December 10th, 2009
Author: Charlotte Bronte
Charlotte Bronte’s first published novel, Jane Eyre was immediately recognised as a work of genius when it appeared in 1847. Orphaned into the household of her Aunt Reed at Gateshead, subject to the cruel regime at Lowood charity school, Jane Eyre nonetheless emerges unbroken in spirit and integrity. How she takes up the post of governess at Thornfield Hall, meets and loves Mr Rochester and discovers the impediment to their lawful marriage are elements in a story that transcends melodrama to portray a woman’s passionate search for a wider and richer life than that traditionally accorded to her sex in Victorian society.
October 28th, 2009
Author: Jackie French
This is the story of a Scottish wolfhound called Snarf and his owner, Hekja, whose simple but happy lives change unrecognisably when their village is raided by Vikings.As a puppy, Snarf is fortuitously rescued by a young girl called Hekja when he is badly injured. Both are then captured by raiding Vikings and transported to ‘Vinland’ with Freydis Ericsdottir, half-sister of Leif Ericson (who is usually credited with ‘discovering’ America. Both Freydis and Leif are the children of Eric the Red, who founded the Greenland colony.)This page-turning story is set against an historical backdrop and the book is both fascinating and historically informative
September 16th, 2009
Author: LLoyd Jones
In a novel that is at once intense, beautiful, and fablelike, Lloyd Jones weaves a transcendent story that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit and the power of narrative to transform our lives. On a copper-rich tropical island shattered by war, where the teachers have fled with most everyone else, only one white man chooses to stay behind: the eccentric Mr. Watts, object of much curiosi …
August 5th, 2009
Author: Anthony Bourke and John Rendall
In 2008, YouTube.com featured an extraordinary film clip that soon became an internet phenomenon. It showed the emotional reunion of two young men and their pet lion, Christian, after they had left him in Africa with Born Free’s George Adamson, who would introduce him into his rightful home in the wild.
June 24th, 2009
Author: Shaffer and Barrows
A moving tale of post-war friendship, love and books, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Societyis a captivating and completely irresistible novel of enormous depth and heart.It’s 1946, and as Juliet Ashton sits at her desk in her Chelsea flat, she is stumped. A writer of witty newspaper columns during the war, she can’t think of what to write next. Out of the blue, she receives a letter from one Dawsey Adams of Guernsey – by chance he’s acquired a book Juliet once owned – and, emboldened by their mutual love of books, they begin a correspondence
May 21st, 2009
Author: Lisa Genova
Neuroscientist and debut novelist Genova mines years of experience in her field to craft a realistic portrait of early onset Alzheimer’s disease. Alice Howland has a career not unlike Genova’s—she’s an esteemed psychology professor at Harvard, living a comfortable life in Cambridge with her husband, John, arguing about the usual (making quality time together, their daughter’s move to L.A.) when the first symptoms of Alzheimer’s begin to emerge.
April 15th, 2009
Author: Phillipa Gregory
Two sisters competing for the greatest prize: the love of a king.A rich and compelling novel of love, sex, ambition, and intrigue,The Other Boleyn Girlintroduces a woman of extraordinary determination and desire who lived at the heart of the most exciting and glamorous court in Europe and survived by following her heart.When Mary Boleyn comes to court as an innocent girl of fourteen, she catches the eye of Henry VIII. Dazzled, Mary falls in love with both her golden prince and her growing role as unofficial queen. However, she soon realizes just how much she is a pawn in her family’s ambitious plots as the king’s interest begins to wane and she is forced to step aside for her best friend and rival: her sister, Anne. Then Mary knows that she must defy her family and her king and take her fate into her own hands.
February 5th, 2009
Author: Lionel Shriver
…. Fearing that her own shortcomings may have shaped what her son has become, she confesses to a deep, long-standing ambivalence about both motherhood in general and Kevin in particular. How much is her fault? Lionel Shriver tells a compelling, absorbing, and resonant story while framing these horrifying…
February 1st, 2009
Author: Susan Duncan
Following a series of personal tragedies, former editor of Woman’s Day and The Australian Women’s Weekly Susan Duncan gives a searingly honest account of throwing in her job and making a fresh start to life.
