The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom ‘You must not become too friendly with them, ’ she said. ‘They are not the same as us.’ ‘How?’ I asked. ‘How are they not the same?’ When seven-year-old Irish orphan Lavinia is transported to Virginia to work in the kitchen of a wealthy Read more…
Funny Girl by Nick Hornby Make them laugh, and they’re yours forever . . . It’s the swinging 60s and the nation is mesmerized by unlikely comedy star Sophie Straw, the former Blackpool beauty queen who just wants to make people laugh, like her heroine Lucille Ball. Behind the Read more…
Black Diamonds by Catherine Bailey Wentworth House was surrounded by 70 collieries employing tens of thousands of men. It is England’s forgotten palace which belonged to Britain’s richest aristocrats. Black Diamonds tells the story of its demise: family feuds, forbidden love, class war, and a tragic and violent death Read more…
Go set a Watchman by Harper Lee Described as the “publishing event of the decade” Go set a Watchman was written before the American Classic, To Kill A Mockingbird – which, until now, was Harper Lee’s only published novel. Maycomb, Alabama. Twenty-six-year-old Jean Louise Finch – ‘Scout’ – returns home Read more…
Us by David Nicholls One night, Douglas Petersen, a 54-year-old industrial biochemist, is woken by his art gallerist wife of almost a quarter of a century, Connie, and informed that she thinks their marriage may be over. This is bad news for Douglas – not only because Read more…
The Heat of Betrayal by Douglas Kennedy The publisher’s blurb: Robin knew Paul wasn’t perfect. But he said they were so lucky to have found each other, and she believed it was true. In the heady strangeness of Morocco, he is everything she wants him to be – passionate, Read more…
The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay First with your head and then with your heart . . . So says Hoppie Groenwald, boxing champion, to a seven-year-old boy who dreams of being the welterweight champion of the world. For the young Peekay, it is a piece of advice Read more…
The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal 264 wood and ivory carvings, none of them bigger than a matchbox: Edmund de Waal was entranced when he first encountered the collection in his great uncle Iggie’s Tokyo apartment. When he later inherited the ‘netsuke’, they unlocked a story far larger Read more…
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë “There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.” From its haunting first line to its famous closer, “Reader, I married him”, Charlotte Brontë takes her audience by the throat with a fierce narrative of great immediacy. Jane Eyre’s voice on the page Read more…
We are all completely beside ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler Rosemary is now an only child, but she used to have a sister the same age as her, and an older brother. Both are now gone – vanished from her life. “I wanted you to have an extraordinary life,” confesses Rosemary’s Read more…