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The Other Hand: Chris Cleave
A war zone on an African beach may not be the best place to heal a wounded marriage. This sounds almost like a Nigerian proverb sprouted by Little Bee, the heroine in this involving novel, The Other Hand. Sarah’s…
The Angel Maker: Stefan Brijs
After a 20-year absence, Doctor Victor Hoppe returns to a small town in Belgium, much to the interest of its other inhabitants. Their curiosity is stoked by the doctor leaving behind an acclaimed academic posting in embryology and by the…
The Twin: Gerbrand Bakke
Helmer is a farmer: a bachelor who lives in the shadow of his dead twin’s memory. His days revolved around his animals; watching canoeists in the canal; conversations with his father, his neighbour Ada and her two boys. He’s also…
The 19th Wife: David Ebershoff
Cast out of his polygamous Mormon sect aged 14 and dumped by the side of the road, Jordan Scott has little time for thoughts of his mother. She is one of the many wives of the sect’s corrupt and secretive…
The Impostor: Damon Galgut
Adam is a broken man. Having lost his job and his home in Johannesburg, he has moved into an abandoned home his brother owns on the edge of town. He wants to write poetry, but his creative well is as…
The Good Plain Cook: Bethan Roberts
It is 1936 and nineteen-year-old Kitty is searching for independence, so she answers an advertisement for a cook to work in ‘an artistic household’ in deepest Sussex. Her new employer is Ellen Steinberg, a doggedly bohemian and extremely rich American…
Rancid Pansies: James Hamilton Paterson
‘It’s no fun being an aesthete; one’s sensibilities are constantly being outraged.’ Poor old Gerald Samper: he should be writing librettos but instead he’s a ghostwriter for airhead celebrities.
In this third Samper book, Gerry is still managing to cook…
A Beautiful Place To Die: Malla Nunn
In South Africa in 1952, an Afrikaner Police Captain is murdered in the town of Jacob’s Rest. Detective Emmanuelle Cooper is called to investigate, and finds himself in a gritty world of violence, crime, and racial segregation laws that are…
Bleeding Heart Square: Andrew Taylor
Bleeding Heart Square in London is a place with a past, and a dark and disturbing sense of history. In 1934, as the Depression and its attendant social unrest begin to grip England, several residents find that their lives begin…
Too Close To Home: Linwood Barclay
Jim Cutter, his wife and son are appalled when their neighbours, the Langleys, are murdered. Their town in upstate New York is a sleepy place, famous only for its annual literary festival, which attracts the brightest stars in the US…
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