Exclusive Chapter Sampler: A Year of Marvellous Ways


Sarah Winman - 2015
     From the author of the bestselling WHEN GOD WAS A RABBIT comes this spellbinding new novel. Marvellous Ways is eighty-nine years old and has lived alone in a remote Cornish creek for nearly all her life. Lately she's taken to spending her days sitting by the river with a telescope. She's waiting for something - she's not sure what, but she'll know it when she sees it. Drake is a young soldier left reeling by the Second World War. When his promise to fulfil a dying man's last wish sees him wash up in Marvellous' creek, broken in body and spirit, the old woman comes to his aid. A Year of Marvellous Ways is a glorious, life-affirming story about the magic in everyday life and the pull of the sea, the healing powers of storytelling and sloe gin, love and death and how we carry on when grief comes snapping at our heels.

House of Orphans


Helen Dunmore - 2006
    Her challenging, independent, enigmatic presence disturbs Thomas as much as it fascinates him. Their relationship will shatter all the certainties of his life. Meanwhile, Eeva is drawn back to Helsinki, to the comrades of her childhood, and in particular to Lauri, the son of her father's friend. It is a world full of danger. For this is Finland in political ferment - the power of the Russian Empire over its subject peoples is growing more oppressive, but resistance to the Tsar's rule is growing too, both in Finland and in Russia. Some call such resistance terrorism; others call it a fight for freedom. Just as Helen Dunmore's "The Siege" is a novel about how huge public events bear down on private lives, so "House of Orphans", while a spellbinding story of love and loneliness is also about the tension between reform and revolution, and a country emerging into Independence.

Sorry


Gail Jones - 2007
    Perdita becomes friends with a deaf and mute boy, Billy, and an Aboriginal girl, Mary. Perdita and Mary soon come to call one another sister and begin to share a profound bond. They are content with life in this barren corner of the world until a terrible event lays waste to their lives. "Sorry" explores the values of friendship, loyalty, and sacrifice with a brilliance that has earned Gail Jones numerous accolades.

The Voluptuous Delights of Peanut Butter and Jam


Lauren Liebenberg - 2008
    The Voluptuous Delights of Peanut Butter and Jam is, above all else, a magical evocation of childhood; at times laugh-out-loud funny, at others heartbreakingly sad. It tells the story of two young sisters, Nyree and Cia O'Callohan, who live on a remote farm in the East of what was Rhodesia in the late 1970s. Beneath the dripping vines of the Vumba rainforest, and under the tutelage of their heretical grandfather, Oupa, theirs is a seductive world laced with African paganism, bastardised Catholicism and the lore of the Brothers Grimm - until their idyll is shattered forever by their orphaned cousin, Ronin. His arrival at the farm sets in motion a chain of events that result in tragedy and the loss of innocence.

So I Am Glad


A.L. Kennedy - 1995
    M. Jennifer M. Wilson has decided to become a voice. A professional enunciator, an announcer, a voice-over artist, she has retreated into a world of words. Behind the sound-proof double doors of the recording studio she must surely be safe from the painful inconveniences of hate and love. Until reality breaks in and Jennifer uncovers the harsh vocabulary of addiction and the addictive extremes of sex. -An alchemical romance, a Swiftian satire for our times, an impossible spiritual journey and a devastating plummet into insanity and perversion, So I Am Glad is oblique, incisive, hilarious and horrific.

The Wilding


Maria McCann - 2010
    When his father returns from the visit the next day, all he can say is that Jonathan's uncle has died. Then Jonathan finds a fragment of the letter, with talk of inheritance and vengeance...

The Hard Way


Julie Luongo - 2008
    Although gifted with wit and artistic talent, Lucy lacks focus. While she tries out careers from crime reporter to sleep-deprived law student, her offbeat life experiences fuel her insatiable desire to create. Unfortunately “starving artist” isn’t exactly a desirable job title, so Lucy hides her creativity under her business suit.As if figuring out her life isn’t hard enough, all of Lucy’s friends are getting married, but Lucy’s not sure if she’s capable of living happily ever after. With a string of loser former flames, giving up on love seems to be the best option. Until Ben—Lucy’s Mr. Right who comes at completely the wrong time.In the tradition of The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing, The Hard Way is a scrapbook of stories from Lucy’s life. As she discovers more about the people around her, will she finally begin to understand herself?

False Advertising


Dianne Blacklock - 2007
    She recycles, obeys the water restrictions, she is even polite to telemarketers. as a mother, wife, daughter and nurse, Helen is used to putting everyone's needs before her own. But it only takes one momentary lapse of concentration to shatter her life forever.There was no momentary lapse for Gemma. Her customary recklessness leaves her pregnant, alone and estranged from her family with her one-promising advertising career in tatters.So when Gemma barges unceremoniously into Helen's life, things will never be the same again for either of them. Two very different women who have one thing in common - their lives have fallen short of their expectations. But is fate offering them a second chance?

The Loves And Journeys Of Revolving Jones


Leslie Thomas - 1992
    a lovely blend of humour, sexual comedy and pathos' Daily Express 'A rollicking tale of a Welsh sailor with a girl in every port, but only one true love at home...Thomas has a rare gift for words...This is his best book and a celebration of his robust talents, which combine flesh with imagination. He always had a narrative verve, and this saga develops it into a turn of the wheel of life. Revolving Jones comes back at last to his eternal miss, and hopefully, Leslie Thomas will achieve a revolution in his reputation' The Times 'This exciting adventure story is also one man's pilgrimage, a lifetime's odyssey, a ritually layered tale of the quest for humour and love' Daily Mail 'He inhabits that "bestseller author" territory that includes the likes of Jeffrey Archer, Jack Higgins and Ken Follett, but he is a far better writer than any of them' Marcel Berlins, Sunday Times

This Is How


M.J. Hyland - 2009
    But in spite of his hopes and determination to build a better life, nothing goes to plan and Patrick is soon driven to take a desperate and chilling course of action.

Drivers


Peter Carroll - 2014
    Revenge, justice, loyalty, lies, love, anger and an identity crisis. Turns out, the new chauffeur is not her only driver...so buckle up and enjoy the ride.

Midsummer Meeting


Elvi Rhodes - 2000
    She was lonely and unsettled - her parents had been killed in a car accident, her boyfriend had decided to go back to his wife, and as a painter she led a solitary life in her North Yorkshire home town. But she felt immediately at home in the gracious stone house that had been bequeathed to her, and was made welcome by the local residents - in particular, by the members of the Mindon Amateur Dramatic Society (somewhat appropriately known as MADS) presided over by the formidable Ursula. Ursula liked to run things her way, and brooked no opposition when the ambitious decision was made (largely by herself) to put on A Midsummer Night's Dream as their next production. Petra , to her surprise and pleasure, was put in charge of the wardrobe. Rivalries, squabbles, love affairs and seething resentments threatened to scupper the production, and all Ursula's managerial skills were needed to prevent disaster. But Petra had more pressing things on her mind than the costumes for the cast. A mystery from her past began to haunt her - and the answer to that mystery might solve the puzzle of why she had been left such a beautiful house by a total stranger.

Evening News


Marly Swick - 1999
    The telephone rings; the gun goes off, shooting -- and killing -- Teddy's two-year-old half sister Trina, who was playing in a wading pool in the yard outside, with Giselle, their mother, by her side.Thus begins Marly Swick's second novel after the highly acclaimed "Paper Wings." As with her previous work, Swick resolutely travels the domestic landscape, detailing delicately and truthfully the effect of Trina's death on the unstable triangle of the family left behind. Each member finds their bonds of love and loyalty tested, and each is resilient in the face of their loss, but for different -- perhaps too different -- reasons: Giselle must get Teddy through the crisis, but Dan, his stepfather, having just lost his daughter, has no such responsibility.Told alternately from the point of view of Giselle and Teddy himself, "Evening News" is a beautifully accomplished novel about resilience in the face of loss -- and about the irrevocable damage that both the loss and the resilience can inflict."A book that

An Inconvenient Friend


Rhonda McKnight - 2010
    Will she get her man or destroy herself and everyone else in the process?

The White Family


Maggie Gee - 2002
    . . tender, sexy and alarming.”—Jim CraceWhen Alfred White, patriarch of the White family, collapses at work, his wife, May, and their three disparate children find themselves confronting issues they would rather ignore. Maggie Gee skillfully weaves a narrative that reminds us that racism not only devastates the lives of its victims, but also those of its perpetrators.Maggie Gee is the first female chair of the Royal Society of Literature and lives in London. The White Family was shortlisted for the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction and the IMPAC Award. The Flood was longlisted for the Orange Prize.