Book picks similar to
Wildflowers: A Story from the collection, I Am Heathcliff by Dorothy Koomson


short-stories
racism-diversity-prejudice-ousiders
must-buy
moralistic

War God from the Sea (erilaR, #3)


Hector Miller - 2021
    Guided by the hand of fate, they become embroiled in a struggle for tribal dominance which soon escalates to a quest fueled by greed, revenge and desire.Meanwhile, in the lands of the Empire, the Romans continue their designing and incite the tribes to take up the sword against their fellow barbarians, drawing the Heruli into a conflict that could spell their demise.But for the tribes to prosper, Rome has to endure. Ragnar and his companions have to outwit and outfight the Heruli’s ancient enemies to keep the Empire from falling into the hands of the conniving Goths.Ragnar faces overwhelming odds, but the gods have ordained it long before. In the fires of destruction, a new power is being forged – one which is destined to conquer all.

State of the Union


Douglas Kennedy - 2005
    She is not the revolutionary child that her painter mother and famous radical father had hoped for. Raised in the creative chaos of 1960s America, Hannah vows to reject her parents' liberal lifestyle, and settles instead for typical family life in a nondescript corner of Maine.But normality isn't quite what Hannah imagined it would to be, and try as she might to fight it, the urge to rebel against the things that hem her in grows ever stronger. Eventually, a series of encounters puts Hannah in an exhilarating but dangerous position - one in which she never thought she would find herself.For decades, this one transgression in an otherwise faultless life lies buried deep in the past, all but forgotten - until a turn of fate brings it crashing back into the limelight. As her secret emerges, Hannah's life goes into freefall and she is left struggling against the force of the past.

The Man Who Never Was


Hylton H. Smith - 2013
    A strange discovery halts the regeneration plans. As there is no obvious explanation as to why the various artefacts should be there, the police become involved. The only clue which offers any progress points to events which took place many years ago. Just when a young police officer thinks she has seen something similar to one of the objects, and a new line of inquiry looms, higher authority descends on the investigation. The intrigue thickens.

These Dividing Walls


Fran Cooper - 2017
    In a forgotten corner of Paris stands a building.Within its walls, people talk and kiss, laugh and cry; some are glad to sit alone, while others wish they did not. A woman with silver-blonde hair opens her bookshop downstairs, an old man feeds the sparrows on his windowsill, and a young mother wills the morning to hold itself at bay. Though each of their walls touches someone else's, the neighbours they pass in the courtyard remain strangers. Into this courtyard arrives Edward. Still bearing the sweat of a channel crossing, he takes his place in an attic room to wait out his grief.But in distant corners of the city, as Paris is pulled taut with summer heat, there are those who meet with a darker purpose. As the feverish metropolis is brought to boiling point, secrets will rise and walls will crumble both within and without Number 37...

Daniel


Keith Yocum - 2009
    17, 1972, during some of the darkest days of the Vietnam War, an American soldier walked out of the jungle and onto an isolated US Army firebase in the Central Highlands. The stranger had no identification, was in good health and otherwise seemed normal. But there was a problem. While the stranger said his name was Daniel Carson, he could remember almost nothing else. Quiet and reserved, he could not explain where he came from or why he had mysteriously shown up on Firebase Martha. Attempts by the base commander to confirm Daniel’s identity turned up even more odd details. Battalion reported that a soldier named Daniel Carson and fitting the description provided by the commander had been Killed In Action the week before. Who was Daniel? Was he a deserter? A faker? A lunatic? Or was he something altogether different? Was he a lucky charm or a savior sent to rescue the unfortunate soldiers on Firebase Martha? The answers to these questions are not revealed until 1976 when three survivors from the firebase meet after the war in a bar in Washington, D.C. and agree spontaneously to visit Daniel’s parents in nearby suburban Virginia. What they find shakes them to the core.

Sunshine After Rain


Dee Williams - 2005
    But their happy world is shattered when, in 1912, William takes a trip to America that ends in tragedy.

Forbidden Falls


V.J. Chambers - 2021
    He’ll destroy his boss Apple Shannon, a cheerful thirty-something who owns The Kitchen where he works after school.First, he’ll seduce her.Then, he’ll blackmail her, claiming she molested a minor.Finally, he’ll take everything from her: her business, her self-respect, and her reputation.The best part is she’ll blame herself, so it’s not just brute force destruction. It’s eloquent and complex. There’s layers to the whole thing.

Tomb of the Lost


Julian Noyce - 2011
    In four parts.Tomb of the Lost is an action/adventure novel that spans 2300 years.Babylon, Persia 323bc.On a bed a man lays dying. Alexander the great, King, the Lion of Macedon has a mysterious fever. He became king at twenty, dying at thirty three, having conquered the known world. Following his death his General and friend Ptolemy takes the body and inters it into a magnificent tomb in Alexandria, Egypt. The very city Alexander founded.Two thousand three hundred years later and the leader of Germany Adolf Hitler who is a great collector of antiquities orders the sarcophagus, lost two thousand years before by Julius Caesar's legionaries, to be found and brought to Berlin.Hitler assigns a team of his Wehrmacht commanded by a General and his Colonel and a team of SS led by a fanatical Major to locate it.With their mission a success the Germans descend on the port town of Gabes, Tunisia just as the town is about to be over run by the British and as the battle for North Africa reaches its brutal climax the sarcophagus is lost once again leaving only one man alive to tell the tale.That man is Alfred Dennis.Nearly seventy years later and marine archaeologist Natalie Feltham and her team with the help of Peter Dennis, a journalist and grandson of Alfred Dennis, make the greatest discovery in modern archaeology.Now it's a race against time for Natalie and her team as dark powers from Germany's Nazi past try to take what is rightfully hers.

Evangelista's Fan & Other Stories


Rose Tremain - 1994
    This collection-- dazzling, diverse, sophisticated-- demonstrates the enormous range of her talent between two camps-- alongside such contemporary issues as mortgage debt and medical error.

The River: A Christopher Radcliff Short Story


A.D. Swanston - 2018
    . . Cambridge on the morning of a day in April, the year of Our Lord 1569.And Christopher Radcliff, Doctor of Civil Laws at Pembroke Hall and recruiter of clever young men to the service of the Earl of Leicester, is amongst a crowd of excited townsfolk and university scholars gathered on a field to watch a game of foot ball. It is to be played between the apprentices of the town and pupils of the colleges and it is hoped it will reconcile differences between town and gown. Bets are placed, wagers made. On the field long-standing animosities surface and violence breaks out but not before the college team is victorious, thanks to the skill of a Pembroke Hall man, John Groom.Later that day, Radcliff is summoned to the senior tutor’s rooms. It transpires that John Groom has been locked up on a serious charge of assault – he’d nearly caused a cobbler’s apprentice to drown. If found guilty, Groom would be expelled from college and face imprisonment. But Christopher smells a rat. He believes the charge to be the fabrication of someone with a serious grudge against the young man, and yet it does seem as if Groom is hiding something. Enlisting the help of his friend Edward Allington and his wife Katherine, Dr Radcliff knows the truth lies somewhere within the infamous den that is Slegge’s gaming house…

Her Mother's Secret


Jan Baynham - 2020
    As she makes new friends and enjoys the laidback lifestyle, she writes all about it in her diary. But Elin’s carefree summer of love doesn’t last long, and her island experience ultimately leaves her with a shocking secret … Twenty-two years later, Elin’s daughter Alexandra has inherited the diary and is reeling from its revelations. The discovery compels Alexandra to make her own journey to the same island, following in her mother’s footsteps. Once there, she sets about uncovering what really happened to Elin in that summer of ’69.

Expecting Jeeves


P.G. Wodehouse - 2016
    Originally published in The Strand magazine from 1918 to 1922 and later collected as The Inimitable Jeeves, these ten tales by comedic master P. G. Wodehouse abound in sparkling wit. "Scoring off Jeeves" recounts a lunch with Aunt Agatha ("A pretty frightful ordeal … Practically the nearest thing to being disemboweled."), who insists that Bertie propose to Honaria Glossop ("simply nothing more nor less than a pot of poison"), necessitating Jeeves' rescue of the perennial bachelor ("and according to my nearest and dearest, practically a half-witted bachelor at that"). Other stories include "The Delayed Exit of Claude and Eustace," featuring Bertie's frolicsome cousins ("as innocuous as a pair of sprightly young tarantulas"); "Aunt Agatha Takes the Count," involving our hero's formidable relative and her intrusion upon his vacation in the south of France; and "Comrade Bingo," in which Bertie's school chum masquerades as a Bolshevist and Jeeves comes very near to being rattled.

Waking the Tiger: A thrilling award-nominated historical crime novel


Mark Wightman - 2021
    Following the disappearance of his wife, his life and career have fallen apart.A distinctive tiger tattoo is the only clue to her identityOnce a rising star of Singapore CID, Betancourt has been relegated to the Marine Division, with tedious dockyard disputes and goods inspections among his new duties.Who is she? And why are the authorities turning a blind eye?But when a beautiful, unidentified Japanese woman is found murdered in the shadow of a warehouse owned by one of Singapore’s most powerful families, Betancourt defies orders and pursues those responsible. What he discovers will bring him into conflict with powerful enemies, and force him to face his personal demons.

Come Spy With Me


Max Allan Collins - 2020
    Sand’s real-life exploits inspired a very famous series of best-selling novels by a friend in the spy game.On his honeymoon with his new wife, Stacey Boldt – the heiress to a Texas oil fortune – they are interrupted by an unfriendly blast from the past.Now an executive with Boldt Oil in Houston, Sand finds himself, and his bride, pulled back into the world of espionage when JFK himself recruits him for a dangerous job in Cuba.Sand – and Mrs. Sand – will be caught up in everything from a Rat Pack party in Vegas hosted by a mobster to a Caribbean island where a deadly assassin has targeted El Presidente.Come Spy With Me is the first in The John Sand Series, invoking the best of the original James Bond spy thrillers.

Moving On


Cathy Bramley - 2019
     Gina Moss is proud of herself: she's just had the most amicable divorce ever. No arguments, no fuss, no drama. It means she has plenty of time and energy for her thriving childminding business too. Welcome Cottage is both home and workplace for Gina. It sits just on the edge of The Evergreens - a grand if slightly run-down Victorian residence to three octogenarians who have far too much fun for their age: Violet, Delphine and Bing.But a tragedy puts her older friends at risk of eviction - and Gina in charge of the battle to save them. It might be her first fight, but it's one that Gina is determined not to lose... A Patchwork Family is a heart-warming novel told in four parts, following the challenges and triumphs faced by Gina Moss as she swaps an easy life for a happy one. This is the first part. ***** Praise for Cathy Bramley from some of your other favourite authors: 'Delightful!' Katie Fforde'A page-turner of a story' Milly Johnson'Delightfully warm with plenty of twists and turns' Trisha Ashley'The perfect romantic tale, to warm your heart and make you smile' Ali McNamara