New Titles
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender
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On the eve of her ninth birthday, unassuming Rose Edelstein, a girl at the periphery of schoolyard games and her distracted parents' attention, bites into her mother's homemade lemon-chocolate cake and discovers she has a magical gift: she can taste her mother's emotions in the slice. She discovers this gift to her horror, for her mother – her cheerful, can-do mother – tastes of despair and desperation. Suddenly, and for the rest of her life, food becomes perilous. Anything can be revealed at any meal. Rose's gift forces her to confront the secret knowledge all families keep hidden – truths about her mother's life outside the home, her father's strange detachment and her brother's clash with the world. Yet as Rose grows up, she realises there are some secrets that even her taste buds cannot discern. The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake is a luminous tale about the heartbreak of loving those whom you know too much about. It is profound and funny, wise and sad, and Aimee Bender's dazzling prose illuminates the strangeness of everyday life.
Invisible River by Helena McEwan
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Evie has left her father, her life in Cornwall and her childhood behind her to begin a very different sort of life at art school in London. At first the great city provides her with a world of inspiration. Her imagination is fired by the history, and the scenes of London. With Rob, Bianca and 'the ballerina', Evie discovers the ancient and ever-changing city and her paintings are filled with colour and fantasy as she indulges her need to escape. When her alcoholic father turns up on her doorstep, her past becomes her present again and Evie struggles to carry on with her new life. This is the story of a daughter, an artist and the moment when you realise your life is your own. Helena McEwen draws together the themes of art, love, friendship and memory with a painter's skill, in a story filled with hope.
More than You can Say by Paul Torday
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‘Tell you what, Leader, do you want to double your money? Double or quits? Of course double or quits. I'm having lunch at the Randolph Hotel in Oxford tomorrow with my uncle. If you can join us by one o'clock sharp tomorrow, I'll tear up this cheque and write you another for six thousand pounds’ It is a bet Richard Gaunt cannot resist - all he has to do is walk from London to Oxford in under twelve hours. As an ex-soldier he is up to the challenge. But what starts as a harmless bet turns into something altogether different when Richard is taken hostage by a mysterious stranger, Mr Khan, who makes him a highly unusual proposal. What he offers in return could transform Richard's life. Traumatised by a tour of duty in Iraq, Richard feels he has nothing to lose. The love of his life won't speak to him, he has lost every job he ever had and his friends have vanished. He therefore decides to accept Khan's strange request - never imagining the places it will take him.
Consolation by Anna Gavalda
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An international bestseller and French publishing sensation Consolation is a dazzling, heartbreaking tale of one man, two remarkable women and an unforgettable transvestite. Charles Balanda is forty-seven; a successful architect, he is constantly on the move. But from the moment he hears about the death of the woman he once loved - Anouk, the tragically big-hearted mother of a childhood friend - his life begins to unravel until, one day, he finds himself on a Paris pavement covered in blood. But fate brings him one final chance to be happy in Kate, an enchanting young woman, herself damaged but fearless and in love with life. The resulting story is a triumphant, spellbinding and ultimately consoling novel about the power of a second chance.
The Concert Ticket by Olga Grushin
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On any given morning, on the street corners of a Russian city, little kiosks suddenly appear. As soon as their shutters open, a queue forms, men and women lining up in the hope of a little bit of luxury: a pair of silk stockings or a box of chocolates. One morning news spreads that the exiled composer, Selinsky, will be returning to the city for one concert only, and there is one kiosk, somewhere, selling tickets to this most magical event of the year. So begins the story of a family, in which a ticket to Selinsky's concert means everything: for Sergei, the father, it holds the promise of an affair with another woman; for his wife, Anna, it offers the hope of winning back her faithless husband; for their son, Alexander, it means the possibility of escaping to the West. The Concert Ticket is a fabulously told story of love, longing and escape, of beauty in a world of repression, and of a family at the mercy of each other and the times in which they live.
1222 by Anne Holt
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1222 metres above sea level, train 601 from Oslo to Bergen careens of iced rails as the worst snowstorm in Norwegian history gathers force around it. Marooned in the high mountains with night falling and the temperature plummeting, its 269 passengers are forced to abandon their snowbound train and decamp to a centuries-old mountain hotel. They ought to be safe from the storm here, but as dawn breaks one of them will be found dead, murdered. With the storm showing no sign of abating, retired police inspector Hanne Wilhelmsen is asked to investigate. But Hanne has no wish to get involved. She has learned the hard way that truth comes at a price and sometimes that price just isn't worth paying. Her pursuit of truth and justice has cost her the love of her life, her career in the Oslo Police Department and her mobility: she is paralysed from the waist down by a bullet lodged in her spine. Trapped in a wheelchair, trapped by the killer within, trapped by the deadly storm outside, Hanne's growing unease is shared by everyone in the hotel. Should she investigate, or should she just wait for help to arrive? And all the time rumours swirl about a secret cargo carried by train 601. Why was the last carriage sealed? Why is the top floor of the hotel locked down? Who or what is being concealed? And, of course, what if the killer strikes again?
The House of the Mosque by Kader Abdolah
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Iran, 1969. The house of the mosque has been occupied for centuries by successive generations of the family who served the mosque. Now it is home to the families of three cousins - Aqa Jaan, a merchant and head of the city’s bazaar; Alsaberi, the imam of the mosque; and Aqa Shoja, the mosque’s muezzin. The house teems with life as each family grows up with their own triumphs and tragedies. Sadiq is waiting for a suitor to knock at the door to ask for her hand, while her two grandmothers sweep the floors each morning dreaming of travelling to Mecca. Shahbal longs only for a television to watch the first moon landing. These daily dramas play out under the watchful eyes of the storks that nest on the rooftop of the house. But this family will experience upheaval unknown to previous generations, for in Iran, political unrest is brewing.. The story of a key period of world history—the Iranian Revolution—is told through the eyes of one family.
A Radiant Life by Nuala O'Faolain
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A selection of columns by journalist and author Nuala O’Faolain published in The Irish Times and The Sunday Tribune spanning a twenty-year period from the 1980s until her untimely death in 2008.
The Champion by Tim Binding
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Charles Pemberton has lived his whole life in the same small town: he went to the best local school, he lived in one of the finest houses and his parents were, effectively, middle-class aristocracy. His quiet life of privileged contentment might well have continued undisturbed, were it not for the arrival of Clark ‘Large’ Rossiter. In this uncharismatic town, Large is the biggest personality, equally capable of magnetic charm and all-consuming wrath; he terrorizes the old guard and shakes up the established hierarchy in his relentless pursuit of money, status and, eventually, revenge. Through the lives of Charles and Large, Binding chronicles the vertiginous period from Thatcher to Blair – years all the more prescient for their similarity to the current boom and bust. The Champion is literary satire at its savage best.
The Falafel King is Dead by Sara Shilo
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The town has lost its famed falafel king, but the Dadon family have also lost a father and husband. Living with the daily threat of Katyusha missiles from neighbouring Lebanon, and struggling to survive amid the rubble of their lives, Simona and her three children each find their own way of coping with their grief, their fear, and their hopes. Raw, lyrical, shocking and moving, Sara Shilo's powerful debut novel recounts the life of an ordinary Israeli family over the course of a single day.