Oh My God, What a Complete Aisling


Emer McLysaght - 2017
    Aisling. She lives at home in Ballygobbard (or Ballygobackwards, as some gas tickets call it) with her parents and commutes to her good job at PensionsPlus in Dublin.Aisling goes out every Saturday night with her best friend Majella, who is a bit of a hames (she’s lost two phones already this year – Aisling has never lost a phone). Aisling spends two nights a week at her boyfriend John’s. He’s from down home and was kiss number seventeen at her twenty-first.But Aisling wants more. She wants the ring on her finger. She wants the hen with the willy straws. She wants out of her parents’ house, although she’d miss Mammy turning on the electric blanket like clockwork and Daddy taking her car 'out for a spin' and bringing it back full of petrol.When a week in Tenerife with John doesn’t end with the expected engagement, Aisling calls a halt to things and soon she has surprised herself and everyone else by agreeing to move into a three-bed in Portobello with stylish Sadhbh from HR and her friend, the mysterious Elaine. Newly single and relocated to the big city, life is about to change utterly for this wonderful, strong, surprising and funny girl, who just happens to be a complete Aisling. Emer McLysaght and Sarah Breen, the creators of the much-loved Aisling character and the popular Facebook page 'Oh My God, What a Complete Aisling', bring Aisling to life in their novel about the quintessential country girl in the big smoke.

Some Call it Love


Sarah Peis - 2017
    A mistaken arrest, an unpaid debt and a trip to Vegas. Rock-bottom, meet Willa. One thing I learned this week: Never choose an essay topic based on the movie Thor and Chris Hemsworth’s abs. Another—probably more important—thing I also learned: Drooling when staring at Jameson Drake is not a good look. I thought my week was as bad as it would get, until I find out my dad owes Jameson a lot of money. And I’m supposed to pay it off by working for him. Now I have a new job, a huge debt to pay off and a hot boss who takes broody alpha to a new level. When I find myself on my way to Vegas to bail my dad out, Jameson insists on coming along. Things go from bad to worse, as they usually do when my family is involved, and Jameson turns into my savior. Now I’m faced with a choice: Keeps things professional or explore the chemistry between us. But honestly, who can resist a knight in shining armor? This romantic comedy is the first book in the Some Call It Series and can be read as a standalone.

The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty: Delhi, 1857


William Dalrymple - 2006
    As the British Commissioner in charge insisted, “No vestige will remain to distinguish where the last of the Great Moghuls rests.” Bahadur Shah Zafar II, the last Mughal Emperor, was a mystic, an accomplished poet and a skilled calligrapher. But while his Mughal ancestors had controlled most of India, the aged Zafar was king in name only. Deprived of real political power by the East India Company, he nevertheless succeeded in creating a court of great brilliance, and presided over one of the great cultural renaissances of Indian history.Then, in 1857, Zafar gave his blessing to a rebellion among the Company’s own Indian troops, thereby transforming an army mutiny into the largest uprising any empire had to face in the entire course of the nineteenth century. The Siege of Delhi was the Raj’s Stalingrad: one of the most horrific events in the history of Empire, in which thousands on both sides died. And when the British took the city—securing their hold on the subcontinent for the next ninety years—tens of thousands more Indians were executed, including all but two of Zafar’s sixteen sons. By the end of the four-month siege, Delhi was reduced to a battered, empty ruin, and Zafar was sentenced to exile in Burma. There he died, the last Mughal ruler in a line that stretched back to the sixteenth century.Award-winning historian and travel writer William Dalrymple shapes his powerful retelling of this fateful course of events from groundbreaking material: previously unexamined Urdu and Persian manuscripts that include Indian eyewitness accounts and records of the Delhi courts, police and administration during the siege. The Last Mughal is a revelatory work—the first to present the Indian perspective on the fall of Delhi—and has as its heart both the dazzling capital personified by Zafar and the stories of the individuals tragically caught up in one of the bloodiest upheavals in history.

An Uncommon Family


Christa Polkinhorn - 2011
    Anna struggles with her husband's deception, and Jonas mourns the death of his wife. Together they battle the demons of their past.Three people with a troubled past meet in Zurich, Switzerland. While caring for and teaching little Karla, who promises to be a talented painter, Anna and Jonas fall in love but sinister events in their past threaten their budding romance.An Uncommon Family is a story about loss, lies, and betrayal but also about the healing power of love and art. It takes place in Switzerland, New York City, and Guadalajara, Mexico.

This is a Love Story


Jessica Thompson - 2012
    It's because of a squirrel on water skis...She sees Nick's dangerous brown eyes and thinks,Don't.Fall.Into.Them.Who will be there to catch Siena when she falls? She is so fragile. She has so many secrets, and he is not that serious.Funny and sad, this is the story of two people destined never to come together in the great love affair they crave more than anything else.

Commonwealth


Joey Goebel - 2008
    Besides his patriotism, little enlivens him except for pro wrestling, cigarettes, and any instance in which he thinks his masculinity is at stake. And though you wouldn’t know it, Blue Gene hails from one of the wealthiest families in the country.His mother, a fanatical Christian socialite, has a dream in which she sees Blue Gene’s older brother, the handsome but anxious John Hustbourne Mapother, becoming an apocalyptic world savior. Eager to fulfill his mother’s prophecy, John runs for Congress but finds that as a corporate executive, he’s not very popular with his largely working-class constituents. And so, after years of estrangement, the Mapothers reach out to Blue Gene, realizing that they need his common-man touch in order to cast their family name in a more favorable light with voters.With absurd humor and poignant wit, this timely, small-town epic takes us from flea markets to mansions to abandoned Wal-Mart buildings, all the while examining the bizarre relationship between the “high” and “low” classes of America.

Who’s That Girl?


Mhairi McFarlane - 2015
    Shamed online and ostracised by everyone she knows, her boss suggests an extended sabbatical – ghostwriting an autobiography for hot new acting talent, Elliot Owen. Easy, right?Wrong. Banished back to her home town of Nottingham, Edie is not only dealing with a man who probably hasn’t heard the word ‘no’ in a decade, but also suffering an excruciating regression to her teenage years as she moves back in with her widowed father and judgey, layabout sister.When the world is asking who you are, it’s hard not to question yourself. Who’s that girl? Edie is ready to find out.

Hijabistan


Sabyn Javeri - 2019
    An office worker feels empowered through sex, shunning her inhibitions but not her hijab ... until she realizes that the real veil is drawn across her desires and not her body. A British-Asian Muslim girl finds herself drawn to the jihad in Syria only to realize the real fight is inside her. A young Pakistani bride in the West asserts her identity through the hijab in her new and unfamiliar surroundings, leading to unexpected consequences. The hijab constricts as it liberates. Not just a piece of garment, it is a worldview, an emblem of the assertion of a Muslim woman's identity, and equally a symbol of oppression. Set in Pakistan and the UK, this unusual and provocative collection of short stories explores the lives of women crushed under the weight of the all-encompassing veil and those who feel sheltered by it.

Smart Women


Judy Blume - 1983
    are each divorced, and each is trying to reinvent her life in Colorado-while their respective teenage daughters look on with a mixture of humor and horror. But even smart women sometimes have a lot to learn-and they will, when B.B.'s ex-husband moves in next door to Margo...

The Foster Child


Jenny Blackhurst - 2017
    Imogen is convinced she's just a sad and angry child struggling to cope with her loss.But Ellie's foster parents and teachers are starting to fear her. When she gets upset, bad things seem to happen. And as Imogen gets closer to Ellie, she may be putting herself in danger...

Snuffing out the Moon


Osama Siddique - 2017
    Snuffing Out the Moon is a dazzling debut novel that is at once a cry for freedom and a call for resistance.Advance Praise for Snuffing Out the Moon ‘Criss-crossing historical periods and populating its multiple narratives with a diverse set of characters, Snuffing Out the Moon is a daringly original novel charting the past and the future of our civilization, and so illuminating the author’s view of our present. A challenging and thought-provoking read’—Shashi Tharoor, author and MP‘This novel stirred strange feelings in me. Its air is bleak and somehow forbidding. It is vast in scope but comparatively compressed in a space that the novelist uses expertly to draw for us the lineages of the past, the present and the future. It leaves us with the chilling vision that evil—greed or the impulse to destroy—is man’s destiny. Masterfully composed, the novel sums up aeons of history and culture with an assurance of narrative power that makes the picture of the past and the present as compelling as his imaginings of the future. Present fears are no less than the horrible imaginings, the novel seems to say. Learned and sagacious, the narrative pleases while it also awes the reader’—Shamsur Rahman Faruqi, author of The Mirror of Beauty‘Osama Siddique’s ambitious historical novel will be of consequence not only to Pakistan but to the Indian subcontinent’—Bapsi Sidhwa, author of Ice-Candy-Man‘Innovative, introspective and evocative, this remarkable debut novel gives poignant expression to an age-old human dilemma and one of the central challenges of our own troubled times: the choice between stultifying social conformity born of ignorance, intellectual laziness and fear, and the liberating agency that comes from doubt, dissent and defiance. Polyphonic in scope and written in the fragmentary and episodic mode, the intriguingly titled Snuffing Out the Moon deftly weaves together half a dozen different narratives informed by the rich sociopolitical, cultural and literary traditions of South Asia’s six millennia- long history. Beginning in 2084 BCE with the Indus Valley Civilization and ending in 2084 CE when the deadly politics of religious radicalism and water wars have drastically recast the face of South Asia, the novel is a gripping read. It dispenses with linear time by criss-crossing the past, present and the future in a disconnected fashion without becoming random and trivial or devoid of inner meaning and connectedness. A welcome addition to South Asia’s burgeoning trove of English-language literature, it will engage and absorb a cross-section of readers with its sparkling wit, lyrical bursts and welter of insights into human frailties and foibles’—Ayesha Jalal, historian and author of Jinnah: The Sole Spokesman

Grace to Save (Serenity Landing Tuesdays of Grace #1)


Carol Moncado - 2016
    Fifteen years later, he and Cassie are getting along just fine and he's even fallen in love. The last thing he expects to find on his doorstep one Tuesday morning is Cassie's mom - the one person he thought he’d never see again - and she's asking the impossible. Circumstances, including her firefighter brother's death on 9/11, forced Abi Connealy into a decision she's spent years regretting and her daughter grew up without her. But now, a family crisis compels her to do the one thing she swore she never would: find the daughter she’d abandoned just a few days after birth. Shocked when Travis doesn’t send her packing, Abi prays to a God she doesn’t believe in that her relationship with her daughter will be restored. Travis plans to propose to his girlfriend, but their relationship hits the rocks as he and Abi both struggle with the long-dormant feelings that never had the chance to develop. When Cassie demonstrates incredible grace toward the grandfather who refuses to acknowledge her existence, Abi begins to learn the love of a Savior - a Savior who has more than enough Grace to Save.

Mistletoe on Main Street


Olivia Miles - 2014
    . . Briar Creek's quaint shop windows, cozy homes nestled in snow, and neighborly residents are what Christmas dreams are made of--for everyone except Grace Madison. She left her hometown years ago to pursue a writing career. But when her father's death leaves his bookstore empty, Grace must return to face why she fled Vermont in the first place: Luke Hastings, who still heats her up like a shot of smoky whiskey on a cold winter's night. Grace is back, and Luke is worried. How much has she changed as a bestselling author in the big city? What memories will she stir up? And was the choice he made five years ago the biggest mistake of his life? Now, with their past, present, and future rocking around the Christmas tree, it's time for Grace and Luke to face the music . . . and the mistletoe.

Dying For Christmas


Tammy Cohen - 2014
    Held captive by a blue-eyed stranger. To mark the twelve days of Christmas, he gives me a gift every day, each more horrible than the last. The twelfth day is getting closer. After that, there'll be no more Christmas cheer for me. No mince pies, no carols. No way out.But I have a secret. No-one has guessed it. Will you?

Wind Chime Café


Sophie Moss - 2014
    Hearing rumors that a developer is about to build a five-star resort on the sleepy Chesapeake Bay island, she plans to transform the café into a premier upscale bistro. But Annie’s life is about to get a lot more complicated.Back on Heron Island for the first time in ten years, Navy SEAL Will Dozier has no intention of selling his grandparents’ property to a developer. As he works on renovating the house and trying to find another buyer, he’s forced to face a painful reality—that he’s secretly struggling with PTSD. Determined to hide his troubles from the rest of the islanders, Will decides that a fling with the new girl is the perfect way to help him “get his head straight.” The last thing Will expects is to fall in love…with his hometown and with Annie. But Will’s life and career are in San Diego with the SEALs. Can Annie’s love and the healing magic of the island be enough to convince him to stay?