In A Lady’s Guide to Fortune Hunting Kitty Talbot realises she needs a fortune, or rather, a husband with one as she has only twelve weeks to save her family from ruin.
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Set over one sizzling August, Book Lovers is the new chemistry-filled ‘rivals to lovers’ romcom by Emily Henry.
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If you were charmed by The Curious Incident, laughed with Eleanor Oliphant and cried over A Man Called Ove, you will love The Improbable Life of Ricky Bird.
Ricky Bird loves making up stories for her little brother Ollie almost as much as she loves him. The imaginary worlds she creates are wild and whimsical places full of unlimited possibilities. Real life is another story.
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What if your first love was your one and only chance at happiness? In our lives, some promises are easily forgotten, while others come to haunt us with tragic results. Today’s pre-order pick is The Lessons.
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Having written over 66 novels, Agatha Christie has developed some of our favourite characters. Which is your favourite Agatha Christie character?
Jodi Picoult is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of twenty-eight novels which have been translated into thirty-four languages in thirty-five countries. Jodi has a penetrating insight into the hearts and minds of real people and writes these insights in page-turning detail.
Born and raised on Long Island in America, Jodi thought her uneventful childhood would not help her as a writer, in fact it was the opposite. The core of a family and the tangle of relationships is something that is central to all of her stories. Jodi studied creative writing at Princeton and published two stories while studying and then went on to further her study with a Master’s of Education at Harvard.
Jodi is the recipient of many awards, including the New England Bookseller Award for Fiction, the Alex Awards from the YALSA, a lifetime achievement award for mainstream fiction from the Romance Writers of America, and the NH Literary Award for Outstanding Literary Merit. Her stories have also been made into movies and television series.
Here are six of our favourite Picoult stories (you can buy all of Jodi’s books here)
Anna is not sick, but she might as well be. By age thirteen, she has undergone countless surgeries, transfusions and shots so that her older sister, Kate, can somehow fight the leukaemia that has plagued her since childhood. Anna was conceived as a bone marrow match for Kate, a life and a role that she has never questioned until now. Like most teenagers, Anna is beginning to question who she truly is. But unlike most teenagers, she has always been defined in terms of her sister – and so Anna makes a decision that for most would be unthinkable, a decision that will tear her family apart and have perhaps fatal consequences for the sister she loves.
Told from multiple points of view, My Sister’s Keeper examines what it means to be a good parent, a good sister, a good person. Is it morally correct to do whatever it takes to save a child’s life, even if that means infringing upon the rights of another? Should you follow your own heart, or let others lead you? What happens when emotion catches up to scientific advances?
Set in a small town in the wake of a horrific school shooting, Nineteen Minutes features the return of two beloved Picoult characters – Jordan McAfee, the lawyer from The Pact and Salem Falls, who once again finds himself representing a boy who desperately needs someone on his side; and Patrick Ducharme, the intrepid detective introduced in Perfect Match, whose best witness is the daughter of the superior court judge assigned to the case. As the story unfolds, layer after layer is peeled back to reveal some hard-hitting questions about the nature of justice, the balance of power and what it means to be different. Nineteen Minutes is a riveting, thought-provoking tale with a jaw-dropping finale.
In this contemporary tale of love and friendship, Jodi Picoult brings to life a familiar world, and in a single terrifying moment awakens every parent’s worst fear: we think we know our children – but do we ever really know them at all? For eighteen years the Hartes and the Golds have lived next door to each other – they’ve grown so close it seems they have always been a part of each other’s lives. Parents and children alike have been best friends, so it’s no surprise that in high school Chris and Emily’s friendship blossoms into something more. They’ve been soul mates since they were born. So when midnight calls from the hospital come in, no one is ready for the appalling truth: Emily is dead at seventeen from a gunshot wound to the head. There’s a single unspent bullet in the gun that Chris took from his father’s cabinet – a bullet that Chris tells police he intended for himself. But a local detective has doubts about the suicide pact that Chris has described.
The Pact paints an indelible portrait of families in anguish, culminating in an astonishingly suspenseful courtroom drama as Chris finds himself on trial for murder.
For seventy years, Josef Weber has been hiding in plain sight. He is a pillar of his local community. He is also a murderer. When Josef decides to confess, it is to Sage Singer, a young woman who trusts him as her friend. What she hears shatters everything she thought she knew and believed. As Sage uncovers the truth from the darkest horrors of war, she must follow a twisting trail between terror and mercy, betrayal and forgiveness, love – and revenge.
At her controversial and compelling best, Jodi Picoult explores the moment when boundaries break down, and when the only step left to take is a leap of faith. As Mariah White struggles with depression her seven-year-old daughter Faith seeks solace in a new friend – a friend who may or may not be imaginary. Faith talks to her ‘Guard’ constantly and begins to recite passages from the Bible-a book she’s never read. After a succession of visits to psychiatrists, all of whom conclude Faith is not hallucinating, the unimaginable starts to seem possible: perhaps Faith may actually be seeing God. When Faith’s cachet is enhanced by reported miracle healings and alleged stigmata, she is touted as a prophet. Amidst the gathering storm of controversy, most disruptive of all is the arrival of two men: one a renowned television atheist who plans to debunk Faith’s claims and help boost his flagging ratings, and the other her divorced father whose fear for his daughter’s safety leads him to battle for custody. As Mariah finds herself fighting to keep her daughter, she has to push past her own insecurities and stand up for herself and her competence as a parent. Keeping Faith explores a family plagued by the media, the medical profession, and organised religion in a world where everyone has an opinion but no one knows the truth.
Dawn thinks she knows everything there is to know about dying. As a death doula she helps her clients fix what is left undone so they can peacefully make the final transition. But when her plane plummets from the sky and she thinks she is experiencing the last moments of her life, she is shocked to find that she isn’t thinking of her husband or teenage daughter – but of a road she strayed from 15 years earlier, when she turned her back on her PhD studies. Against all odds, Dawn survives, and the airline gives her a free ticket to wherever she needs to get to. in alternating chapters, we see possible choices: Land – returning to her husband, a quantum physicist who studies the possibilities of parallel universes, she is faced with a test to her marriage and a daughter who is struggling with self-image issues. And Water: returning to her studies and the archaeological site she worked on 15 years earlier, where the man she abandoned is about to make the discovery of a lifetime. But time may not be as straightforward as we think. As Dawn explores her possible futures, she is finding out what a well-lived life means, what we leave behind of ourselves when we leave the earth, and who she might have been…
Enjoy!
With over thirty novels published and becoming bestsellers, the American novelist, John Grisham is one of our favourite legal thriller storytellers.
Grisham began his career working in criminal defence and litigation and only wrote as a hobby each morning before heading to the office. It took him three years to write his first novel; A Time To Kill, and he has since written a book a year.
Many of John Grisham’s novels have been adapted into blockbuster movies and his fan base (us included) are eagerly awaiting the release of his latest book Sparring Partners (which you can pre-order here).
Here are six of our favourite Grisham stories.
He thought it was his dream job. It turned into his worst nightmare. When Mitch McDeere qualified third in his class at Harvard, offers poured in from every law firm in America. Bendini, Lambert and Locke were a small, well-respected firm, but their offer exceeded Mitch’s wildest expectations: a fantastic salary, a new home, and the keys to a brand new BMW. Except for the mysterious deaths of previous lawyers with the firm. And the FBI investigations. And the secret files. Mitch soon realises that he’s working for the Mafia’s law firm, and there’s no way out – because you don’t want this company’s severance package. To survive, he’ll have to play both sides against each other – and navigate a vast criminal conspiracy that goes higher than he ever imagined…
Two Supreme Court Justices are dead, their murders unsolved. But one woman might have found the answer. Darby Shaw is a brilliant New Orleans legal student with a sharp political mind. For her own amusement, she draws up a legal brief showing how the judges might have been murdered for political reasons, and shows it to her professor. He shows it to his friend, an FBI lawyer. Then the professor dies in a car bomb. And Darby realises that her brief, which pointed to a vast presidential conspiracy, might be right. Someone is intent on silencing Darby for good – somebody who will stop at nothing to preserve the secrets of the Pelican Brief…
A US State Senator is dead. Only Mark Sway knows where the body is hidden. And he’s eleven years old. The FBI want him to tell them where it is, regardless of the risk to the boy and his family. The killer wants to silence him permanently. Reggie Love has only been practising law for five years, but she agrees to represent Mark pro bono, knowing she’s his best hope for survival. Against the twin threats of the cold-hearted American state and the schemes of a cold-blooded killer, Reggie must fight the case of her life. Or it might be the last case of her life.
There are some cases you have to take. Adam Hill is a rookie lawyer at a top Chicago firm. The world is at his feet. So why does he volunteer to represent a KKK terrorist under threat of execution? And why is the defendant happy to put his life in a novice’s hands? The answer lies twenty years in the past, but there are darker, more shocking secrets to be uncovered…
The Rainmaker is a gripping courtroom thriller. Rudy Baylor is a newly qualified lawyer: he has one case, and one case alone, to save himself from his mounting debts. His case is against a giant insurance company which could have saved a young man’s life, but instead refused to pay the claim until it was too late. The settlement could be worth millions of dollars, but there is one problem: Rudy has never argued a case in court before, and he’s up against the most expensive lawyers that money can buy.
When justice is for sale, every jury has a price. In Biloxi, Mississippi, a landmark trial begins. There are hundreds of millions of dollars at stake and soon it swerves mysteriously off course. The jury is behaving strangely, and at least one juror is convinced he’s being watched. Soon they have to be sequestered. Then a tip from an anonymous young woman suggests she is able to predict the jurors’ increasingly odd behaviour. Is the jury somehow being manipulated, or even controlled? If so, by whom? And, more importantly, why?
Enjoy!
This week on the blog we’re spotlighting the thrilling work by John Grisham. Be sure to read Thursday’s blog where we share our top 6 Grisham books.
Happy Monday.
Tonight’s clever book cover is Subliminal. It appears as a minimal cover but has a clever little play with font. Click through to have a closer look.
Sometimes you come across an author who can do no wrong and every book of theirs you read seems to be more amazing than the last. We think Tolkein is one such author.
Which JRR Tolkien book is your favourite?
