Spydus Search Results - Location: Acquisitions and Collection: Readers Group and Item Category 1: Readers Group and ...

A gentleman in Moscow / Amor Towles.

In 1922 Count Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal. He is sentenced to house arrest in The Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel's doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him a doorway into a much larger world of emotional discovery.
Author: Towles, Amor
Published: London : Windmill Books, 2024.
462 pages : map (black and white) ; 20 cm
Average rating: (1 review)

18 copies

Go as a river / Shelley Read.

1940s Colorado: Teenage Victoria Nash is the sole surviving woman in a family of troubled men. She spends her days running the household on her family's peach farm.Wilson Moon is a young drifter with a mysterious past. Displaced from his tribal land, he wants to believe one place is just like another. When Victoria and Wil meet on a street corner, their unexpected connection ignites both passion and danger, revelations and secrets. But when tragedy strikes, Victoria is propelled away from the only home she has ever known and towards a reckoning with loss, hope, and her own untapped strength. Gathering all the pieces of her small and extraordinary existence, she will arrive at a single rocky decision that will change her life for ever.
Author: Read, Shelley
Published: London : Penguin Books, 2024.
305 pages ; 20 cm

14 copies

Trespasses / Louise Kennedy.

Cushla Lavery lives with her mother in a small town near Belfast. At 24, she splits her time between her day job as a teacher to a class of 7-year-olds, and regular bartending shifts in the pub owned by her family. It's here, on a day like any other - as the daily news rolls in of another car bomb exploding, another man shot, killed, beaten or left for dead - that she meets Michael Agnew, an older (and married) barrister who draws her into his sophisticated group of friends. When the father of a young boy in her class, becomes the victim of a savage attack, Cushla is compelled to help his family. But as her affair with Michael intensifies, political tensions in the town escalate, threatening to destroy all she is working to hold together.
Author: Kennedy, Louise (Ph. D.)
Published: London : Bloomsbury Publishing, 2023.
311 pages ; 20 cm

13 copies

The people on Platform 5 / Clare Pooley.

Nobody ever talks to strangers on the train. It's a rule. But what would happen if they did? Every day at 8:05, Iona Iverson boards the train to go to work. Every day, she sees the same people and makes assumptions about them, even giving them nicknames. But they never speak. Obviously. Then, one morning, Smart-but-Sexist Surbiton chokes on a grape right in front of Iona. Probably-a-Psychopath-New-Malden steps up to help and saves his life, and this one event sparks a chain reaction. With nothing in common but their commute, an eclectic group of people learn that their assumptions about each other don't match reality. But when Iona's life begins to fall apart, will her new friends be there when she needs them most?
Author: Pooley, Clare
Published: London : Penguin Books, 2023.
378 pages : map (black and white) ; 20 cm

13 copies

The echo of old books : a novel / Barbara Davis.

Rare-book dealer Ashlyn Greer's affinity for books extends beyond the intoxicating scent of old paper, ink, and leather. She can feel the echoes of the books' previous owners - an emotional fingerprint only she can read. When Ashlyn discovers a pair of beautifully bound volumes that appear to have never been published, her gift quickly becomes an obsession. Not only is each inscribed with a startling incrimination, but the authors, Hemi and Belle, tell conflicting sides of a tragic romance.
Author: Davis, Barbara
Published: Seattle : Lake Union Publishing, 2023.
425 pages
7 reserves

13 copies

Demon Copperhead / Barbara Kingsolver.

This is the tale of Demon Copperhead: our hero. A boy with no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper-coloured hair, bucket-loads of charm and a talent or two the world is yet to discover. Born to a teenaged single mother in a single wide trailer, life is not set fair for Demon as he escorts us on this, his journey through the modern perils of foster care, athletic success and addiction, the dizzying highs of true love, and the crushing losses that can accompany it. But Demon is a fighter, a survivor.
Author: Kingsolver, Barbara
Published: London : Faber, 2023.
548 pages ; 20 cm
Average rating: (1 review)
1 reserve

15 copies

The four winds / Kristin Hannah.

Texas, 1934. Elsa Martinelli had finally found the life she'd yearned for. A family, a home and a livelihood on a farm on the Great Plains. But when drought threatens all she and her community hold dear, Elsa's world is shattered to the winds. Fearful of the future, when Elsa wakes to find her husband has fled, she is forced to make the most agonizing decision of her life. Fight for the land she loves or take her beloved children, Loreda and Ant, west to California in search of a better life. Will it be the land of milk and honey? Or will their experience challenge every ounce of strength they possess?
Author: Hannah, Kristin
Published: London : Pan Books, 2022.
454 pages : illustration (black and white) ; 20 cm
Average rating: (2 reviews)

18 copies

The funny thing about Norman Foreman / Julietta Henderson.

What do you get when you cross a painfully awkward son, lofty comedic ambition and a dead best friend? Norman. Norman and Jax were a legendary comedic duo in waiting. They had a plan to take them all the way to the Edinburgh Fringe in just 5 years' time. But when Jax dies before they turn twelve, Norman decides a tribute act for his best friend just can't wait - so he rewrites their plan: 1. Look after mum 2. Find Dad 3. Get to the Edinburgh Fringe. Sadie won't win a mother of the year award anytime soon and not knowing exactly who her son's father is isn't topping her list of achievements. But if performing at the Fringe and finding his dad is what will help Norman through, they're going to make it happen.
Author: Henderson, Julietta
Published: London : Penguin Books, 2022.
355 pages ; 20 cm

18 copies

The island of missing trees / Elif Shafak.

1974, on the island of Cyprus. Two teenagers, from opposite sides of a divided land, meet at a tavern in the city they both call home. The tavern is the only place that Kostas, who is Greek and Christian, and Defne, who is Turkish and Muslim, can meet, in secret, hidden beneath the blackened beams from which hang garlands of garlic, chilli peppers and wild herbs. This is where one can find the best food in town, the best music, the best wine. But there is something else to the place: it makes one forget, even if for just a few hours, the world outside and its immoderate sorrows. In 'The Island of Missing Trees', prizewinning author Elif Shafak brings us a rich, magical tale of belonging and identity, love and trauma, memory and amnesia, human-induced destruction of nature, and, finally, renewal.
Author: Shafak, Elif, 1971-
Published: UK : Penguin Books, 2022.
368 pages : illustrations (black and white) ; 20 cm
1 reserve

13 copies

The Midnight Library / Matt Haig.

When Nora Seed finds herself in the Midnight Library, she has a chance to make things right. Up until now, her life has been full of misery and regret. She feels she has let everyone down, including herself. But things are about to change. The books in the Midnight Library enable Nora to live as if she had done things differently. With the help of an old friend, she can now undo every one of her regrets as she tries to work out her perfect life. But things aren't always what she imagined they'd be, and soon her choices place the library and herself in extreme danger. Before time runs out, she must answer the ultimate question: what is the best way to live?
Author: Haig, Matt, 1975-
Published: Edinburgh : Canongate, 2021.
304 pages ; 20 cm

22 copies

American dirt / Jeanine Cummins.

'American Dirt' explores the experience of attempting to illegally cross the US-Mexico border, a journey which thousands of migrants make each year. Yesterday, Lydia had a bookshop. Yesterday, Lydia was married to a journalist. Yesterday, she was with everyone she loved most in the world. Today, her eight-year-old son Luca is all she has left. For him, she will carry a machete strapped to her leg. For him, she will leap onto the roof of a high speed train. For him, she will find the strength to keep running.
Author: Cummins, Jeanine
Published: London : Tinder Press, 2021.
457 pages ; 20 cm

16 copies

Playing nice / JP Delaney.

Pete answers the door to a parent's worst nightmare. On his doorstep is a stranger, Miles Lambert, who breaks the news that Pete's two-year-old, Theo, isn't his biological child after all - he is Miles's, switched with the Lamberts' baby at birth by an understaffed hospital. Reeling from shock, Peter and his partner agree that, rather than swap the children back, it's better to stay as they are but to involve the other family in their children's lives. But a plan to sue the hospital triggers an official investigation that unearths some questions about just what happened on the day the babies were switched. And when Theo is thrown out of nursery for hitting other children, Maddie and Pete have to ask themselves: how far do they want this arrangement to go? What are the secrets hidden behind the Lamberts' smart front door? And how much can they trust the real parents of their child - or even each other?
Author: Delaney, JP
Published: London : Quercus, 2021.
424 pages ; 20 cm

14 copies

The authenticity project / Clare Pooley.

Julian Jessop is tired of hiding the deep loneliness he feels. So he begins The Authenticity Project - a small green notebook containing the truth about his life. Leaving the notebook on a table in his friendly neighbourhood café, Julian never expects Monica, the owner, to track him down after finding it. Or that she'll be inspired to write down her own story. Little do they realize that such small acts of honesty hold the power to impact all those who discover the notebook and change their lives completely.
Author: Pooley, Clare
Published: London : Black Swan, 2021.
404 pages ; 20 cm

13 copies

A long petal of the sea / Isabel Allende ; translated from the Spanish by Nick Caistor and Amanda Hopkinson.

That September 3, 1939, the day of the Spanish exiles' splendid arrival in Chile, the Second World War broke out in Europe. Victor Dalmau is a young doctor when he is caught up in the Spanish Civil War, a tragedy that leaves his life - and the fate of his country - forever changed. Together with his sister-in-law, the pianist Roser Bruguera, he is forced out of his beloved Barcelona and into exile. When opportunity to seek refuge in Chile arises, they take it, boarding a ship chartered by the poet Pablo Neruda to the promised 'long petal of sea and wine and snow' over the seas. There, they find themselves enmeshed in a rich web of characters who come together in love and tragedy over the course of four generations, destined to witness the battle between freedom and repression as it plays out across the world.
Author: Allende, Isabel
Published: London : Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021.
318 pages ; 20 cm

12 copies

The Thursday Murder Club / Richard Osman.

In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet up once a week to investigate unsolved murders. But when a brutal killing takes place on their very doorstep, the Thursday Murder Club find themselves in the middle of their first live case. Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron might be pushing 80 but they still have a few tricks up their sleeves. Can our unorthodox but brilliant gang catch the killer before it's too late?
Author: Osman, Richard, 1970-
Published: UK : Penguin Books, 2021.
389 pages ; 20 cm
Average rating: (2 reviews)

23 copies

The miseducation of Evie Epworth / Matson Taylor.

July, 1962. 16-year-old Evie Epworth stands on the cusp of womanhood. But what kind of a woman will she become? The fastest milk bottle-delivery girl in East Yorkshire, Evie is tall as a tree and hot as the desert sand. She dreams of an independent life lived under the bright lights of London (or Leeds). The two posters of Adam Faith on her bedroom wall ('brooding Adam' and 'sophisticated Adam') offer wise counsel about a future beyond rural East Yorkshire. Her role models are Charlotte Bronte, Shirley MacLaine and the Queen. But, before she can decide on a career, she must first deal with the malign presence of her future step-mother, the manipulative and money-grubbing Christine.
Author: Taylor, Matson
Published: London : Scribner, 2021.
359 pages ; 20 cm

12 copies

The vanishing half / Brit Bennett.

The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Ten years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters' story lines intersect?
Author: Bennett, Brit
Published: London : Dialogue Books, 2021.
366 pages ; 20 cm

16 copies

The family upstairs / Lisa Jewell.

In a large house in London's fashionable Chelsea, a baby is awake in her cot. Well-fed and cared for, she is happily waiting for someone to pick her up. In the kitchen lie three decomposing corpses. Close to them is a hastily scrawled note. They've been dead for several days. Who has been looking after the baby? And where did they go? Two entangled families. A house with the darkest of secrets.
Author: Jewell, Lisa
Published: London : Arrow Books, 2020.
449 pages ; 20 cm
Family upstairs
Family Upstarirs ; 1

17 copies

The beekeeper of Aleppo / Christy Lefteri.

Nuri is a beekeeper; his wife, Afra, an artist. They live a simple life, rich in family and friends, in the beautiful Syrian city of Aleppo - until the unthinkable happens. When all they care for is destroyed by war, they are forced to escape. But what Afra has seen is so terrible she has gone blind, and so they must embark on a perilous journey through Turkey and Greece towards an uncertain future in Britain. On the way, Nuri is sustained by the knowledge that waiting for them is Mustafa, his cousin and business partner, who has started an apiary and is teaching fellow refugees in Yorkshire to keep bees. As Nuri and Afra travel through a broken world, they must confront not only the pain of their own unspeakable loss, but dangers that would overwhelm the bravest of souls.
Author: Lefteri, Christy, 1980-
Published: London : Manilla Press, 2020.
377 pages : maps (black and white) ; 20 cm
Average rating: (2 reviews)
1 reserve

16 copies

Little fires everywhere / Celeste Ng.

Everyone in Shaker Heights was talking about it that summer: how Isabelle, the last of the Richardson children, had finally gone around the bend and burned the house down. In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is meticulously planned - from the layout of the winding roads, to the colours of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principal is playing by the rules. Enter Mia Warren - an enigmatic artist and single mother- who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenage daughter Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons. Soon Mia and Pearl become more than just tenants: all four Richardson children are drawn to the mother-daughter pair.
Author: Ng, Celeste
Published: London : Abacus, 2020.
388 pages ; 20 cm

12 copies

The Dutch House / Ann Patchett.

Danny Conroy grows up in the Dutch House, a lavish folly in small-town Pennsylvania taken on by his property developer father. Though his father is distant and his mother is absent, Danny has his beloved sister Maeve: Maeve, with her wall of black hair, her delicacy, her brilliance. Life is comfortable and coherent, played out under the watchful eyes of the house's former owners in the frames of their oil paintings, or under the cover of the draperies around the window seat in Maeve's room. Then one day their father brings Andrea home: Andrea, small and neat, a dark hat no bigger than a saucer pinned over a twist of her fair hair. Though they cannot know it, Andrea's advent to the Dutch House sows the seed of the defining loss of Danny and Maeve's lives.
Author: Patchett, Ann
Published: London : Bloomsbury Publishing, 2020.
337 pages ; 20 cm

13 copies

People like us / Louise Fein.

This is a love story set in 1930s Germany. Hetty, daughter of an SS officer, falls in love with Walter, a Jew - but will the steady march of dark forces destroy their world, or can love ultimately triumph?
Author: Fein, Louise
Published: London : Head of Zeus, 2020.
496 pages

12 copies

Just my luck / Adele Parks.

It's the stuff dreams are made of - a lottery win so big, it changes everything. For fifteen years, Lexi and Jake have played the same six numbers with their friends, the Pearsons and the Heathcotes. Over dinner parties, fish & chip suppers and summer barbecues, they've discussed the important stuff - the kids, marriages, jobs, and houses - and they've laughed off their disappointment when they failed to win anything more than a tenner. But then, one Saturday night, the unthinkable happens. There's a rift in the group. Someone doesn't tell the truth. And soon after, six numbers come up which change everything forever.
Author: Parks, Adele
Published: London : HQ, 2020.
376 pages ; 20 cm
8 reserves

14 copies

The other passenger / Louise Candlish.

You're feeling pretty smug about your commute to work by riverboat. No more traffic gridlock or getting stuck on the tube in tunnels (you're claustrophobic). Now you've got fresh air, an iconic Thames view, a whole lifestyle upgrade. You've made new friends on board - led by your hedonistic young neighbour, Kit - and just had your first official 'water rats' get-together. The day after the drinks, Kit isn't on the morning boat. The river landmarks are all the same, but something's off. When you disembark, the police are waiting. Kit's wife, Melia, has reported him missing and another passenger saw you arguing on the last boat home after your drinks. Police say you had a reason to lash out at him. To threaten him. You protest. You and Kit are friends - ask Melia, she'll vouch for you. And who exactly is pointing the finger? What do they know about your private lives?
Author: Candlish, Louise
Published: London : Simon & Schuster, 2020.
401 pages ; 20 cm

13 copies

The mermaid and Mrs Hancock / Imogen Hermes Gowar.

One September evening in 1785, the merchant Jonah Hancock hears urgent knocking on his front door. One of his captains is waiting eagerly on the step. He has sold Jonah's ship for what appears to be a mermaid. As gossip spreads through the docks, coffee shops, parlours and brothels, everyone wants to see Mr Hancock's marvel. Its arrival spins him out of his ordinary existence and through the doors of high society. At an opulent party, he makes the acquaintance of Angelica Neal, the most desirable woman he has ever laid eyes on - and a courtesan of great accomplishment. This meeting will steer both their lives onto a dangerous new course, on which they will learn that priceless things come at the greatest cost. What will be the cost of their ambitions? And will they be able to escape the destructive power mermaids are said to possess?
Author: Gowar, Imogen Hermes
Published: London : Vintage, 2019.
488 pages ; 20 cm

14 copies

All the beautiful lies / Peter Swanson.

On the eve of his college graduation, Harry is called home by his step-mother Alice, to their house on the Maine coast, following the unexpected death of his father. But who really is Alice, his father's much younger second wife? In a brilliant split narrative, Peter Swanson teases out the stories and damage that lie in her past. And as her story entwines with Harry's in the present, things grow increasingly dark and threatening - will Harry be able to see any of it clearly through his own confused feelings?
Author: Swanson, Peter, 1968-
Published: London : Faber & Faber, 2019.
364 pages ; 20 cm

11 copies

This is what happened / Mick Herron.

26-year-old Maggie Barnes is someone you would never look at twice. Living alone in a month-to-month sublet in the huge city of London, with no family but an estranged sister, no boyfriend or partner, and not much in the way of friends, Maggie is just the kind of person who could vanish from the face of the earth without anyone taking notice. Or just the kind of person MI5 needs to infiltrate the establishment and thwart an international plot that puts all of Britain at risk. Now one young woman has the chance to be a hero - if she can think quickly enough to stay alive.
Author: Herron, Mick
Published: London : John Murray, 2019.
243 pages ; 20 cm

13 copies

The field of blood / Denise Mina.

In Glasgow, a toddler goes missing, snatched from the front garden of his home. But while the city braces itself for the discovery of a lone sexual predator, the police are led to the doors of two 11-year-old boys.
Author: Mina, Denise
Published: London : Vintage, 2019.
404 pages ; 20 cm.
Paddy Meehan
Paddy Meehan series

12 copies

A ladder to the sky / John Boyne.

A psychological drama of cat and mouse, 'A Ladder to the Sky' shows how easy it is to achieve the world if you are prepared to sacrifice your soul. If you look hard enough, you can find stories pretty much anywhere. They don't even have to be your own. Or so would-be writer Maurice Swift decides very early on in his career. A chance encounter in a Berlin hotel with celebrated novelist Erich Ackermann gives him an opportunity to ingratiate himself with someone more powerful than him. For Erich is lonely, and he has a story to tell. Whether or not he should do so is another matter entirely. Once Maurice has made his name, he sets off in pursuit of other people's stories. He doesn't care where he finds them - or to whom they belong - as long as they help him rise to the top.
Author: Boyne, John, 1971-
Published: London : Black Swan, 2019.
433 pages ; 20 cm

11 copies

The comforts of home / Susan Hill.

DC Simon Serrailler's last, devastating case was nearly the death of him and left him confronting a new reality. Recovering on a remote Scottish island, his peace doesn't last long. He is pulled in to a murder inquiry by the overstretched local police. A newcomer, popular with the islanders, has died in perplexing circumstances. It's good to be back on the job but it's when Simon returns to Lafferton that things start to get complicated.
Author: Hill, Susan, 1942-
Published: London : Vintage, 2019.
373 pages ; 20 cm.
Simon Serrailler cases

12 copies