‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ by Harper Lee (hardback $49.95)
This stunning edition, released to celebrate the 50th Anniversary, is a ‘must have’ for all those who have loved this timeless classic.
Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit em, but remember its a sin to kill a mockingbird.Atticus Finch gives this advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of this classic novel a black man charged with attacking a white girl. Through the eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Lee explores the issues of race and class in the Deep South of the 1930s with compassion and humour. She also creates one of the great heroes of literature in their father, whose lone struggle for justice pricks the conscience of a town steeped in prejudice and hypocrisy.
MAJOR PETTIGREW’S LAST STAND by Helen Simonson
Honour, duty and a properly brewed cup of tea … get ready for the Major to steal your heart in the sweet, moving and uplifting story of a highly unlikely relationship between a very proper English gentleman and a widowed Pakistani shopkeeper. RRP $32.99
Heart warming and humorous… If you liked ‘The ‘Guernsey Literary Potato Peel Society’ you are sure to enjoy this one. Wenche
BOMBPROOF, by Michael Robotham
Sami Macbeth is not a master criminal. He’s not even a minor one. He’s not a jewel thief. He’s not a safe-cracker. He’s not an expert in explosives. Sami plays guitar and wants to be a rock god but keeps getting side-tracked by unforeseen circumstances. Fifty-four hours ago Sami was released from prison. Thirty-six hours ago he slept with the woman of his dreams at the Savoy. An hour ago his train blew up. Now he’s carrying a rucksack through London’s West End and has turned himself into the most wanted terrorist in the country. Sami Macbeth – the man with the uncanny ability to turn a desperate situation into a hopeless one. RRP $19.99
If you stayed up all night reading Robotham’s ‘Shatter’, you are not likely to get much sleep with this one either….
A DARK MATTER, by Peter Straub
The charismatic and cunning Spenser Mallon is a campus guru in the 1960s, demanding both devotion and sexual favours of his young acolytes. After he invites his most fervent followers to attend a secret ritual in a local meadow, the only thing that remains is a gruesomely dismembered body and the shattered souls of all who were present. Years later, one man attempts to understand what happened to his wife and to his friends by writing a book about this horrible night and it’s through this process that they begin to examine the unspeakable events that have bound them in ways they cannot fathom, but that have haunted every one of them through their lives. As each of the old friends tries to come to grips with the darkness of the past, they find themselves face-to-face with the evil triggered so many years earlier. RRP $32.99
THE POSTMISTRESS, by Sarah Blake
It is 1940 and half the world is living through the horror of the Second World War, but America still believes it is safe from the bloodshed. In Franklin, a small town on Cape Cod, Iris James is the postmistress and she firmly believes that her job is to keep and deliver people’s secrets, to pass along the news of love and sorrow that letters carry. But one day she does the unthinkable: she doesn’t deliver a letter and instead slips it into her pocket…
The Postmistress is an unforgettable tale of the secrets we must bear or bury. It is about what happens to love during wartime, when those we cherish leave. And how every story of love or war is about looking left when we should have been looking right. RRP $32.99
SOLAR, by Ian McEwan
An engrossing, satirical and very funny new novel about climate change
Description of book
Michael Beard is a Nobel prize-winning physicist whose best work is behind him. Trading on his reputation, he speaks for enormous fees, lends his name to the letterheads of renowned scientific institutions and half-heartedly heads a government-backed initiative tackling global warming. A compulsive womaniser, Beard finds his fifth marriage floundering. But this time it is different: she is having the affair, and he is still in love with her.
When Beard’s professional and personal worlds collide in a freak accident, an opportunity presents itself for Beard to extricate himself from his marital mess, reinvigorate his career and save the world from environmental disaster.
Ranging from the Arctic Circle to the deserts of New Mexico, SOLAR is a serious and darkly satirical novel, showing human frailty struggling with the most pressing and complex problem of our time. A story of one man’s greed and self-deception, it is a profound and stylish new work from one of the world’s great writers.
RRP $32.99
MR ROSENBLUM’S LIST by Natasha Solomons
Jack Rosenblum is five foot three and a half inches of sheer tenacity. Through study and application he intends to become a Very English Gentleman. Jack is compiling a list, a comprehensive guide to the manners, customs and habits of his new home. And he never speaks German, apart from the occasional curse. Assimilation, he’s convinced, is the secret of success. But the war’s been over for eight years and despite his best efforts, his bid to blend in remains fraught with unexpected hurdles. Including his wife. Sadie finds his obsession baffling. She doesn’t want to forget who they are or where they come from. She’d rather bake cakes to remember the people they left behind than worry about how to play bridge. But Jack is convinced they can find a place to call home. In a final attempt to complete his list, he leads a reluctant Sadie into the English countryside. Here, in a land of woolly pigs, bluebells and jitterbug cider, they embark on an impossible task…
RRP $29.99
