Each month I get really excited about the books which are being published the following month. This month it has been particularly difficult to choose just ten as there are some amazing titles due to be released. However, here are my top ten.
'If you remember my love in your prayers as strongly as I adore you, I shall hardly be forgotten, for I am yours,' - Henry Rex, forever
Written by King Henry VIII to his sweetheart, the seductive and vivacious Anne Boleyn, his passion for her would be so great that Henry would make Anne his queen, and change the course of English history.
But the woman whom Henry had promised to love for all time would go from palace to prison, charged with heinous crimes. Her life ended on a bloody scaffold in the Tower of London.
Explore the incredible story of Anne Boleyn, the most famous and controversial of Henry VIII's six wives, in this exciting new account of her life told in words and pictures.
Baja California, 1979: Viridiana spends her days under the harsh sun, watching the fishermen pulling in their nets and the dead sharks piled beside the seashore. Her head is filled with dreams of romance, travel and of a future beyond this drab town where her only option is to marry and have children.
When a wealthy American writer arrives with his wife and brother-in-law, Viridiana jumps at the offer of a job as his assistant, and she's soon entangled in the glamorous foreigners' lives. They offer excitement, and perhaps an escape from her humdrum life. When one of them dies, eager to protect her new friends, Viridiana lies - but soon enough, someone's asking questions. It's not long before Viridiana has some of her own questions about the identities of her new acquaintances.
Sharks may be dangerous, but there are worse predators nearby, ready to devour a naïve young woman unwittingly entangled in a web of deceit.
It’s 1990. The Happy Mondays are in the charts, a 15-year-old called Kate Moss is on the cover of the Face magazine, and Julia Roberts wears thigh-boots for the poster for a new movie called Pretty Woman.
February Kingdom is nineteen years old when she is knocked sideways by family tragedy. Then one evening in May she finds an escaped canary in her kitchen and it sparks a glimmer of hope in her. With the help of the bird called Yellow, Feb starts to feel her way out of her own private darkness, just as her aunt embarks on a passionate and all-consuming affair with a married American drama teacher.
THIS COULD BE EVERYTHING is a coming-of-age story with its roots under the pavements of a pre-Richard Curtis-era Notting Hill that has all but vanished. It’s about what happens when you start looking after something more important than you, and the hope a yellow bird can bring…
The great Elizabeth Raffald used to be a household name, and her list of accomplishments would make even the highest of achievers feel suddenly impotent. After becoming housekeeper at Arley Hall in Cheshire at age twenty-five, she married and moved to Manchester, transforming the Manchester food scene and business community, writing the first A to Z directory and creating the first domestic servants registry office, the first temping agency if you will. Not only that, she set up a cookery school and ran a high class tavern attracting both gentry and nobility. She reputedly gave birth to sixteen daughters, wrote book on midwifery and was an effective exorciser of evil spirits. These achievements gave her notoriety and standing in Manchester, but it all pales in comparison to her biggest achievement; her cookery book The Experienced English Housekeeper. Published in 1769, it ran to over twenty editions and brought her fame and fortune. But then disaster; her fortune lost, spent by her alcoholic husband. Bankrupted twice, she spent her final years in a pokey coffeehouse in a seedy part of town. Her book, however, lived on. Influential and often imitated (but never bettered), it became the must-have volume for any kitchen, and it helped form our notion of traditional British food as we think of it today. To tell Elizabeth's tumultuous rise and fall story, historian Neil Buttery doesn't just delve into the history of food in the eighteenth century, he has to look at trade and empire, domestic service, the agricultural revolution, women's rights, publishing and copyright law, gentlemen's clubs and societies, the horse races, the defeminization of midwifery, and the paranormal, to name but a few. Elizabeth Raffald should be revered, not unknown. How can this be? Perhaps we should ask Mrs Beeton...
Sam is dead, which means that Elsie Jane has just lost the brilliant, sensitive man she planned to grow old with. The early days of grief are a fog of work and single parenting. Too restless to sleep, Elsie pores over Sam's old love letters, paces her house, and bickers with the ghosts of Sam and her dead parents night after night. As the year unfolds, she develops an obsession with a local murder mystery, attends a series of disastrous internet dates in search of a "replacement soulmate," and solicits a space-time wizard via Craigslist, convinced he will help her forge a path through the cosmos back to Sam.
Examining the ceaseless labour of motherhood, the stigma of death by drug poisoning, and the allure of magical thinking in the wake of tragedy, What Remains of Elsie Jane is a heart-splitting reminder that grief is born from the depths of love.
Haworth 1847 - Anne and Emily Brontë have had their books accepted for publication, while Charlotte's has been rejected everywhere, creating a strained atmosphere at the parsonage.
At the same time, a shocking court case has recently concluded, acquitting a workhouse master of murdering his wife by poison. Everyone thinks this famously odious and abusive man is guilty. However, he insists he is many bad things but not a murderer. When an attempt is made on his life, he believes it to be the same person who killed his wife and applies to the detecting sisters for their help.
Despite reservations, they decide that perhaps, as before, it is only they who can get to the truth and prove him innocent - or guilty - without a shadow of doubt.
I would kill to dance like her.
Disciplined and dedicated, Olivia is the perfect ballerina. But no matter how hard she works, she can never match identical twin Clara's charm.
I would kill to be with her.
As rehearsals intensify for the ballet Coppélia, the girls feel increasingly like they are being watched. And, as infatuation turns to obsession, everything begins to unravel.
One damsel + one wolf + many, many, many frogs = DISTRESS
Gloriously fun, romantic and feel-good, discover a 21st century London fairytale with an unforgettable twist . . .
Bella Marble is a true, hopeless, despairing romantic. Above all things, even above her wish to be a writer, she wants love.
But when her beautiful best friend moves out of their flat share to live with the most boring ogre in history, and her perfectly paired parents tell her their own love story is coming to an end, Bella's illusions of a happily ever after start to shatter. If they can't find 'the one', what chance does she have?
Disenchanted, Bella throws herself into looking for love in all the wrong places. London may be fresh out of knights in shining Armani, but it's got a surplus of frogs - and as Bella learns, kissing frogs can be extremely fun.
But Bella is forgetting the essential rule of all fairytales.
There is nothing more powerful than a first kiss . . .
One outback town. Two puzzling murders. Fifty suspects.
In Unamurra, a drought-scarred, one-pub town deep in the outback, two men are savagely murdered a month apart - their bodies elaborately arranged like angels.
With no witnesses, no obvious motives and no apparent connections between the killings, how can lone police officer Detective Dana Russo - flown in from hundreds of kilometres away - possibly solve such a baffling, brutal case?
Met with silence and suspicion from locals who live by their own set of rules, Dana must take over a stalled investigation with only a week to make progress.
But with a murderer hiding in plain sight, and the parched days rapidly passing, Dana is determined to uncover the shocking secrets of this forgotten town - a place where anyone could be a killer.
A gripping and vividly atmospheric story from the international bestseller, this is a searing story perfect for fans of Jane Harper, Chris Hammer and Garry Disher.
Blood and power bind three generations of women in the Ozark Mountains. So does an evil that’s followed them across the decades.
1931. Gracelynn Doherty lives peacefully on Tin Mountain, helping her adoptive granny work her cures. Despite whispers that the women are witches, the superstitious locals still seek them out, whether to remedy arthritis or a broken heart. But when evangelist Josiah Bellflower comes to town promising miracle healing, full bellies, and prosperity, his revivals soon hold Tin Mountain in thrall―and Granny in abject fear.
Granny recognizes Josiah. Fifty years ago, in a dark and desperate moment, she made a terrible promise. Now Josiah, an enemy, has returned to collect his due.
As Granny sickens and the drought-ridden countryside falls under a curse, Gracelynn must choose: flee Tin Mountain and the only family she knows, or confront the vengeful preacher whose unholy mission is to destroy her.
No comments:
Post a Comment