Hello book lovers! How are you all? I hope you are managing to squeeze in some reading during lockdown?
The vote for Julyâs read is on. So many wonderful choices to choose from it was hard to whittle it down to five! I hope you like the ones I have chosen.
To vote on this monthâs choice head on over to the Facebook page and cast your photo. Voting closes 12 midnight Friday 3rd July and we will announce the choice the next day!
See you there! Much love Amanda xx
The Phonebox at the Edge of the World – Laura Imai Messina
We all have something to tell those we have lost . . .
When Yui loses her mother and daughter in the tsunami, she wonders how she will ever carry on. Yet, in the face of this unthinkable loss, life must somehow continue. Then one day she hears about a man who has an old disused telephone box in his garden. There, those who have lost loved ones find the strength to speak to them and begin to come to terms with their grief. As news of the phone box spreads, people will travel to it from miles around. Soon Yui will make her own pilgrimage to the phone box, too. But once there she cannot bring herself to speak into the receiver. Then she finds Takeshi, a bereaved husband whose own daughter has stopped talking in the wake of their loss.
What happens next will warm your heart, even when it feels as though it is breaking. For when you’ve lost everything – what can you find?
Sorry for the Dead – Nicola Upson
In the summer of 1915, the sudden death of a young girl brings grief and notoriety to Charleston Farmhouse on the Sussex Downs.
Years later, Josephine Tey returns to the same house–now much changed–and remembers the two women with whom she once lodged as a young teacher during the Great War. As past and present collide, with murders decades apart, Josephine is forced to face the possibility that the scandal which threatened to destroy those women’s lives hid a much darker secret.
Queenie – Candice Carty-Williams
Queenie Jenkins is a 25-year-old Jamaican British woman living in London, straddling two cultures and slotting neatly into neither. She works at a national newspaper, where sheâs constantly forced to compare herself to her white middle class peers. After a messy break up from her long-term white boyfriend, Queenie seeks comfort in all the wrong placesâ¦including several hazardous men who do a good job of occupying brain space and a bad job of affirming self-worth.
As Queenie careens from one questionable decision to another, she finds herself wondering, âWhat are you doing? Why are you doing it? Who do you want to be?ââall of the questions todayâs woman must face in a world trying to answer them for her.
With âfresh and honestâ (Jojo Moyes) prose, Queenie is a remarkably relatable exploration of what it means to be a modern woman searching for meaning in todayâs world
The Burning Land – George Alagiah
‘It was never meant to be like this. Sabotage, yes. Propaganda, yes. All of that and more – but not this. Not murder.’
South Africa has become a powder keg. Its precious land is being sold off to the highest bidders while the country’s corrupt elite pocket the profits. As the dreams and hopes of its people are threatened, frustration turns to violence. With the shocking murder of one of the country’s bright young hopes, the fuse is well and truly lit.
Conflict mediator Lindi and her childhood friend Kagiso find themselves in the heart of the chaos, fighting to save themselves and their country as events are set in motion that no one – least of all they – can control.
Where the Forest Meets the Stars - Glendy Vanderah
After the loss of her mother and her own battle with breast cancer, Joanna Teale returns to her graduate research on nesting birds in rural Illinois, determined to prove that her recent hardships have not broken her. She throws herself into her work from dusk to dawn, until her solitary routine is disrupted by the appearance of a mysterious child who shows up at her cabin barefoot and covered in bruises.
The girl calls herself Ursa, and she claims to have been sent from the stars to witness five miracles. With concerns about the childâs home situation, Jo reluctantly agrees to let her stayâjust until she learns more about Ursaâs past.
Jo enlists the help of her reclusive neighbor, Gabriel Nash, to solve the mystery of the charming child. But the more time they spend together, the more questions they have. How does a young girl not only read but understand Shakespeare? Why do good things keep happening in her presence? And why arenât Jo and Gabe checking the missing childrenâs website anymore?
Though the three have formed an incredible bond, they know difficult choices must be made. As the summer nears an end and Ursa gets closer to her fifth miracle, her dangerous past closes in. When it finally catches up to them, all of their painful secrets will be forced into the open, and their fates will be left to the stars.
