Book picks similar to
We Have Been Warned by Naomi Mitchison
fiction
pbook
scotland
tbr-middlebrow-and-rediscovered
The Pearl-fishers
Robin Jenkins - 2007
But how will they respond when love seems to blossom between local man Gavin Hamilton and the beautiful pearl-fisher Effie? The Pearl-fishers is a classic love story and the master storyteller’s last novel.
A House Full Of Men
Parinda Joshi - 2021
The first trip involved the last rites of her grandmother. The second involved a wedding, thankfully, but she returned home to her mother's funeral. She has never forgiven her mother for leaving her alone in a house full of men. Is there anyone at home she can share her deepest thoughts with? Anyone who can lend an ear to her endless relationship issues, manic obsessions and simple aspirations? Who's got the time? Kittu might live in a full house, but sometimes, she feels like she's all alone in the world. A House Full of Men is a novel about false starts and failed attempts, love and the importance of being understood.
The Cornish Connection
Amanda James - 2020
Nancy works in the Whistling Kettle Cafe and Charlie is a DS in the Truro police. Charlie's a down to earth Cornishman, while Nancy, seemingly an ordinary member of her community, has an extraordinary gift. She is able to make psychic connections with those who have passed, and objects belonging to those still living.Charlie mostly tries to ignore that aspect of his wife's personality, he can’t abide all that ‘mumbo jumbo’ as he calls it. Then, out of the blue, Nancy leaves her job and decides her mission in life is to use her gift to help others. This is not what Charlie signed up for, and he lets Nancy know about his feelings in no uncertain terms. That is, until he realises she might be a very useful detective...Helping Charlie find a missing teenager boost Nancy’s confidence, and makes her determined to continue her work. People come to see her because they want her to find a long-lost friend or relative, an object that is dear to them, or a pet who’s gone missing. Helping people find happiness is Nancy’s main aim. Charlie, however, wants her to help him solve crimes.Will the couple find some common ground? Or will their connection be broken?The Cornish Connection - a beautifully told, thought-provoking and uplifting story. The perfect feel-good summer read!Perfect for fans of Emma Burstall, Fern Britton and Heidi Swain
Dancing with Einstein
Kate Wenner - 2004
She is Marea Hoffman, who, after wandering the world for seven years, has returned to New York at age thirty with the intention of starting her real life.But Marea approaches everything in her own idiosyncratic style, and she is soon seeing four different therapists simultaneously and telling her story to each in a different way. The story she reveals is about her childhood in 1950s Princeton during the age of “duck and cover” drills and McCarthyism, when fear of communism obsessed America. Marea’s father, a Holocaust survivor, worked on the Manhattan Project and later on the development of the hydrogen bomb; her mother was a confirmed pacifist.Frightened by her early exposure to the threat of nuclear annihilation, young Marea finds comfort in the company of her father’s colleague and friend, the grandfatherly Albert Einstein. Einstein charms Marea even as he provokes the wrenching moral debate that will drive her parents apart. When Einstein disappears from Marea’s life as suddenly as he entered it and her father is killed in a mysterious car accident, she is left alone with a mother she no longer trusts and with questions that won’t go away.Nearly two decades later, during the August hiatus from her four therapists, Marea takes a reluctant trip home to Princeton. There her eyes are newly opened to the past when she uncovers her father’s secret Cold War diary.Weaving back and forth between 1970s New York and 1950s Princeton, Wenner’s exploration of the impact that history can have on a young life is powerful and moving—a deeply intelligent look at the challenge of finding hope in the modern age.
Influence
Daniel Hurst - 2020
But shortly after Ivy’s untimely death she is contacted by a secretive businessman who offers her the chance at the fame and fortune she so desperately craves.While Emily initially gets to experience the things she has always wanted, it soon becomes clear that her new employer had sinister motives for approaching her and it isn’t long before she discovers that the life of her dreams comes with the kind of conditions that are the stuff of nightmares.
Social media isn’t life or death. It’s more important than that.
Sweet Pastries & Sourdough: (Little Duck Pond Cafe, Book 15)
Rosie Green - 2021
But when Katja's ski-ing holiday ends in disaster, a new teacher must be found very quickly. Anita is up for the challenge, but - fresh from a break-up and an operation that's left her feeling physically and emotionally vulnerable - the last thing she's looking for when she moves to Sunnybrook is a new relationship. So it's Sod's law that she should find herself with not one but two guys vying for her attention. Sven, from Denmark, is a bit of an enigma - but maybe passion lurks beneath his cool reserve? And as for twenty-five-year-old football coach Ross - surely she'd be asking for trouble getting involved with a gorgeous man a decade her junior? (Although her football-mad son Rufus seems to love him.)Moving in with Bertha proves a real comfort - but can Anita get to the bottom of what's troubling the older woman?Anita's job at the True Loaf Bakery is only temporary, but she finds herself drawn ever deeper into life in the village - especially when she finds a child's bracelet from long ago, in the rubble of the newly-renovated building. Solving the mystery of who it belongs to takes Anita on a journey of discovery - a journey that might just help her discover what her own heart really needs...
The Wanderer
David Anderson - 2013
It has been five long years since his life was turned on its head, but against all odds he continues to cling to life.Every day since the plague has been a battle for survival. With no family and no companion he wanders the empty streets of his desolate home town as a way to pass the lonely days, his familiar surroundings his only reminder of a more normal time. By sticking with little deviation to a daily routine he attempts to retard the erosion of his sanity. Growing used to his new existence, and never expecting change, how would he react if he knew that, just around the corner, another life-shattering change awaits him?
And Give You Peace
Jessica Treadway - 2000
Jessica Treadway flawlessly portrays the complexity of human experience in the face of incomprehensible loss, revealing yet again why the New York Times Book Review has called her "a writer with an unsparing bent for the truth."
The Friendship Tree
Helen J. Rolfe - 2015
But as she vows to start over, she meets Jake – and life gets more complicated than she could ever have imagined. Jake is the direct competitor for the family business, and a man with a dark secret, and Tamara struggles to fight her attraction to him as she deals with secrets of her own and an ex who refuses to give up. Tamara is soon drawn in to the small community of Brewer Creek where she becomes the coordinator for an old fashioned Friendship Tree – a chart telling people who they can call on in times of trouble. And before long, she realises the Friendship Tree does a lot more than organise fundraising events and working bees; it has the power to unite an entire town. Should you ever try to run from your past? ‘An enjoyable read by a new author. One to watch!’ Katie Fforde 'A fantastic sense of place, a traditional romance, contemporary issues and a nice touch of mystery.' Sue Moorcroft. 'The gorgeous setting, impossible romance and fabulous main characters are making this such a fantastic read.' Librarian Lavender ***Shortlisted for the Romantic Novelists' Association's Joan Hessayon New Writers' Scheme Award 2016***
Incarceron, and Sapphique by Catherine Fisher
Catherine Fisher
NY Times Bestseller: Incarceron and Sapphique
No Good Like It Is
McKendree R. Long III - 2010
2d Lieutenant Dobey Walls meets and bonds with veteran Corporal Jimmy Melton. As the Civil War begins, they leave to join the 8th Texas Cavalry in Houston, then take part in the first and the final charges of the Army of Tennessee. Between those events, they ride with Nathan Bedford Forrest, play an honorable role in the Fort Pillow Massacre, harass Sherman with Shannon's Raiders, and visit the second best brothel in Atlanta. As surrender looms, they're released to search for Dobey's long-missing family in the Texas Panhandle. Their efforts are hampered by destitute farmers, lonely widows, dangerous militia, freed slaves, and runaways, who increase their numbers and excitement. In the process, they save a quadroon and her daughter from Yankee deserters who have stolen a Union payroll. This act of mercy brings them romance but puts Pinkerton detectives and a renegade lawman on their trail.
Men Like Air
Tom Connolly - 2016
Nineteen-year-old Finn has just arrived in the city with his irrepressible and volatile girlfriend, Dilly, determined to even the score with his older brother Jack for abandoning him in the UK in the aftermath of their parents’ deaths. Across town, successful gallery owner Leo Emerson is haunted by loneliness, unsettled by the contrast between his life and that of his brother-in-law and oldest friend Isidor, who is enviably contented in his faith and his marriage. When Finn wanders into Leo’s gallery, a series of unexpected and interconnected events unfold, changing the lives of all four men, for better or worse. Leo and Isidor’s settled existences are overturned by events outside of their control, while Jack and Finn’s complex relationship reaches its long overdue showdown. Beautifully orchestrated and richly comic, Men Like Air explores the romance and solitude of cosmopolitan life, the transformative power of art, and the impact we have on one another’s lives—and what happens when the ties that bind us are tested or broken. It is an intense and uplifting story of growth and renewal, mapping the complex workings of the human heart across the streets of New York City.
The Land of Women
Regina McBride - 2003
She tries to remember her mother's voice and the pitch and treble of it passes through her; the rhythm of it so clear that for a moment they are...connected by frail strings. So begins The Land of Women, and we are swept into Fiona O'Faolain's last summer in Ireland, the season of her burgeoning sexuality. It is a time, too, when mother and daughter step toward friendship among the voluminous gowns they make for local brides. Yet that giddy summer also delivers betrayal. Fiona's journey from the shame that ended her girlhood takes her to Santa Fe and to Carlos Aragon, a restorer of antiquities, whose ancestry is mysteriously linked to hers. As he explores their pasts with the precision of an artisan, Fiona must face her excruciating memory. In The Land of Women the past lives in the present, and physical and emotional geography touch.
The Castilians (Seton Chronicles #1)
V.E.H. Masters - 2020
A few among the Scottish nobles, for both political and religious reasons, are eager for this alliance too. They kill Cardinal Beaton, who is Mary’s great protector, and take St Andrews Castle, expecting rescue any day from England.For a sister and brother – spirited Bethia, living outside the castle in St Andrews, and Will among the rebels inside the castle – the long siege becomes a fight for survival. But it’s also a struggle over loyalties and the choices they each must make: whether to save their family, or follow their hearts…This debut novel closely follows the tumultuous events of the siege of St Andrews Castle, and its dramatic re-takingRunner up SAW Barbara Hammond TrophyFinalist Wishing Shelf Book Awards
Free
Lisa Litberg - 2014
Usually when I tell people that they laugh and ask me what my real name is. I just look them dead on and repeat, 'Free.' I left my old name behind with my old life; shed both of them like a useless layer of skin. When I stepped free of that world, I took the name Free. It is my real name. I picked it myself. What could be more real than that?"Since leaving home at the age of 18, Free has traveled the country searching for home. Her travels afford a variety of experiences, from following the Grateful Dead to waitressing in Chicago to selling jewelry in New Orleans' French Market, but nothing seems to quell her sense of unrest. All the while her estranged brother Alfie is in her thoughts. Once she finds him, perhaps she'll finally feel at home. But her world is filled with bad choices and unsavory characters, and she finds that freedom sometimes comes at a cost. The reader will feel as if they are traveling right alongside Free in this moving coming-of-age story.