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Twelve Years a Slave

12-years-a-slaveSolomon Northup –

This unforgettable memoir was the basis for the Academy Award-winning film 12 Years a Slave. This is the true story of Solomon Northup, who was born and raised as a freeman in New York. He lived the American dream, with a house and a loving family – a wife and two kids. Then one day he was drugged, kidnapped, and sold into slavery in the deep south. These are the true accounts of his twelve hard years as a slave – many believe this memoir is even more graphic and disturbing than the film. His extraordinary journey proves the resiliency of hope and the human spirit despite the most grueling and formidable of circumstances.

Winter’s Tale

winters-taleMark Helprin –

New York City is subsumed in arctic winds, dark nights, and white lights, its life unfolds, for it is an extraordinary hive of the imagination, the greatest house ever built, and nothing exists that can check its vitality. One night in winter, Peter Lake, orphan and master-mechanic, attempts to rob a fortress-like mansion on the Upper West Side.
Though he thinks the house is empty, the daughter of the house is home. Thus begins the love between Peter Lake, a middle-aged Irish burglar, and Beverly Penn, a young girl, who is dying.
Peter Lake, a simple, uneducated man, because of a love that, at first he does not fully understand, is driven to stop time and bring back the dead. His great struggle, in a city ever alight with its own energy and besieged by unprecedented winters, is one of the most beautiful and extraordinary stories of American literature.

Unlucky 13

unlucky 13James Patterson –

When two dead bodies are found inside a wrecked car on the Golden Gate Bridge, Detective Lindsay Boxer doubts that it will be anything as simple as a traffic accident.
The scene is more gruesome than anything she has seen before. It definitely wasn’t the crash that killed these people.
While Lindsay starts to piece this case together, she gets a call she wasn’t expecting. Sightings of her ex-colleague-turned-ruthless-killer Mackie Morales have been reported.
Wanted for three murders, Mackie has been in hiding since she escaped from custody. But now she’s ready to return to San Francisco and pay a visit to some old friends

The Legacy of Elizabeth Pringle

legacy-of-elizabeth-pringleKirsty Wark –

Elizabeth Pringle has lived on the beautiful island of Arran for over 90 years; the retired teacher and spinster is a familiar and yet solitary figure tending her garden and riding her bicycle around the island. When she dies she leaves her beloved house, “Holmlea” to a woman she merely saw pushing a pram down the road over thirty years ago.

That young mother, Anna, had put a letter through Elizabeth’s door asking to buy the house, but Elizabeth never pursued her. But time passed and Anna is now in a home with dementia and it falls to her daughter Martha, the baby in the pram, to come and take up their inheritance.

Power Play

power-playDanielle Steel –

Fiona Carson has proven herself as CEO of a multibillion-dollar high-tech company – a successful woman in a man’s world. Devoted single mother, world-class strategist, and tough negotiator, Fiona has to keep a delicate balance every day.
Meanwhile, Marshall Weston basks in the fruits of his achievements. At his side is his wife Liz who has gladly sacrificed her own career to raise their three children. Smooth, shrewd and irreproachable, Marshall’s power only enhances his charisma – but he harbors secrets that could destroy his life at any moment.
Both must face their own demons, and the lives they lead come at a high price. But just how high a price are they willing to pay?
POWER PLAY is a compelling, heart-rending portrayal of love, family and career – the perfect read for fans of Barbara Taylor Bradford, Penny Vincenzi and Lesley Pearce.

On Cringila Hill

on-cringilla-hillNoel Beddoe –

When a teenage boy is killed in a targeted shooting, the events that unfold rock the lives of the migrant families of Cringila. School friends Jimmy and Piggy have witnessed the violent crime, but need to protect their fledgling drug business.
After seasoned police detective Gordon Winter is assigned the murder case, his investigations uncover long-buried secrets and an entrenched culture of loyalty and fear.
On Cringila Hill weaves a gripping story of power, racial tensions and blood ties in a once-vibrant industrial community.

NYPD Red 2

NYPD-red-2James Patterson –

When NYPD Red arrives at a crime scene, everyone takes notice. Known as the protectors of the rich, famous, and connected, NYPD Red is the elite task force called in only for New York City’s most high-profile crimes. And Detective Zach Jordan is the best of the best, a brilliant and relentless pursuer of justice. He puts professionalism above all, ignoring his feelings for his partner, Detective Kylie MacDonald, the woman who broke his heart when they first met in the academy.
But even with their top-notch training, Zach and Kylie aren’t prepared for what they see when they’re called to a crime scene in the heart of Central Park. They arrive to find a carousel spinning round and round, its painted horses grinning eerily in the early morning dark. There is only one rider: a brutally slaughtered woman, her body tied up and dressed in a Hazmat suit, on display for the world to see.
The victim, a woman of vast wealth and even greater connections, is the fourth in a string of shocking murders that have hit the city. As the public pressure mounts, and political and personal secrets of the highest order hang in the balance, Zach and Kylie must find out what’s really behind the murderer’s rampage. But Kylie has been acting strange recently–and Zach knows whatever she’s hiding could threaten the biggest case of their careers.
NYPD Red 2 is the next outstanding novel in James Patterson’s newest series, a thriller that careens through New York City and deep into the psyche of a depraved killer you’ve never seen before.

Mrs Sinclair’s Suitcase

mrs-sinclairs-suitcaseLouise Walters –

Forgive me, Dorothea, for I cannot forgive you. What you do, to this child, to this child’s mother, it is wrong…Roberta likes to collect the letters and postcards she finds in second-hand books. When her father gives her some of her grandmother’s belongings, she finds a baffling letter from the grandfather she never knew – dated after he supposedly died in the war.
Dorothy is unhappily married to Albert, who is away at war. When an aeroplane crashes in the field behind her house she meets Squadron Leader Jan Pietrykowski, and as their bond deepens she dares to hope she might find happiness. But fate has other plans for them both, and soon she is hiding a secret so momentous that its shock waves will touch her granddaughter many years later.

Firestorm

firestormTamara McKinley –

Becky Jackson’s family has been managing the bush hospital in far-flung Morgan’s Reach for three generations. When Becky’s husband is tragically lost at war, she and her young son Danny must leave the city where she’s been living since marriage and return to her birthplace to start over.
But for all its charm, Morgan’s Reach is a divided community, where blood is thicker than water and grudges run deep. So when a mysterious stranger appears in the bush outside the town and Danny begins to act strangely, it is not only Becky’s newfound stability that’s threatened.
And what of the fact that there’s not been a drop of rain in over three years? The risk of firestorm looms large and the hospital is already pushed to breaking point. A single spark could level the area in minutes – burning away everything for which the town has worked so hard; exposing the secrets they’ve fought to keep so close.

By Its Cover

by-its-coverDonna Leon –

Critically acclaimed, internationally bestselling Commissario Guido Brunetti series has attracted readers the world over with the beauty of its setting, the humanity of its characters, and its fearlessness in exploring politics, morality, and contemporary Italian culture. In the pages of Leon’s novels, the beloved conversations of the Brunetti family have drawn on topics of art and literature, but books are at the heart of this novel in a way they never have been before.

One afternoon, Commissario Guido Brunetti gets a frantic call from the director of a prestigious Venetian library. Someone has stolen pages out of several rare books. After a round of questioning, the case seems clear: the culprit must be the man who requested the volumes, an American professor from a Kansas university.

The only problem—the man fled the library earlier that day, and after checking his credentials, the American professor doesn’t exist. As the investigation proceeds, the suspects multiply. And when a seemingly harmless theologian, who had spent three years at the library reading the Fathers of the
Church, turns up brutally murdered, Brunetti must question his expectations about what makes a man innocent, or guilty.

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