The Secret Mother


Victoria Delderfield - 2015
    The Secret Mother puts a face on the label Made in China - the bittersweet story of a girl - like millions of others - willing to risk everything.

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.

Gum Moon: A Novel of San Francisco Chinatown


Jeffrey L Staley - 2018
    A sympathetic prostitute befriends Chun, but two years later, at the height of a plague quarantine, Chun is thrust into a bewildering new world. A young Methodist woman rescues her and places her in a Home for abused and trafficked girls. The Home is destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and fire, but Chun (aka "Maud") survives. In an attempt to raise funds to rebuild the Home, Maud and a group of seven other Chinese children embark on a six-month cross-country singing tour. Performing for President Theodore Roosevelt in the White House is the highlight of the journey, but when the matron of the Home suffers a breakdown, thirteen year-old Maud must find within herself the strength and resolve to lead the band of children home. The novel is based on events in the life of the author's wife's grandmother.

A Small Town Called Hibiscus


Gu Hua - 1981
    Its author Gu Hua was brought up in the Wuling Mountains of south Hunan. He presents the ups and downs of some families in a small mountain town there during the hard years in the early sixties, the "cultural revolution," and after the downfall of the "gang of four." He shows the horrifying impact on decent, hard-working people of the gang's ultra-Left line, and retains a sense of humor in describing the most harrowing incidents. In the end wrongs are righted, and readers are left with a deepened understanding of this abnormal period in Chinese history and the sterling qualities of the Chinese people.

Storms Gather Between Us


Clare Flynn - 2019
    Since escaping his family’s notoriety in Australia Will Kidd has spent a decade sailing the seas, never looking back. Content to live the life of a wanderer, everything changes in a single moment when he comes face to face with a ghost from his past on a cloudy beach in Liverpool.The daughter of an abusive zealot, every step of Hannah Dawson's life has been laid out for her... until she meets Will by chance and is set on a new path. Their love is forbidden and forces on all sides divide them, but their bond is undeniable. Now, they will have to fight against all the odds to escape the chains of their histories and find their way back to one another. A compelling tale of family secrets and love against the odds, perfect for fans of Fiona Valpy and Gill Paul. Praise for Storms Gather Between Us 'Another great book by Clare Flynn’ Reader Review‘A really gripping and moving pre WWII story’ Reader Review‘I would recommend this book without hesitation’ Reader Review‘Very descriptive, immersive and well written. This book is guaranteed to make you turn each and every page.’ Reader Review‘I was totally gripped from the first page’ Reader Review

The Granville Sisters


Una-Mary Parker - 2005
    When war is declared, the love lives of the Granville girls suffer. Rosie's husband is killed during the Blitz. Then Lousie falls in love with Jack, a sixteen-year-old evacuee from the slums of London. When she falls pregnant, she is sent to Wales in disgrace. The girls? mother, Liza, can only pin her hopes on Charlotte now . . .

Lone Star Rising


Elmer Kelton - 2003
    In the throes of the War Between the States, Rusty joins the Rangers and searches for the renegades who killed his adoptive father.In Badger Boy, the Rangers are disbanded and Rusty returns to his home on the Red River only to discover that the girl he loves has married another. In a time of personal turmoil as well as the post-war uphheaval in Texas, Rusty's childhood returns to haunt him as he rescues Andy Pickard, called Badger Boy by his Comanche captors.Andy and Rusty ride together in the newly reformed Rangers in The Way of the Coyote, in a time when Texas is overrun with outlaws, Confederate raiders, Ku Klux Klansmen, and marauding Comanches.

The Masada Complex


Avraham Azrieli - 2010
    – President Barack Obama calls America’s alliance with Israel “unshakeable.” The Masada Complex questions this assertion with a realistic political thriller taking place in Arizona, Washington and Jerusalem.The Masada Complex unveils a chilling scenario. Its hero is Masada El-Tal, a beautiful Israeli expatriate, currently an investigative reporter in Arizona. Her exposure of a bribe payment causes a disgraced U.S. senator to commit suicide. Angered by Israel’s supposed culpability, an angry Congress moves to terminate all military aid to the Jewish state. At the same time, someone repeatedly attempts to assassinate Masada, whose relentless investigation becomes a race against time, leading to a shocking discovery and a spectacular climax.

The Dukedom of Secrets Past


Tiffany Baton - 2021
    So she gets a job as a lady’s maid for the Duke’s daughter.Elias Misttalon, Marquess of Richbrow, is no stranger to the shackles of duty. Determined to do what is right for his family, he resolves to make his arranged courtship work. Until he meets his intended’s lady’s maid, that is…Struggling between duty and their hearts’ desires, Elias and Juliet are venturing into deep waters. What Juliet finds out shocks her to the core. One is an accident, two is suspicious. And revenge is a dish best served cold with a dose of decades-old poison.

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…

Life


Lu Yao - 1982
    Against the vivid, gritty backdrop of 1980s China, Lu Yao traces the proud and passionate Gao Jialin’s difficult path to professional, romantic, and personal fulfillment—or at least hard-won acceptance.With the emotional acuity and narrative mastery that secured his reputation as one of China’s great novelists, Lu Yao paints a vivid, emotional, and unsparing portrait of contemporary Chinese life, seen through the eyes of a working-class man who refuses to be broken.

China Survival Guide: How to Avoid Travel Troubles and Mortifying Mishaps


Larry Herzberg - 2008
    Readers will learn essential skills like how to haggle, exchange currencies, cross the street, decipher menus, say useful phrases in Chinese, and more. The guide comes complete with survival tips on etiquette, a map, and resource lists. Don’t leave home for China without it!Veteran travelers Qin and Larry Herzberg are Chinese language and culture professors at Calvin College in Michigan.

The Book of Craw: A Hobo's Testament (Companion Volume to "The Dirty Parts of the Bible")


Sam Torode - 2013
    The Book of Craw -- comprised of poems and proverbs from Craw's own notebook -- is the companion volume to The Dirty Parts of the Bible: A Novel.

Ten O'Clock Horses


Laurie Graham - 2000
    The first avocado pears are appearing at the greengrocer's, people are thinking about carpeting their lavatories and boxing in their banisters, and Ronnie Glover, housepainter, husband and father, is feeling the first vague stirrings of discontent with his life. Then, out of the blue, the fabulous, sophisticated (and married) Jacqueline bursts into his life and teaches him to tango. She seems to offer everything he ever dreamt of. But is it all too good to he true?

Nelly Kelly


Lena Kennedy - 1981
    Forced to keep house for her autocratic, charming father, Nelly toils in a sweatshop to keep her family fed and clothed. But when life is hard, Nelly has friendship, dancing and her early dreams to cling to. Dreams which slowly crumble as marriage, the war and a lost baby are followed by the heartache of a lost love. Fortune may crush her proud spirit but when faced with a crisis which will test her courage to the limit, no tragedy can change Nelly Kelly's determination to be her own woman.