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Mothering Sunday
Graham Swift
How will Jane Fairchild, orphan and housemaid, occupy her time when she has no mother to visit? How, shaped by the events of this never to be forgotten day, will her future unfold?
Mothering Sunday has at its heart both the story of a life and the life that stories can magically contain. Constantly surprising, joyously sensual and deeply moving, it is Graham Swift at his thrilling best.
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Small Great Things
Jodi Picoult
Ruth Jefferson is a labour and delivery nurse at a Connecticut hospital with more than twenty years' experience. During her shift, Ruth begins a routine checkup on a newborn, only to be told a few minutes later that she's been reassigned to another patient. The parents are white supremacists and don't want Ruth, who is African American, to touch their child. The hospital complies with their request, but the next day, the baby goes into cardiac distress while Ruth is alone in the nursery. Does she obey orders or does she intervene ?
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The Essex Serpent
Sarah Perry
Set in Victorian London and an Essex village in the 1890's, and enlivened by the debates on scientific and medical discovery which defined the era, The Essex Serpent has at its heart the story of two extraordinary people who fall for each other, but not in the usual way. They are Cora Seaborne and Will Ransome. Cora is a well-to-do London widow who moves to the Essex parish of Aldwinter, and Will is the local vicar. They meet as their village is engulfed by rumours that the mythical Essex Serpent, once said to roam the marshes claiming human lives, has returned. Told with exquisite grace and intelligence, this novel is most of all a celebration of love, and the many different guises it can take.
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China Rich Girlfriend
(Crazy Rich Asians number 2)
Kevin Kwan
Kevin Kwan, bestselling author of Crazy Rich Asians, is back with a wickedly funny new novel of social climbing, secret e-mails, art-world scandal, lovesick billionaires, and the outrageous story of what happens when Rachel Chu, engaged to marry Asia’s most eligible bachelor, discovers her birthfather.
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The Light Between Oceans
M.L. Stedman
After four harrowing years on the Western Front, Tom Sherbourne returns to Australia and takes a job as the lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock, nearly half a day’s journey from the coast. To this isolated island, where the supply boat comes once a season and shore leaves are granted every other year at best, Tom brings a young, bold, and loving wife, Isabel.
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The Man Who Risked It All
Laurent Gounelle
Looking down from the Eiffel Tower, Alan Greenhow stands on the edge, determined to end it all. As he prepares to jump, his thoughts are interrupted by a cough. To his right is a mysterious stranger in a dark suit, smoking a cigar. This is Yves Dubreuil. The person who will change Alan’s life. From best-selling author Laurent Gounelle, The Man Who Risked It All explores the fragility of life and the possibilities that are presented to us in the unlikeliest circumstances.
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Messages from a Lost World: Europe on the Brink
Stefan Zweig
Stefan Zweig was a leading talisman of a united Europe of unfettered movement, of pro-active cultural exchange, human decency and tolerance, all polar opposites of the Nationalist regimes he loathed, and which came to power in the 1930s. In these poignant essays and addresses, forged in the last years or even months of his life, he shows his profound concern for and dedication to the survival of Europe's spiritual integrity.
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The Round House beest read
Louise Erdrich
One Sunday in the spring of 1988, a woman living on a reservation in North Dakota is attacked. The details of the crime are slow to surface as Geraldine Coutts is traumatized and reluctant to relive or reveal what happened, either to the police or to her husband, Bazil, and thirteen-year-old son, Joe. In one day, Joe's life is irrevocably transformed. He tries to heal his mother, but she will not leave her bed and slips into an abyss of solitude. Increasingly alone, Joe finds himself thrust prematurely into an adult world for which he is ill prepared.
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Here I Am
Jonathan Safran Foer
In the book of Genesis, when God calls out, “Abraham!” to order him to sacrifice his son Isaac, Abraham responds, “Here I am.” Later, when Isaac calls out, “My father!” to ask him why there is no animal to slaughter, Abraham responds, “Here I am.”
How do we fulfil our conflicting duties as father, husband, and son; wife and mother; child and adult? Jew and American? How can we claim our own identities when our lives are linked so closely to others’? These are the questions at the heart of Jonathan Safran Foer’s first novel in eleven years--a work of extraordinary scope and heartbreaking intimacy.
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Three Sisters, Three Queens
(The Plantagenet and Tudor Novels number 8)
Philippa Gregory
When Katherine of Aragon is brought to the Tudor court as a young bride, the oldest princess, Margaret, takes her measure. With one look, each knows the other for a rival, an ally, a pawn, destined—with Margaret’s younger sister Mary—to a sisterhood unique in the entire world. The three sisters will become the queens of England, Scotland, and France.
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The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet
(Wayfarers number 1)
Becky Chambers
Somewhere within our crowded sky, a crew of wormhole builders hops from planet to planet, on their way to the job of a lifetime. To the galaxy at large, humanity is a minor species, and one patched-up construction vessel is a mere speck on the starchart. This is an everyday sort of ship, just trying to get from here to there.
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Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption
Laura Hillenbrand
On a May afternoon in 1943, an Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean and disappeared, leaving only a spray of debris and a slick of oil, gasoline, and blood. Then, on the ocean surface, a face appeared. It was that of a young lieutenant, the plane’s bombardier, who was struggling to a life raft and pulling himself aboard. So began one of the most extraordinary odysseys of the Second World War.
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Adventure of a Terribly Greedy Girl:
a memoir of Food, Family, Film and Fashion
Kay Plunkett-Hogge
Imagine Adventures of a Terribly Greedy Girl as a book written by the illegitimate child of Nora Ephron and Laurie Colwin, dusted with a little Eastern promise. It's a celebration of a tumbling through life, of mistakes, and opportunities laid bare. Joyful, witty, and occasionally indiscreet, this is a book that stares at menopause with a gin in hand and looks back at a life entirely unplanned.
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Before I Fall
Lauren Oliver
For popular high school senior Samantha Kingston, February 12—"Cupid Day"—should be one big party, a day of valentines and roses and the privileges that come with being at the top of the social pyramid. And it is…until she dies in a terrible accident that night.
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The Other Mrs Walker
Mary Paulson-Ellis
Somehow she'd always known that she would end like this. In a small square room, in a small square flat. In a small square box, perhaps. Cardboard, with a sticker on the outside. And a name... The Other Mrs Walker - a detective story with no detective - is a beautiful, beguiling and intensely moving debut.
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Room
Emma Donoghue
To five-year-old Jack, Room is the entire world. It is where he was born and grew up; it's where he lives with his Ma as they learn and read and eat and sleep and play. At night, his Ma shuts him safely in the wardrobe, where he is meant to be asleep when Old Nick visits. Told entirely in the language of the energetic, pragmatic five-year-old Jack, Room is a celebration of resilience and the limitless bond between parent and child, a brilliantly executed novel about what it means to journey from one world to another.
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The Woman who Read Too Much
By Bahiyyih Nakhjavani
A mid-19th-century Persian poetess clashes against old-world gender expectations, religious orthodoxy, and politics in this exquisite tale, based on the actual life of poet and theologian Tahirih Qurratu'l-Ayn. Four haunting, first-person narrators—the Mother of the Shah, the Wife of the Mayor, the sister of the Shah, and the daughter of the poetess of Qazvin—recall how the poetess emancipated Tehran's citizens with literacy, predicted the fates of a Mullah and a high-ranking government official, and scandalously displayed her naked face to some four score of men. The poetess of Qazvin "knew too much, thought too much, read far too much, and finally said too much, too…she had always been a rebel....A heretic from the start."
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The Museum of Innocence
By Orhan Pamuk
It is Istanbul in 1975. Kemal is a rich and engaged man when he by chance encounters a long-lost relation, Fusun, a young shopgirl whose beauty stirs all the passion denied him in a society where sex outside marriage is taboo.
Fusun ends their liaison when she learns of Kemal’s engagement. But Kemal cannot forget her: for nine years he tries to change her mind, meanwhile stealing from her an odd assortment of personal items, which he collects and cherishes — a “museum of innocence” that he puts on display to tell the heartbreaking story of a love that shaped a life.
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GULP
By Mary Roach
The alimentary canal is classic Mary Roach terrain: the questions explored in Gulp are as taboo, in their way, as the cadavers in Stiff and every bit as surreal as the universe of zero gravity explored in Packing for Mars. Why is crunchy food so appealing? Why is it so hard to find words for flavors and smells? Why doesn’t the stomach digest itself? How much can you eat before your stomach bursts? Can constipation kill you? Did it kill Elvis?
This is a journey into the delights and disgusts of our food, and how it travels through our bodies.
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A God in Ruins
By Kate Atkinson
A title that relates the life of Teddy Todd - would-be poet, heroic World War II bomber pilot, husband, father, and grandfather - as he navigates the perils and progress of the 20th century. It looks at war - that great fall of Man from grace - and the effect it has, not only on those who live through it, but on the lives of generations to come.
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The Four Books
By Yan Lianke
In the ninety-ninth district of a sprawling labour camp, the Author, Musician, Scholar, Theologian and Technician are undergoing Re-education, to restore their revolutionary zeal and credentials. In charge of this process is the Child, who delights in draconian rules, monitoring behaviour and confiscating treasured books.
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FUNNY GIRL
By Nick Hornby
Barbara Parker is Miss Blackpool of 1964, but she doesn't want to be a beauty queen. She only wants to make people laugh. So she leaves her hometown behind, takes herself off to London, and lands a life-changing audition for a new BBC comedy series. Overnight she becomes Sophie Straw: charming, gorgeous, destined to win the nation's hearts.
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The Novel Habits of Happiness
By Alexander McCall Smith
Now in paperback, this is the 10th book in the series set in Edinburgh and featuring Isabel Dalhousie. Isabel finds herself questioning her views on reincarnation, the nature of grief and the positioning of lighthouses.
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Dark Places
By Gillian Flynn
Libby Day was just seven years old when her fifteen-year-old brother massacred her family while she hid in a cupboard. Her evidence helped put him away. Ever since then she has been drifting.
But when she is contacted by a group who are convinced of Ben’s innocence, Libby starts to ask questions she never dared before.
Ben was a social misfit in their small town, but was he capable of murder? Are there secrets to uncover at the family farm? Libby must delve into her family's past to uncover the truth - no matter how painful...
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The Sixth Extinction
By Elizabeth Kolbert
Blending natural history, field reporting and the history of ideas into a powerful account of the mass extinction happening today, likely to be mankind's most lasting legacy. This book urgently compels us to rethink the fundamental question of what it means to be human.
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The Heat of Betrayal
By Douglas Kennedy
Robin knew Paul wasn't perfect. But he said thewere 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, talented, knowledgeable. She is convinced that it is here she will finally become pregnant.
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Freedom
By Jonathan Franzen
This is the story of the Berglunds, their son Joey, their daughter Jessica and their friend Richard Katz. It is about how we use and abuse our freedom; about the beginning and ending of love; teenage lust; the unexpectedness of adult life... and why things almost never work out as they ‘should’.
It is a story about the human heart, and what it leads us to do to ourselves and each other.
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The leftovers
Tom Perrotta
Following the sudden disappearance of thousands of citizens, Kevin Garvey, Mapleton's new mayor, wants to bring a sense of hope to his traumatised community, but his family has fallen apart in the wake of disaster. Kevin's wife has joined a homegrown cult, and his son is a disciple of the prophet Holy Wayne. Only Jill, Kevin's daughter, remains, and she's no longer the sweet student she once was.
Written with a rare ability to illuminate our everyday struggles, 'The Leftovers' is a startling novel about love, connection and loss.
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This side of brightness
Colum McCann
At the turn of the twentieth century, Nathan Walker comes to New York City to take the most dangerous job in the country: digging the tunnel far beneath the Hudson that will carry trains from Brooklyn to Manhattan. In the bowels of the riverbed, the workers - black, white, Irish and Italian - dig together, the darkness erasing all differences. But above ground, the men keep their distance until a dramatic accident on a bitter winter's day welds a bond between Walker and his fellow workers that will both bless and curse three generations.
Almost ninety years later, Treefrog stumbles on the same tunnels and sets about creating a home amongst the drug addicts, alcoholics, prostitutes and petty criminals that comprise the forgotten homeless community.
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THE BEGINNER’S GOODBYE
Anne Tyler
When Dorothy came back from the dead, it seemed to Aaron that some people simply didn't notice. The accident that killed Dorothy - involving an oak tree, a sun porch and some elusive biscuits - leaves Aaron bereft and the house a wreck. As those around him fuss and flap and bring him casserole after casserole, Aaron ploughs on. But then Dorothy starts to materialize in the oddest places. At first, she only comes for a short while, leaving Aaron longing for more. Gradually she stays for longer, and as they talk, they also bicker and the cracks that were present in their perfectly ordinary marriage start to reappear...
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THE BOOK OF LIFE
Stuart Nadler
Forced together on a trip from Manhattan to Rhode Island, a father and son attempt to renew their bond over lobster, cigarettes, and a buried secret. A pure-hearted artist finds his devotion cruelly tested, while his true love tries to repent for the biggest mistake of her life. Unwittingly thrust into an open marriage, a man struggles to reconnect with his newly devout son. And in the book's daring first story, an arrogant businessman begins a forbidden affair during the High Holidays. Written in clear, crystalline prose, The Book of Life comprises seven stunning tales about faith, family, grief, love, temptation, and redemption that signal the arrival of a bold and exciting new writer.
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A WAY IN THE WORLD
V.S. NAIPAUL
This vastly innovative novel explores colonial inheritance through a series of narratives that span continents, swing back and forth between past and present and delve into both autobiography and fiction. Naipaul offers a personal choice of examples of Spanish and British imperial history in the Caribbean, including an imagined vision of Raleigh's last expedition and an introduction to Francisco de Miranda, a would-be liberator and precursor to Bolivar, which are placed within a context of echoing modernity and framed by two more personal, heavily autobiographical sections sketching the narrator an eloquent yet humble man of Indian descent who grew up in Trinidad but spent much of his adult life in England and Africa. Meditative and dramatic, these historical reconstructions, imbued with Naipaul's acute perception, drawn with his deft and sensitive touch, and told in his beautifully wrought prose, are transmuted into an astonishing novel exploring the profound and mysterious effect of history on the individual.
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Writing Arabic
From Script to Type
Stefan F. Moginet
This book, abundatly illustrated with examples, clearly presents the development of Arabic writing styles, from the begining with reed pens to twenty-first-century computerized typesetting. For those interested in the extraordinary history of writing.
Also in french : Du calame à l'ordinateur.
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