The very best blend of literary fiction that includes romance, history and mystery - all chosen by book clubs.
The Secret Mother
Victoria Delderfield
Mai Ling is chasing the Chinese dream. She’s escaping to the city, seeking a new life, running away from the old customs of arranged marriage and domestic drudgery.The Secret Mother puts a face to the label ‘Made in China’. It tells the bittersweet story of a girl – like millions of others – willing to risk everything. The Secret Mother uncovers the life of Mai Ling, a sixteen year old who follows the Chinese dream and pays the highest price.
The Partridge and the Pelican
Rachel Crowther
Two girls find a baby abandoned in a phone box, and the event casts a long shadow as their lives unfold through careers, marriages and motherhood.
Tatler: ‘A twist in the tail.’
The Water and the Wine
Tamar Hodes
The novel follows the early lives ofLeonard Cohen, Marianne, and other writers and artists who took up residence on Hydra, Greece, in the 1960s.
It is a hedonistic time of love, sex and new ideas. However, as Greece is taken over by a military junta, the artistic idyll is threatened.
The China Bird
Bryony Doran
An art student with a liking for Egon Schiele sees beauty in Edward’s twisted spine, and begs him to sit for her. This beauty and beasttale of secrecy, love and understanding explores our perceptions of beauty and lust.
"A delicate and unusual novel that explores the precariousness of relationships with precision and insight." Livi Michael, author
The Sand Eggs
Bryony Doran
A young woman is thrust into a foreign culture, a sister excluded by widowhood, an older woman returns to a once familiar land.
Short stories that carry a note of seductive isolation.
"Rare glimpses of stifling family life." Berlie Doherty, author.