall to his vivacious wife Vanessa, beautiful but contrary, highly strung and blazingly angry. The trouble is, he is no less in thrall to her alluring mother, Poppy. Their provocative presence fills Guy’s head with stories so wild he can’t concentrate to write them. Not that anyone reads anymore, anyway. Reading, Guy fears, is finished. His publisher, fearing the same, has committed suicide. His agent, like all agents, is in hiding. Vanessa, however, is writing her own novel. Guy dreads the consequences.” (adapted from Amazon.co.uk)

Tigers in red weather / Liza Klaussmann.
“Nick and her cousin, Helena, have grown up sharing sultry summers at Tiger House, the glorious old family estate on the island of Martha’s Vineyard. As World War II ends they are on the cusp of adulthood, the world seeming to offer itself up to them. Helena is leaving for Hollywood and a new marriage, while Nick is to be reunited with her young husband Hughes, due to return from London and the war. Everything is about to change. Neither quite finds the life she had imagined, and as the years pass, the trips to Tiger House take on a new complexity. Then, on the brink of the 1960s, Nick’s daughter Daisy and Helena’s son Ed make a sinister discovery. It plunges the island’s bright heat into private shadow and sends a depth-charge to the heart of the family.” (adapted from Amazon.co.uk)

The lighthouse / Alison Moore. “On a North Sea ferry, on whose blustery outer deck stands Futh, a middle-aged, recently separated man heading to Germany for a restorative walking holiday. Spending his first night in Hellhaus at a small, family-run hotel, he finds the landlady hospitable but is troubled by an encounter with an inexplicably hostile barman. In the morning, Futh puts the episode behind him and sets out on his week-long circular walk along the Rhine. As he travels, he contemplates his childhood; a complicated friendship with the son of a lonely neighbour; his parents’ broken marriage and his own. But the story he keeps coming back to, the person and the event affecting all others, is his mother and her abandonment of him as a boy, which left him with a void to fill, a substitute to find. At the end of the week, Futh, sunburnt and blistered, comes to the end of his circular walk, returning to what he sees as the sanctuary of the Hellhaus hotel, unaware of the events which have been unfolding there in his absence.” (adapted from Amazon.co.uk)

The testament of Jessie Lamb : a novel / Jane Rogers.
“A rogue virus that kills pregnant women has been let loose in the world, and nothing less than the survival of the human race is at stake. Some blame the scientists, others see the hand of God, and still others claim that human arrogance and destructiveness are reaping the punishment they deserve. Jessie Lamb is an ordinary sixteen-year-old girl living in extraordinary times. As her world collapses, her idealism and courage drive her toward the ultimate act of heroism. She wants her life to make a difference. But is Jessie heroic? Or is she, as her scientist father fears, impressionable, innocent, and incapable of understanding where her actions will lead?” (adapted from Amazon.com)

The garden of evening mists : a novel / Tan Twan Eng.
“Malaya, 1951. Yun Ling Teoh, the scarred lone survivor of a brutal Japanese wartime camp, seeks solace among the jungle-fringed tea plantations of Cameron Highlands. There she discovers Yugiri, the only Japanese garden in Malaya, and its owner and creator, the enigmatic Aritomo, exiled former gardener of the emperor of Japan. Despite her hatred of the Japanese, Yun Ling seeks to engage Aritomo to create a garden in memory of her sister, who died in the camp. Aritomo refuses but agrees to accept Yun Ling as his apprentice “until the monsoon comes.” Then she can design a garden for herself. As the months pass, Yun Ling finds herself intimately drawn to the gardener and his art, while all around them a communist guerrilla war rages. But the Garden of Evening Mists remains a place of mystery. Who is Aritomo and how did he come to leave Japan? And is the real story of how Yun Ling managed to survive the war perhaps the darkest secret of all?” (adapted from Amazon.com)

The selection of new contemporary fiction this month includes the latest novels by popular authors, Nicci French, Philippa Gregory and Andy McNab. Highly recommend is the translated novel titled, New Finnish Grammar by Italian Diego Marani, a truly amazing debut.

Tuesday’s gone / Nicci French. “Psychotherapist Frieda Klein thought she was finished with the police. But once more DCI Karlsson is knocking at her door. A man’s decomposed body has been found in the flat of Michelle Doyce, a woman trapped in a world of strange mental disorder. The police don’t know who he was, how he got there or what happened and Michelle can’t tell them. But Karlsson hopes Frieda can get access to the truths buried beneath her confusion. Painstakingly, Frieda uncovers a possible identity for the corpse: Robert Poole, a jack of all trades and master conman. But the deeper Frieda and Karlsson dig into Poole’s past, the more of his victims they encounter and the more motives they find for murder.” (adapted from Amazon.co.uk)

The Kingmaker’s daughter / Philippa Gregory.
“The gripping and ultimately tragic story of Anne Neville and her sister Isabel, the daughters of the Earl of Warwick, the most powerful magnate in England. In the absence of a son and heir, he ruthlessly uses the two girls as pawns but they, in their own right, are thoughtful and powerful actors. Against the backdrop of the court of Edward IV and his beautiful queen, Elizabeth Woodville, Anne turns from a delightful child growing up in intimacy and friendship with the family of Richard Duke of York to become ever more fearful and desperate as her father’s enemies turn against her, the net closes in and there is, in the end, simply nowhere she can turn, no one she can trust with her life.” (adapted from Amazon.co.uk)

Truth like the sun / Jim Lynch.
” It is 1962, and the city of Seattle is about to be famous. Roger Morgan, an audacious young promoter, wants to pull off the ultimate coup de theatre: the World’s Fair, rising out of the downtown fog to show the whole nation that the future has arrived. In the run-up to the Fair’s grand opening, Roger is everywhere at once, entertaining Elvis Presley and Lyndon Johnson, dipping in and out of secret card games and smooth-talking his way out of awkward financial questions, all under the haze of many a whiskey and the shadow of a looming crisis in Cuba. Roger dazzles everyone he meets, and is still a backstage power forty years later when, at the age of seventy, he makes a surprise bid for mayor. Helen Gulanos, a journalist new in town and keen to make her mark, sees her retrospectives on the 1962 Fair become front-page news as Roger’s candidacy ignites the public imagination. She resolves to uncover the real Roger from behind the warm handshakes and glossy receptions, because even Seattle’s golden boy must have something to hide.” (adapted from Amazon.co.uk)

Battle lines / Andy McNab & Kym Jordan.
“Coming back from war is never easy, as Sergeant Dave Henley’s platoon discovers all too quickly when they return from fighting in Afghanistan. Life at home is very different than on the battlefield for everyone. When they are summoned back to Helmand to protect the US team assigned to destroy the opium crop, it is almost a relief to the soldiers, if not to their wives, girlfriends and families who are turned inside out once more by their men’s sudden departure. For all concerned, danger lurks around every corner, for Dave’s team who must learn new skills to survive, and their loved ones in England, whose lives can be destroyed by equally deadly weapons, a harsh look, a misunderstanding, an ugly rumour.” (adapted from Amazon.co.uk)

New Finnish grammar / Diego Marani ; translated by Judith Landry.New Finnish Grammar “One night at Trieste in September 1943 a seriously wounded soldier is found on the quay. The doctor, of a newly arrived German hospital ship, Pietri Friari gives the unconscious soldier medical assistance. His new patient has no documents or anything that can identify him. When he regains consciousness he has lost his memory and cannot even remember what language he speaks. From a few things found on the man the doctor, who is originally from Finland, believes him to be a sailor and a fellow countryman, who somehow or other has ended up in Trieste. The doctor dedicates himself to teaching the man Finnish, beginning the reconstruction of the identity of Sampo Karjalainen, leading the missing man to return to Finland in search of his identity and his past.” (adapted from Amazon.co.uk)

Purgatory / Tomás Eloy Martínez ; translated from the Spanish by Frank Wynne. “ This novel is set in Argentina. Simon Cardoso had been dead for thirty years when Emilia Dupuy, his wife, found him at lunchtime in the dining room of Trudy Tuesday. Simon, a cartographer like Emilia, had vanished during one of their trips to map an uncharted country road. Later testimonies had confirmed that he had been one of the thousands of victims of the military regime, arrested, tortured and executed for being a “subversive.” Yet Emilia had refused to believe this account, and had spent her entire life waiting for him to reappear. Now in her sixties, the Simon she has found is identical to the man she lost three decades ago.” (adapted from Amazon.co.uk)

The Taliban Cricket Club / Timeri N. Murari.
” Set in Kabul, Afghanistan in 2000. Rukhsana supports her dying widowed mother and teenaged brother by writing stories secreted outside the country and published pseudonymously. But Rukhsana fears her journalistic cover is blown when summoned by Zorak Wahidi, head of the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. He wants journalists to promote a cricket tournament in a misguided bid to win diplomatic accolades for the Taliban. Though woman are not allowed to compete, Rukhsana played cricket at college in India, and so disguises herself as a man to coach her brother and cousins in order to get them out of Afghanistan. But when Wahidi asks for Rukhsana’s hand in marriage, she must navigate dangerous social territory in an effort to remain free, and stay alive.” (adapted from Syndetics summary)

The love and death of Caterina / Andrew Nicoll.
“Luciano Hernando Valdez is his Latin American nation’s most celebrated novelist and he’s suffering from writer’s block. So far his latest great work comprises the words ‘The scrawny yellow cat crossed the road’. He’s tried all his usual tricks to get back on track, but nothing will work, until he meets Caterina. Beautiful, young and one of his biggest fans, she has idolised him since she was a child and he has inspired her to write. Convinced that falling in love with her, spending every minute he can alongside her, moulding her to his world, will unlock something and enable him to write, he pursues her and soon enough, he falls headlong into her arms. But it’s only a matter of time before he murders her.” (adapted from Amazon.co.uk)

The Geneva trap / Stella Rimington.
“Geneva, 2012. When a Russian intelligence officer approaches MI5 with vital information about the imminent cyber-sabotage of an Anglo-American Defense programme, he refuses to talk to anyone but Liz Carlyle. But who is he, and what is his connection to the British agent? At a tracking station in Nevada, US Navy officers watch in horror as one of their unmanned drones plummets out of the sky, and panic spreads through the British and American Intelligence services. Is this a Russian plot to disable the West’s defenses? Or is the threat coming from elsewhere? As Liz and her team hunt for a mole inside the MOD, the trail leads them from Geneva, to Marseilles and into a labyrinth of international intrigue, in a race against time to stop the Cold War heating up once again.” (adapted from Syndetics summary)

Dirt : a novel / David Vann.
“The year is 1985, and twenty-two-year-old Galen, a New Age believer, lives with his emotionally dependent mother in a suburb of Sacramento, surviving on the family trust fund, old money that his aunt and seventeen-year-old cousin are determined to get their hands on. When the family takes a trip to a cabin near South Lake Tahoe, tensions cause Galen to discover the shocking truth of just how far he will go to attain the transcendence he craves.” (adapted from book cover)

This selection of recently received Contemporary Fiction includes several highly acclaimed authors such as James Lee Burke, Martin Amis and Ruth Rendell. Also the Pulitzer Prize winner Jennifer Egan, with her latest novel titled, Look at me.

Lionel Asbo : state of England / Martin Amis.
“Lionel Asbo, a very violent but not very successful young criminal, is going about his morning duties in a London prison when he learns that he has just won £139,999,999.50 on the National Lottery. This is not necessarily good news for his ward and nephew, the orphaned Des Pepperdine, who still has reason to fear his uncle’s implacable vengeance.” (adapted from Amazon.co.uk)

The sandcastle girls / Chris Bohjalian.
“Between April 1915 and April 1916, one and one-half million Armenians were killed by the Ottoman Empire during WWI. In 1915 Elizabeth Endicott accompanies her father to Aleppo, Syria, to bring aid to the Armenian deportees. While there, Elizabeth meets Armen Petrosian, an Armenian engineer working for the Germans and searching for his wife and child, though certain they are already dead. In spite of the loss and horror around them, they fall desperately in love. The story is told through the eyes of Laura Petrosian, Elizabeth and Armen’s great-granddaughter. After seeing an exhibit of photographs of the Armenian victims, she discovers letters and photos and begins to piece her great-grandparents’ story together.” (adapted from Syndetics summary)

Creole belle : a Dave Robicheaux novel / James Lee Burke.
“While the New Iberia, La., deputy sheriff Dave Robicheaux is recovering in a New Orleans hospital from a bullet wound, he receives a visit from Cajun singer Tee Jolie Melton, who leaves him an iPod loaded with music, including the blues song “My Creole Belle.” The problem is that Tee Jolie supposedly disappeared months earlier, and her teenage sister, Blue Melton, has just turned up frozen in a block of ice. Meanwhile, Clete Purcel, Robicheaux’s hard-drinking best friend, has problems of his own: some local wise guys are trying to blackmail him, and he fears his lost daughter, Gretchen, may be a notorious assassin. As Robicheaux and Purcel suit up again to take on an array of foes, including corrupt politicians, oil men, and a wealthy old man they suspect is a Nazi war criminal, they feel the weight of their own history, and begin to hear the ghostly whisper of mortality.” (adapted from Syndetics summary)

Look at me : a novel / Jennifer Egan.
“Reconstructive facial surgery after a car crash so alters Manhattan model Charlotte that, within the fashion world, where one’s look is oneself, she is unrecognizable. Seeking a new image, Charlotte engages in an Internet experiment that may both save and damn her. As her story eerily converges with that of a plain, unhappy teenager, another Charlotte, it raises tantalizing questions about identity and reality in contemporary Western culture.” (adapted from Amazon.co.uk)

The newlyweds : a novel / Nell Freudenberger.The Newlyweds
“Amina Mazid is twenty-four when she leaves Bangladesh for Rochester, New York, and for George Stillman, the husband who met and wooed her online. It’s a twenty-first-century romance that echoes ancient traditions, the arranged marriages of her home country. Although George falls for Amina because she doesn’t ‘play games’, they will both hide a secret, and vital, part of their lives from each other.” (adapted from Amazon.co.uk)

The prisoner of paradise / by Romesh Gunesekera.
“When Lucy Gladwell arrives in Mauritius from England to live with her aunt and uncle in their grand plantation house.. She is nonetheless unprepared for the beauty, fecundity and otherness of this island paradise between Africa and India, where she is to be waited on hand and foot by servants and free to let her thoughts drift on the sea breeze. If only they did not drift to such problematic subjects as the restrictions of colonial society, or the bigoted outbursts of her uncle, or the disquieting attractions of Don Lambodar, a young translator from Ceylon, himself entangled in thoughts of iniquity and desire and facing a decision which could risk his precarious position. Under the surface there is growing unease. For it is 1825: Britain has wrested power from France and is shipping convict labour across the Indian Ocean. The age of slavery is coming to its messy end. For Lucy, for Don, for everyone on the island, a devastating storm is coming.” (adapted from Syndetics summary)

A lady cyclist’s guide to Kashgar : a novel / Suzanne Joinson.
“It is 1923 and Evangeline English, keen lady cyclist, arrives with her sister Lizzie at the ancient Silk Route city of Kashgar to help establish a Christian mission. As they attempt to navigate their new home and are met with resistance and calamity, Eva commences work on her book, A Lady Cyclist’s Guide to Kashgar. In present-day London another story is beginning. Frieda, a young woman adrift in her own life, opens her front door one night to find a man sleeping on the landing. In the morning he is gone, leaving on the wall an exquisite drawing of a long-tailed bird and a line of Arabic script. Tayeb, who has fled to England from Yemen, has arrived on Frieda’s doorstep just as she learns that she is the next-of-kin to a dead woman she has never heard of: a woman whose abandoned flat contains many surprises. The two wanderers begin an unlikely friendship as their worlds collide, and they embark on a journey that is as great, and as unexpected, as Eva’s.” (adapted from Amazon.co.uk)

The Saint Zita Society / Ruth Rendell.
“Dex works as a gardener for Dr Jefferson at his home on Hexam Place in Pimlico: an exclusive street of white-painted stucco Georgian houses inhabited by the rich, and serviced by the not so rich. The hired help, a motley assortment of au pairs, drivers and cleaners, decide to form the St Zita Society (Zita was the patron saint of domestic servants) as an excuse to meet at the local pub and air their grievances. When Dex is invited to attend one of these meetings, the others find that he is a strange man, seemingly ill at ease with human beings. They discover he has recently been released from a hospital for the criminally insane, where he was incarcerated for attempting to kill his own mother. Dex’s most meaningful relationship seems to be with his mobile phone service provider, Peach, and he interprets the text notifications and messages he receives from the company as a reassuring sign that there is some kind of god who will protect him. And give him instructions about ridding the world of evil spirits.” (adapted from Amazon.co.uk)

My policeman / Bethan Roberts.
“It is in 1950s’ Brighton that Marion first catches sight of Tom. He teaches her to swim in the shadow of the pier and Marion is smitten, determined her love will be enough for them both. A few years later in Brighton Museum Patrick meets Tom. Patrick is besotted with Tom and opens his eyes to a glamorous, sophisticated new world. Tom is their policeman, and in this age it is safer for him to marry Marion. The two lovers must share him, until one of them breaks and three lives are destroyed.” (adapted from Amazon.co.uk)

Honour / Elif Shafak.
“The story of Esma a young Kurdish woman in London trying to come to terms with the terrible murder her brother has committed. Esma tells the story of her family stretching back three generations; back to her grandmother and the births of her mother and Aunt in a village on the edge of the Euphrates. Named Pembe and Jamila, meaning Pink and Beautiful rather than the names their mother wanted to call them, Destiny and Enough, the twin girls have very different futures ahead of them all of which will end in tragedy on a street in East London in 1978.” (adapted from Amazon.co.uk)