Recommended Reading for Staff July 2013

Are you aware of these?  Reviews from sites including Goodreads: www.goodreads.com

 

 1)      The Jackson Brodie series by Kate Atkinson

 

2)      The Hundred-Year-Old-Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared / Jonas Jonasson

 It all starts on the one-hundredth birthday of Allan Karlsson. Sitting quietly in his room in an old people's home, he is waiting for the party he-never-wanted-anyway to begin. The mayor is going to be there. The press is going to be there. But, as it turns out, Allan is not...Slowly but surely Allan climbs out of his bedroom window, into the flowerbed (in his slippers) and makes his getaway. And so begins his picaresque and unlikely journey involving criminals, several murders, a suitcase full of cash, and incompetent police. As his escapades unfold, we learn something of Allan's earlier life in which - remarkably - he helped to make the atom bomb, became friends with American presidents, Russian tyrants, and Chinese leaders, and was a participant behind the scenes in many key events of the twentieth century. Already a huge bestseller across Europe, The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared is a fun, feel-good book for all ages.

3)      Astonishing Splashes of Colour/ Clare Morrall (all of hers)

 Short-listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2003, this absorbing, beautifully written, and perceptive novel perfectly captures the complexity of memory and the dynamics of family life
 When an innocent trip to see the play Peter Pan gives Kitty's four brothers an excuse to deny her access to her much-loved nieces, she finds herself in a skewed, vividly colored world where children become emblems of hope, longing, and grief. Still reeling from the loss of her own child that never was, Kitty is suddenly made shockingly aware of the real reason for her pervasive sense of non-existence. Suddenly, her family's oddness, the secrets of her mother’s life and death, and the disappearance of her sister come into a startling new focus—one that leaves Kitty struggling to find own identity.

4)      Joonie/ Rayda Jacobs

 

 

Heartwarming yet tough, this unforgettable story centers around a brave, young black girl named Joonie from Grassy Park, South Africa. When both her uncle and local priest attempt to take sexual advantage of her, Joonie refuses their advances. For all her fortitude, however, Joonie is slow to learn from the past—especially with respect to relationships—and she soon finds herself single and pregnant. A journey of self-discovery, this narrative chronicles Joonie’s coping with a shocking revelation about her identity in a foreign country and celebrates her indomitable spirit

 

5)      The Song Before it is Sung/ Justin Cartwright

 On July 20, 1944, Adolf Hitler narrowly escaped an assassination attempt. He had the main conspirators brutally strung up on meat hooks. Among the executed was Axel von Gottberg, a German Rhodes Scholar at Oxford who returned home in 1934, to the dismay of his Oxford friends, particularly Elya Mendel.

Sixty years later, Elya, now a distinguished professor, leaves behind a collection of papers and letters to a former student, Conrad Senior, and asks him to find out the truth about Axel, whom he had condemned as a Nazi sympathizer. But the more Conrad tries to uncover the truth, the more complex he finds the relationship between the two friends, especially in their involvement with two beautiful English cousins. As Conrad investigates obsessively, his own life comes apart. Weaving darkly through these complex stories is an infamous film of Axel's execution; a film which Conrad is desperate to find, for reasons he can barely understand himself.

Wonderfully written--and based on true events--The Song Before It Is Sung is a novel of profound and sensitive insight into the human condition, spanning Oxford in the 1930s, prewar Prussia, and contemporary Britain and surpassing all of Cartwright's previous works in its scope and ambition.

 

6)      Lightkeeper's Daughter/ Iain Lawrence

 Three years have passed since Squid McCrae last saw her parents and the remote island where she grew up. She returns now at seventeen, a young woman with a daughter in tow. The visit, she knows, will be rough. Lizzie Island- paradise to some, a stifling prison to others- brings an onslaught of memories. It is the place of Squid' s idyllic childhood, where she and her brother, Alastair, blossomed into precocious adolescents. But Lizzie Island is also the place where Alastair died.
Now the past collides with the present as Squid' s homecoming unleashes bittersweet recollections, revelations, and accusations. But nothing is what it appears to be. No one possesses the complete truth, and no one is without blame.

7)      Wallender series by Henning Mankell (thriller/ crime fiction).  I started with The Man from Beijing, but it is not the first.

8)      James Patterson’s Women’s Murder Club mysteries, starting with 1^st to Die

 

9)      Bed Book of Short Stories

The bed, dressed in hand sewn quilt or threadbare blanket, may in and of itself be memorable, but it is what happens in the bed – the sex and lovemaking, the dreams, the reading, the nightmares, the rest, giving birth and dying – which give ‘bed’ special meaning. Whether a bed is shared with a book, a child, a pet or a partner, whether lovers lie in ecstasy or indifference, whether ‘bed’ relates to intimacy or betrayal, it is memories and recollections of ‘bed’, in whatever form, which have triggered the writing of these thirty stories by women from southern Africa.

  

10)   Passion of Artemisia/ Susan Vreeland

Recently rediscovered by art historians, and one of the few female post-Renaissance painters to achieve fame during her own era, Artemisia Gentileschi led a remarkably "modern" life. Susan Vreeland tells Artemisia's captivating story, beginning with her public humiliation in a rape trial at the age of eighteen, and continuing through her father's betrayal, her marriage of convenience, motherhood, and growing fame as an artist. Set against the glorious backdrops of Rome, Florence, Genoa, and Naples, inhabited by historical characters such as Galileo and Cosimo de' Medici II, and filled with rich details about life as a seventeenth-century painter, Vreeland creates an inspiring story about one woman's lifelong struggle to reconcile career and family, passion and genius.

11)   Tell the Wolves I’m Home/ Carol Brunt

There’s only one person who has ever truly understood fourteen-year-old June Elbus, and that’s her uncle, the renowned painter Finn Weiss. Shy at school and distant from her older sister, June can only be herself in Finn’s company; he is her godfather, confidant, and best friend. So when he dies, far too young, of a mysterious illness her mother can barely speak about, June’s world is turned upside down. But Finn’s death brings a surprise acquaintance into June’s life—someone who will help her to heal, and to question what she thinks she knows about Finn, her family, and even her own heart.

At Finn’s funeral, June notices a strange man lingering just beyond the crowd. A few days later, she receives a package in the mail. Inside is a beautiful teapot she recognizes from Finn’s apartment, and a note from Toby, the stranger, asking for an opportunity to meet. As the two begin to spend time together, June realizes she’s not the only one who misses Finn, and if she can bring herself to trust this unexpected friend, he just might be the one she needs the most.

 

12)    Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry/ Rachel Joyce

 

Harold Fry is convinced that he must deliver a letter to an old love in order to save her, meeting various characters along the way and reminiscing about the events of his past and people he has known, as he tries to find peace and acceptance.

Recently retired, sweet, emotionally numb Harold Fry is jolted out of his passivity by a letter from Queenie Hennessy, an old friend, who he hasn't heard from in twenty years. She has written to say she is in hospice and wanted to say goodbye. Leaving his tense, bitter wife Maureen to her chores, Harold intends a quick walk to the corner mailbox to post his reply but instead, inspired by a chance encounter, he becomes convinced he must deliver his message in person to Queenie--who is 600 miles away--because as long as he keeps walking, Harold believes that Queenie will not die.

So without hiking boots, rain gear, map or cell phone, one of the most endearing characters in current fiction begins his unlikely pilgrimage across the English countryside. Along the way, strangers stir up memories--flashbacks, often painful, from when his marriage was filled with promise and then not, of his inadequacy as a father, and of his shortcomings as a husband.

Ironically, his wife Maureen, shocked by her husband's sudden absence, begins to long for his presence. Is it possible for Harold and Maureen to bridge the distance between them? And will Queenie be alive to see Harold arrive at her door?

 

13)   Spiral House/ Claire Robertson

 

Katrijn van der Caab, freed slave and wigmaker’s apprentice, travels with her eccentric employer from Cape Town to Vogelzang, a remote farm where a hairless girl needs their services. The year is 1794, it is the age of enlightenment, and on Vogelzang the master is conducting strange experiments in human breeding and classification. It is also here that Trijn falls in love.

Two hundred years later and a thousand miles away, Sister Vergilius, a nun at a mission hospital, wants to free herself from an austere order. It is 1961 and her life intertwines with that of a gentleman farmer – an Englishman and suspected Communist – who collects and studies insects and lives a solitary life. While a group of
Americans arrive in a cavalcade of caravans and a new republic is about to be born, desire is unfurling slowly.

In Claire Robertson’s majestic debut novel, two stories echo across centuries to expose that which binds us and sets us free.

 

14)   The Perks of being a Wallflower/ Chbosky

The Perks of Being a Wallflower is narrated by an introverted teenager who goes by the alias of "Charlie". He describes various life experiences through a series of letters to an anonymous stranger.  Set in the early 1990s, the story follows Charlie through his freshman year of high school in a Pittsburgh suburb. Charlie is the eponymous wallflower of the novel. Intelligent beyond his years, he is an unconventional thinker; yet, as the story begins, Charlie is also shy and unpopular.

I hope you find something here that inspires you.