Before the Earthquake by Maria Allen
Tindal Street Press
9781906994044
At the turn of the last century, the Salierno family make a tough living as farmers in mountainous terrain in southern Italy. Then an earthquake devastates their village, destroying homes and taking lives. Concetta, their fifteen-year-old daughter, is seriously injured and, on waking from a coma,......
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The Hungry Ghosts by Anne Berry
Blue Door
9780007303380
Raped, then murdered, in Japanese-occupied Hong Kong, 1942, Lin Shui’s ‘Hungry Ghost’ clings tenaciously to life. Just in time she finds a host off whom to feed, twelve-year-old Alice Stafford, troubled daughter of a leading government figure. The parasitic ghost follows her......
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Rupture by Simon Lelic
Picador
9780330511636
North London; in the depths of a sweltering summer, teacher Samuel Szajkowski walks into a school assembly and opens fire. Three pupils and a teacher are shot dead before Samuel turns the gun on himself. As the only woman in her office at CID, Detective Inspector Lucia May is finding it difficult......
The Shadow of a Smile by Kachi A. Ozumba
Alma Books
9781846880971
Torn from his father and a loving sister, the young student Zuba is imprisoned for a crime he has not even thought about committing. His misfortune: to live in a world where corruption is rife and honest, law-abiding people are crushed by the wheels of a blind, unscrupulous bureaucracy. What......
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Talk of the Town by Jacob Polley
Picador
9780330509930
1986, the last day of the summer holidays, and Christopher Hearsey is wondering why his best mate Arthur has suddenly disappeared, and whether lippy Gill Ross a few doors down might know anything about it. The great border city of Carlisle is buzzing with rumours following an act of terrible......
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The Breaking of Eggs by Jim Powell
Weidenfeld & Nicolson
9780297859697
Meet Feliks Zhukowski, a Pole in Paris and a hangover from another age. Decades back, he chose politics over people and ideas over love. Feliks’ life’s work is a travel guide to the old Eastern bloc. His personal life is a series of failures. Unfortunately for him, it’s 1991,......
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Designs for a Happy Home by Matthew Reynolds
Bloomsbury
9780747599067
Can interior design make you a better person? Alizia Tamé™ believes it can. Everyone has heard of her creations: now you can experience the life that lies behind them. Meet her husband Jem – the postmodern potter – and in many ways her inspiration. Share the thrills and......
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Beauty by Raphael Selbourne
Tindal Street Press
9780955647673
Beauty is a twenty-year-old Bangladeshi, back in England having fled an abusive arranged marriage. Placed on the jobseekers’ treadmill and under continuing domestic pressure, she runs away.
Her fractious encounters with officialdom, fellow claimants and passers-by in the city......
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The Girl with Glass Feet by Ali Shaw
Atlantic Books
9781843549185
A mysterious and frightening metamorphosis has befallen Ida MacLaird – she is slowly turning into glass, from the feet up. She returns to St Hauda’s Land, where she believes the glass first took hold, in the vain hope of finding a cure. Midas Crook is a young loner who has lived there......
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The Upright Piano Player by David Abbott
MacLehose Press, Quercus
9781906694845
Henry Cage seemed to have it all: a successful business career, considerable wealth, and a reputation for being a just and principled man. But public virtues can conceal private failings and, as he faces retirement, his well-ordered life begins to unravel.
On the eve of the new......
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