Andrea Camilleri A wave of refugees has arrived on the Sicilian coast, and Inspector Montalbano and his team have been stationed at port, alongside countless volunteers, to receive and assist the newcomers.
Meanwhile, Livia has promised their presence at a friend’s wedding, and the inspector, agreeing to get a new suit tailored, meets the charming master seamstress Elena Biasini. But while on duty at the dock one late night, tragedy strikes, and Elena is found gruesomely murdered. Between managing the growing crowds at the landing, Montalbano delves into the world of garments, in the company of an orphaned cat, where he works to weave together the loose threads of the unsolved crimes and close the case.
Anna Jacobs As the only female cabinet maker in the valley in 1935, Frankie Redfern is unusual. She faces prejudice even from her own mother. But she’s content working for her father, and is unwilling to give up her independence or the work she loves for marriage.
When her husband falls gravely ill, Frankie’s mother takes over, causing serious trouble for her daughter. And her cousin, an unscrupulous local builder, starts to help her for his own reasons. Jericho Harte has never met a woman he wanted to marry until he bumps into Frankie on the moors. When she comes to him the next day with an extraordinary suggestion, it seems a marriage of convenience might suit them both. Or could their relationship become more than that? But Frankie’s problems worsen as her father goes missing from hospital. Is there more to his illness than met the eye? Can Frankie and Jericho help uncover the truth and put an end to the danger she’s in before it’s too late?
Andrew Quilty As night fell on 15 August 2021, the Taliban entered Kabul, capital of Afghanistan. After a 20-year conflict with the United States, its Western allies and a proxy Afghan government, the Islamic militant group once aligned with al Qaeda was about to bury yet another foreign foe in the graveyard of empires. And for the US, the superpower, this was yet another foreign disaster. As cities and towns fell to the Taliban in rapid succession, Western troops and embassy staff scrambled to flee a country of which its government had lost control.
To the world, Kabul in August looked like Saigon in 1975. August in Kabul is the story of how America’s longest mission came to an abrupt and humiliating end, told through the eyes of Afghans whose lives have been turned upside down: a young woman who harbours dreams of a university education; a presidential staffer who works desperately to hold things together as the government collapses around him; a prisoner in the notorious Bagram Prison who suddenly finds himself free when prison guards abandon their post. Andrew Quilty was one of a handful of Western journalists who stayed in Kabul as the city fell. This is his first-hand account.
Paul de Gelder From shark attack survivor to the shark’s biggest advocate, Paul de Gelder tells us just why these majestic diverse animals need our help as much as we need them. Something happens to you the first time you dive with sharks…
We have a perennial fascination with sharks. Portrayed in the media and popular culture as killing machines, we are awed by their power and strength.
But the shark is so much more – a marvel of the sea, they have evolved over 450 million years into over 500 species, from the bioluminescent kitefin to the tiny dwarf lantern shark, the sociable lemon shark to the blue shark, which can birth up to 100 pups in one litter. Bringing balance to the ocean’s ecosystem, our planet is at serious risk when these amazing creatures are threatened. Paul de Gelder, who lost two limbs in a shark attack during a mission as an elite Australian navy clearance diver, spent time as part of his recovery learning all about sharks. He became so obsessed that, despite what happened to him, he is now an expert and has dedicated his life to helping save them. Shark is his love-letter to these unfairly vilified animals, and his warning to the world about what will happen if we don’t look out for them.
Anthony Ham When Chris Clark was born in Glasgow in 1960, the Amazon was still intact and magnificent. Over his lifetime, vast swathes of the world’s largest rainforest have disappeared. This is the story of a man who spent a lifetime trying to save a pristine corner of the Amazon.
Chris Clark is a flawed and fascinating hero, one who survived tragedy, numerous death threats, a dysfunctional family, and the full-throated opposition of powerful interests in Brazil to carve out a small but vital piece of the Amazon rainforest. Supported by a small but passionate group of supporters, and aided by the Waimiri-Atroari, one of the most isolated Indian nations in the northern Amazon, Clark spent thirty years in a race against time to save the Amazon before it disappeared.
The Man Who Loved Pink Dolphins tells the story of the fight to save the lungs of the world through the story of one man who is considered a hero in conservation circles.
John Connolly From “a master of the macabre” (RT Book Reviews), private investigator Charlie Parker is unwittingly drawn into a world of vengeance. New York Times bestselling author John Connolly pits Parker against two separate—but vitally connected—investigations, which prove to be among the most complicated of his entire career.
In The Sisters Strange, criminal Raum Buker arrives in Portland, only for a shocking act of theft to threaten not only his own existence but those of his former lovers—the enigmatic sisters Strange.
And in the title novel, The Furies, Parker must protect two women under threat as Portland shuts down in the face of a global pandemic. Unbeknownst to him, however, these clients are more capable of taking care of themselves than anyone could have imagined.
Ann Cleeves For fifty years a group of friends have been meeting regularly for reunions on Holy Island, celebrating the school trip where they met, and the friend that they lost to the rising causeway tide five years later. Now, when one of them is found hanged, Vera is called in.
Learning that the dead man had recently been fired after misconduct allegations, Vera knows she must discover what the friends are hiding, and whether the events of many years before could have led to murder then, and now . . .
But with the tide rising, secrets long-hidden are finding their way to the surface, and Vera and the team may find themselves in more danger than they could have believed possible . . .
Stella Quinn When Kirsty Fox goes on the run to escape a crash-and-burn at work, she finds a family she didn’t know she needed… A witty and warm rural romance perfect for readers of Rachael Johns and Alissa Callen.
They say a change is as good as a holiday. Joey Miles is hoping so after leaving the city behind, his stockbroking career in flames, to embrace a brand-new challenge: farming. But while returning to his hometown somehow feels right, he’s got a long way to go to get back on his feet financially and the last thing he needs is the townsfolk meddling in his love life (or lack thereof).
To the townsfolk of Clarence, Joey has always been the ultimate tragic romantic hero – and it’s time this hero had a happy ever after…
But Kirsty Fox is only in Clarence to dig up information about a World War II figure from her family’s past – she has no intention of sticking around and finding out if Joey is as adorable as he seems. Kirsty doesn’t stick around. Ever.
Lesley Pearse What happens when the person closest to you has led a life of deception? After the funeral of her mother, Sally, Alice Kent is approached by a man named Angus Tweedy. He claims to be her father and tells her that he served time in prison for marrying Sally bigamously.
What does he hope to gain telling her this now, thirty years on? How can her adored dad Ralph not be her true father? And why did her mother betray her so badly?
She had accepted Sally’s many faults, and her reluctance to never speak of the past. But faced with this staggering deception, Alice knows she must uncover the whole truth about her mother.
Whatever the cost.
Alice’s journey into her mother’s past is one of incredulity as she discovers a woman shaped by a truly traumatic childhood . . .
Kirsty Cambron A prima ballerina. Two American medics. And a young Jewish girl with no name . . . At the height of the Nazi occupation of Rome, an unlikely band of heroes comes together to save Italian Jews in this breathtaking World War II novel based on real historical events.
Rome, 1943. With the fall of Italy’s Fascist government and the Nazi regime occupying the streets of Rome, British ballerina Julia Bradbury is stranded and forced to take refuge at a hospital on Tiber Island. But when she learns of a deadly sickness that is sweeping through the quarantine wards—a fake disease known only as Syndrome K—she is drawn into one of the greatest cons in history. Alongside hospital staff, friars of the adjoining church, and two Allied medics, Julia risks everything to rescue Italian Jews from the deadly clutches of the Holocaust. But when one little girl who dreams of becoming a ballerina arrives at their door, Julia and the others are determined to reunite the young dancer with her family—if only she would reveal one crucial secret: her name.
Present Day. With the recent loss of her grandfather—a beloved small-town doctor and WWII veteran—Delaney Coleman returns home to help her aging parents, even as she struggles to pick up the pieces of her own life. When a mysterious Italian woman claims she owns one of the family’s precious heirlooms, Delaney is compelled to uncover what’s true of her grandfather’s hidden past. Together with the woman’s skeptical but charming grandson, Delaney learns of a Roman hospital that saved hundreds of Jewish people during the war. Soon, everything Delaney thought she knew about her grandfather comes into question as she wrestles with the possibility that the man she’d revered all her life had unknown ties to Rome and may have taken noble secrets to his grave.
Based on true accounts of the invented Syndrome K sickness, The Italian Ballerina journeys from the Allied storming of the beaches at Salerno to the London ballet stage and the war-torn streets of WWII Rome, exploring the sometimes heart-wrenching choices we must make to find faith and forgiveness, and how saving just one life can impact countless others.
