SMSA (Sydney Mechanics’ School of Arts)
New Book Highlights
We hope you enjoy them!
BIOGRAPHY
| Carey, Gabrielle | Only happiness here |
| Macintyre, Ben | Agent Sonya |
| Morris, Heather | Stories of hope |
Agent Sonya / Ben MacIntyre
Macintyre recounts the life and career of Soviet intelligence officer Ursula Kuczynski (1907–2000) in this fascinating history. Born into a middle-class Jewish family in Germany, Kuczynski was an active communist by the time she was 17. In 1930, she married a young German architect and moved with him to Shanghai, where she was recruited by (and became the lover of) infamous Red Army intelligence agent Richard Sorge, who gave her the code name Sonya and made her a “trusted lieutenant” in his spy network. After further training in the Soviet Union and divorce from her husband, Kuczynski liaised with communist partisans in Manchuria, providing material assistance and sending regular radio messages to Moscow. She also managed operations in Poland and Switzerland before arriving in England in 1941, where she transmitted atomic secrets to the Soviet Union from Klaus Fuchs, a German physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project. Upon Fuchs’s capture, Kuczynski fled to East Germany, but soon grew disillusioned with Stalin’s paranoid brand of communism. After a 20-year career, she became one of the few Soviet agents allowed to leave the spy game alive. Macintyre’s richly detailed account, though a bit ponderous at times, shines a new light on two of WWII’s most notorious spy rings. Espionage fans will be thrilled. (Publishers Weekly, April 2020)
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GENERAL FICTION
| Alderton, Dolly | Ghosts |
| Archer, Jeffrey | Hidden in plain sight |
| Atkins, Lucy | Magpie Lane |
| Boyd, William | Trio |
| Chambers, Clare | Small pleasures |
| Child, Lee | The sentinel |
| DeLillo, Don | The silence |
| Doyle, Roddy | Love |
| Feldman, Ellen | Paris never leaves you |
| Grisham, John | A time for mercy |
| Ham, Rosalie | The dressmaker’s secret |
| Hislop, Victoria | One August night |
| Hoffman, Alice | Magic lessons |
| Johns, Rachael | Flying the nest |
| Jones, Gail | Our shadows |
| Laguna, Sofie | Infinite splendours |
| Lelic, Simon | The search party |
| McGuire, Ian | The abstainer |
| Norton, Graham | Home stretch |
| Robinson, Marilynne | Jack |
| Silvey, Craig | Honeybee |
| Unger, Lisa | Confessions on the 745 |
Hidden in Plain Sight / Jeffrey Archer
Jeffrey Archer’s latest offering is the sequel to Nothing Ventured. William Warwick graduated from London University in 1982 and decided to join the police force. In 1986, he is promoted to detective sergeant and transferred to an especially focused team within the Drug Squad. This team has been formed to expose and close down the operations in South London of a notorious drug dealer who is known as ‘The Viper’. Hidden in Plain Sight is the second book in a new series that Archer hopes will see William Warwick rise through the ranks to become Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. It’s not just a detective story; it’s a story about a detective. Consequently, his family, friends and colleagues are fully developed characters. ‘The Viper’ is eventually identified. It’s discovered he was awarded a place at the Sorbonne University where he graduated with honours. He attended a business school in Paris before joining an international company. He doubled the company’s profits but resigned suddenly, moving to London. William and his squad realise they are up against a man who could have chaired a major public company, been a cabinet minister or held a professorship at a prestigious university. Money – and lots of it – is important to ‘The Viper’ and the illegal drug trade is more profitable than the other three careers combined. Time has to be found by William and his fiancée, Beth Rainsford, a valued staff member of a London art gallery, to prepare for their wedding. They attend two rehearsals where Reverend Teasdale takes them carefully through the service and warns them to be ready for something to go wrong on the day; it usually does. And what a ‘something’ that turns out to be. Archer, a first-rate storyteller, has a relaxed style that’s very agreeable with short, sharp chapters that are engaging. (Good Reading Magazine, November 2020)
Small pleasures / Clare Chambers
In late 1950s London, Jean Swinney works for a local newspaper, writing women’s interest stories and household tips. She is almost 40 years old, single, and cares for her elderly mother, a woman housebound with afflictions real and imagined. Her life is empty and bleak. One day she publishes a different story; science has discovered that some organisms can reproduce without male input, and she is astonished when this prompts a letter to the editor from a woman who claims just that – she conceived and delivered a daughter without any contact with a man. Jean’s editor suggests she interview this woman about her outlandish claims, and so she visits Gretchen and her charming daughter – conceived apparently without any male involvement. Gretchen is sincere and believable and offers proof that she was hospitalised in a secure convent for chronic rheumatoid arthritis when she fell pregnant. She offers to have any medical tests required to prove this and wants no payment for her story. Gretchen is now married to Howard, a pleasant and caring man, and Jean is slowly and surely drawn into the charm of their lives; so different and colourful compared to her own. This is a charming and interesting novel of scientific and personal awakening – Gretchen and her daughter, Margaret, undergo many tests, but it is also about Jean being determined to use her journalistic skills to find out what did happen in that hospital ward 10 years ago. As the story progresses, she discovered that nothing is what it seems, and that love comes in many different forms. Her own relationship with her mother is explored, and her own personal griefs are aired. And this is where the reader realises that, at its core, this is a profoundly sad novel. (Good Reading Magazine, August 2020)
Magic lessons / Alice Hoffman
Hoffman’s striking latest entry in her Practical Magic series (after The Rules of Magic) turns to 1664 rural England for the origin story of Maria Owens, matriarch of the series’ clan of witches. Maria is discovered as an infant by Hannah Owens, a practitioner of the “Nameless Art” who raises Maria and teaches her natural remedies and witchcraft. As a girl, Maria has an innate sense of magic and emulates Hannah’s desire to help the scores of women who secretly come to her for help—mostly for problems with their love lives. After Maria is reclaimed at age 10 by her birth mother, Rebecca, another Nameless Art practitioner, Maria comes to understand—like other heroines in Hoffman’s “Magic” books—that love can be unexpectedly overpowering. Maria becomes ensnared in a complicated relationship and has a daughter out of wedlock. As Maria’s story takes her from England to Massachusetts and New York, Hoffman offers an eye-opening account of how single women were treated in the 17th century, particularly when their knowledge or intelligence was deemed threatening. While the musings on “enchantments and remedies” grow repetitive, Maria’s page-turning adventure is thoroughly enjoyable. Hoffman’s redemptive story of a fiercely independent woman adds an engrossing, worthwhile chapter to the series. (Publishers Weekly, October 2020)
Home Stretch / Graham Norton
Six young friends drive out to the beach the day before a wedding in the Irish community of Mullinmore. There is an accident. Three survive, including the driver; three are killed, including the bride and groom. Bill Lawlor is first on the scene. It is he who calls the emergency vehicles and the police. Sergeant Doyle of the Garda Siochána kneels beside two of the survivors, Connor Hayes and Martin Coulter, and asks who was in control of the vehicle. Connor squeezes his eyes shut, takes two deep breaths and says, ‘I was driving’. The lives of many families are shattered; the townsfolk are angry and grieving. It’s decided that 19-year-old Connor should move away for a while. A friend of the Hayes family has a relative who manages a construction company in Liverpool. Home Stretch follows this innocent abroad. The barrows of concrete blocks and the hods of cement aren’t as heavy as Connor feared. He enjoys being told what to do; likes being given a time and place to be. Then, a frightening altercation with a fellow worker forces him to flee. He moves to London. We next meet Connor approaching his 30th birthday. He’s well settled in London but is about to embark on an adventure that will take him to New York and a comfortable lifestyle. Later, in his mid-40s, he’s thinking of returning to Mullinmore. Graham Norton’s third novel is full of surprises. There are a confusing number of names and relatives in the first few chapters but the narrative soon settles down as we accompany Connor in his search for identity. Straight and gay characters interweave; shame and sadness give way to pride and contentment; and loneliness and longing are conquered. A thoughtful, accomplished saga of a community in crisis and the power of resilience. (Good Reading Magazine, October 2020)
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HISTORICAL FICTION
| Cooper, Tea | The cartographer’s secret |
| Jackson, Douglas | Hammer of Rome |
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MYSTERY
| Anderson, Lin | The innocent dead |
| Bowen, Rhys | The last Mrs. Summers |
| Bruns, Catherine | It cannoli be murder |
| Camilleri, Andrea | The safety net |
| Camilleri, Andrea | The Sicilian method |
| Dolan, Eva | Between two evils |
| Farrell, Matthew | What have you done |
| Fowler, Christopher | Oranges and lemons |
| Giordano, Mario | Auntie Poldi and the handsome Antonio |
| Glass, Seraphina Nova | Someone’s listening |
| Hammer, Chris | Trust |
| Isaac, Jane | The truth will out |
| Jackson, Lisa | You betrayed me |
| James, Peter | I follow you |
| Kane, Andrea | Dead in a week |
| Marston, Edward | Fear on the phantom special |
| Spain, Jo | After the fire |
| Spain, Jo | The boy who fell |
| Spain, Jo | The darkest place |
| Thomas, Sherry | Murder on Cold Street |
| Thomas, Sherry | The art of theft |
| Thorpe, Alexander | Death leaves the station |
| Todd, Charles | A lonely death |
| Turton, Stuart | The devil and the dark water |
| Tuti, Ilaria | Flowers over the inferno |
| Westerson, Jeri | Shadow of the Alchemist |
| Wood, Trevor | The man on the street |
Oranges and lemons / Christopher Fowler
In Fowler’s outstanding 18th Peculiar Crimes Unit mystery (after 2019’s The Lonely Hour), budget reductions have led to the disbanding of the PCU, a “specialized London police division with a remit to prevent or cause to cease any acts of public affright or violent disorder,” but not for long. The unit’s two senior detectives, Arthur Bryant and John May, are pressed back into service after the Speaker of the House of Commons, Michael Claremont, is nearly killed when, in an apparent accident, crates of oranges and lemons fell out of a parked van and toppled onto him. That this incident occurred near St. Clement Danes, a London church linked to those fruits in the old English nursery rhyme, leads Home Office higher-ups to fear that Claremont was targeted. Even as Bryant and May try to figure out how the so-called accident could have been planned, more assaults echoing the nursery rhyme occur, all fatal. Fowler again tests his leads with a bizarre series of crimes while devising a satisfying resolution. This long-running series remains as vital as ever. (Publisher’s Weekly, August 2020)
Someone’s listening / Seraphina Nova Glass
Psychologist Faith Finley, the heroine of Glass’s stellar debut, has a happy marriage, a thriving clinical psychology practice near Chicago, and a radio show based on her bestselling book, Starting Over: Life After Abuse. But Faith’s life starts to unravel after a car accident puts her in the hospital and her husband, Liam, goes missing. Then an underage patient of Faith’s accuses her of sexual misconduct, and Faith, formerly a media darling, is excoriated and condemned by the press. Without Liam to rely on, Faith reacts badly and turns to alcohol. As circumstances worsen, she fights back, determined to not only clear her name but also find Liam. Yet every step forward brings two back: the police seem intent on blaming Faith for the accident and have no leads on Liam’s whereabouts, then she finds an envelope with her name on it in her mailbox—inside is a scrap of paper torn from her book, which starts: “Secure your own home.” Intrigue and red herrings abound. Exceptionally well-drawn characters set this above the psychological thriller pack. Readers will eagerly await Glass’s next. (Publisher’s Weekly, July 2020)
The devil and the dark water / Stuart Turton
Stuart Turton’s first book The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle boasted an innovation and complexity that shows itself stronger than ever in his second book The Devil and the Dark Water, an eerie and engaging historical mystery full of intrigue and certain peril. It’s 1634 and the voyage to Amsterdam is set to sail. Onboard are sailors, musketeers, passengers, nobility and Samuel Pipps, the world’s greatest detective, who is imprisoned for a crime he may or may not have committed. His friend and bodyguard, Arent Hayes, must protect him while trying to prove his innocence, but this proves difficult when devilry emerges soon after embarking. With Pipps imprisoned, only Arent can solve the mystery, as strange symbols and seemingly supernatural occurrences threaten the lives of all aboard. Taking inspiration from Western Australia’s history of shipwrecks, Turton has created an epic seaworthy adventure that’s part supernatural and part historical fiction, packed with just about everything you could want in a 1600s high-sea mystery. From superstition and occult to heroes, villains and a Holmes/Watson detective duo – with a twist – Turton masterfully guides the reader through the layered, complex mystery with clarity and captivation. Stuart Turton’s aim for The Devil and the Dark Water was a big mystery: sweeping adventure with a dash of dread and plenty of heroism told through an epic journey. All I can say is that this definitely did feel like an epic. Turton’s wonderfully charismatic writing style is perfect for setting the scene of a mystery and capturing the intricate world-building, nuanced relationships and wealth of unique, vibrant and memorable characters. It’s obvious that each element of this story was crafted with care and intellect, and it was a privilege to read. The Devil and the Dark Water is another high-concept, intelligent and well imagined mystery from Stuart Turton that proves his talent for the unusual and remarkable. (Booktopia Reviews, October 2020)
Flowers over the inferno / Illaria Tuti
Set in Northern Italy, Tuti’s exhilarating debut and series launch introduces Supt. Teresa Battaglia, a tough, solitary woman in her 60s who has earned her place as the head of an all-male homicide team and is keeping her battle with declining health secret from her colleagues. When a middle-aged man’s naked body with its eyes gouged out is found in the densely wooded Dolomite Mountains near the Austrian border, Teresa takes charge of the investigation. An effigy made out of the victim’s bloodied clothing close to the body prompts Teresa to observe, “The effigy is a representation of the killer. He stood here contemplating his work, and wanted us to know…” Other victims follow who are left alive but mutilated. The kidnapping of a baby raises the stakes. Interspersed with the present-day action are horrific chapters set in an Austrian orphanage in 1978 that shed light on the killer’s psychology. Teresa, who must deal with casual and constant sexism in her position of authority, is an unforgettable character readers will want to see a lot more of. (Publishers Weekly, April 2020)
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NON FICTION
| Attenborough, David | A life on our planet | 333.72 ATTE |
| Bowden, Mark | The case of the vanishing blonde | 364.1523 BOWD |
| Dessaix, Robert | The time of our lives | 155.67 DESS |
| Dunn, Mark | The convict valley | 994.42 DUNN |
| Ovenden, Richard | Burning the books | 363.31 OVEN |
| Sisterson, Craig | Southern Cross crime | 823.087 SIST |
| Wilkerson, Isabel | Caste | 305.5122 WILK |
The Time of Our Lives / Robert Dessaix
Dessaix, one of Australia’s most esteemed writers for his stylish literary non-fiction as well as novels, short stories and a play, in this work meditates on his own older age. Known for his scalpel-like wit, he dissects personal and community attitudes to old age, chatting with friends and acquaintances around the globe to establish what it is that allows an individual to grow older well. He peruses the writings of great authors as he ponders old age, its loneliness, benefits, how it affects sex and love, and an individual’s important inner life. There is a deeply emotional thread running through the whole book. His partner’s mother, Rita, is lying in a nursing home, nearing the end of her life. It is not a depressing book, but beautifully written, often very funny and candid as he observes how he and his friends are living their older years. He gives a wry description of the tense self-consciousness he used to feel years ago when he was a regular at a gym. Without exception, he found that the runners going nowhere on treadmills, those swimming laps, and those lifting weights, all looked anxious. What were they fighting against? ‘Just death’, said his elderly friend Sarah, holidaying with him in Java, as they watched a group of other hotel guests join in a wellness dance class. Dessaix ponders comments his friends have made, including that he has ‘never grown up’. And yet he does not consider that he is a child, even though he admits to enjoying ‘playing’, something most people put behind them as they settle into the rigour of adulthood. A friend proclaims that once she entered her 70s she stopped worrying any more about missing out on anything. If she didn’t want to read a book people were enthusing about, or didn’t want to go to a play, she said so. In her mind, it was a time when she found it liberating to not have to put up with bullshit. All at once, he claims, time looks short and is largely given over to maintenance, such as knee replacements, blood tests, visits to the dentist and the podiatrist. This is a thoughtful, entertaining meditation on the joys and pitfalls of getting older. While it may not be the perfect ‘How-to Manual,’ it certainly has a place on ageing readers’ bookshelves. (Good Reading Magazine, October 2020)
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SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY
| Buettner, Robert | Orphan’s triumph |
| Taylor, Jodi | Hard time |
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New additions to eBooks at SMSA
EBOOKS
| General novels | Archer, Jeffrey | Hidden in plain sight |
| General novels | Baldacci, David | Daylight |
| General novels | Disher, Garry | Consolation |
| General novels | Gerlis, Alex | Sea of spies |
| General novels | Ham, Rosalie | The dressmaker’s secret |
| General novels | Leilani, Raven | Luster |
| General novels | Marks, Nadia | One Summer in Crete |
| General novels | Moss, Sarah | Summerwater |
| Historical novels | Ashman, K. M. | The fall of Brittania |
| Mystery | Bettany, Jane | In cold blood |
| Mystery | Brown, Vivien | Be careful what you wish for |
| Mystery | Campbell, Michele | The wife who knew too much |
| Mystery | Forbes, Elena | A bad bad thing |
| Mystery | Turton, Stuart | The devil and the dark water |
| Non fiction | Hocking, Jenny | The Palace letters |
The wife who knew too much / Michelle Campell
Tabitha Girard, the heroine of this fast-moving romantic thriller from Campbell (A Stranger on the Beach), gets a second chance at love when fate brings gorgeous Connor Ford back to their New Hampshire hometown after a summer fling 13 years earlier when they were teens. Their lives have since taken opposite trajectories: Tabitha’s barely making ends meet waitressing after divorcing her abusive husband, while Connor has married a much older widow, heiress Nina Levitt. And yet, he manages to persuade her they’re destined to be together, if only he can somehow wriggle out of his marriage without triggering the draconian prenup. Things quickly turn dicey as Nina smells a murder plot, Connor blows alternately hot and cold, and even a trusting soul like Tabitha starts to suspect that Mr. Wonderful just might be setting her up. Campbell shifts the action among dazzling locations ranging from Nina’s oceanfront Southampton estate to Dubai, but without significantly deepening the characters. For those craving sudsy escapism, this page-turner is poolside ready. (Publishers Weekly, April 2020)
Luster / Raven Leilani
Leilani debuts with a moving examination of a young black woman’s economic desperation and her relationship to violence. Edie is a 20-something low-level employee at a New York city publishing house. She paints on the side, but not often or well enough to comfortably call herself an artist, and she’s infatuated with Eric Walker, a married white man twice her age she met online, with whom she explores his thirst for aggressive domination (“I think I’d like to hit you,” he says; she lets him) and is caught breaking the rules of Eric’s open marriage (no going to his house). After Edie loses her job, Eric’s wife, Rebecca, invites her to stay with them in New Jersey. The arrangement functions partly to vex Eric and partly to support Akila, the Walkers’ adopted black daughter. An inevitable betrayal cracks the household’s veneer of civility, and suddenly Edie must make new arrangements. She does so in earnest, but not before a horrific scene in which Edie and Akila are victims of police brutality. Edie’s ability to navigate the complicated relationships with the Walkers exhibits Leilani’s mastery of nuance, and the narration is perceptive, funny, and emotionally charged. Edie’s frank, self-possessed voice will keep a firm grip on readers all the way to the bitter end. (Publishers Weekly, June 2020)
Summerwater / Sarah Moss
Moss’s taut latest (after Ghost Wall) turns a rain-drenched park in the Scottish Highlands into a site of tension and unease for a group of vacationing strangers. The book opens with a middle-aged woman going for a run in the early morning, her family still asleep in their rented cabin. As she follows the trail past an illegally pitched tent, she considers the trope of a dangerous man in the woods. From here on out, each chapter introduces a new point of view among the mix of English tourists and Scots who watch and pass judgment upon one another without interacting, and situations such as a teenage boy’s ill-advised kayak trip across a rough loch and a teenage girl’s sneaking out at night keep the reader wondering if this is the kind of book where the worst thing will happen. As the noises of late-night revelry from one cabin draw attention from all others, many of whom describe its dwellers wrongly as “foreign” or “those Romanians,” the suspense builds. Meanwhile, a series of lyrical interludes describing the park’s elements of nature and eons of evolution provide delightfully ironic contrasts to the small human dramas. Readers unafraid of a bit of rain will relish this. (Publisher’s Weekly, November 2020)
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AUDIOBOOKS
| Biography | Harvey, Brian | Sea trial |
| General novels | DeLuca, Jen | Well played |
| General novels | James, Daisy | Summer dreams at Villa Limoncello |
| General novels | Persaud, Ingrid | Love after love |
| General novels | Smith, Sarah | Simmer down |
| General novels | Stuart, Douglas | Shuggie Bain |
| General novels | Tevis, Walter | The Queen’s gambit |
| General novels | Williams, T. M. | Dreaming of Tuscany |
| Mystery | Blackmoore, Stephanie | Veiled in death |
| Mystery | Crombie, Deborah | Where memories lie |
| Mystery | Lambert, Ann | The birds that stay |
| Mystery | Morrow, Bradford | The diviner’s tale |
| Mystery | Swann, Christopher | Never turn back |
| Mystery | Walters, Alex | Their final act |
| Mystery | Whishaw, Iona | A killer in King’s Cove |
Veiled in death / Stephanie Blackmoore
At the beginning of this audiobook, when Mallory Shepard discovers a lace veil purported to have been made by Betsy Ross, it sets off a chain of violence in Port Quincy, Pennsylvania, that culminates in murder. Mallory, a professional wedding planner, finds herself in the middle of the investigation, which threatens to get in the way of planning her own wedding. It is hard to imagine anyone other than narrator Christa Lewis voicing the 30-something former lawyer who delivers the first-person narration of the story. Using pacing to build and ease tension, Lewis keeps listeners hooked. She contributes significantly to the overall fun of the listening experience. (Audiofile 2020)
Where memories lie / Deborah Crombie
When a diamond brooch stolen decades ago turns up for sale at an upscale London auction house, the brooch’s owner, Dr. Erika Rosenthal, a retired academic who escaped Nazi Germany with her philosopher husband, David, during WWII, turns for help to her friend Insp. Gemma James in Crombie’s lively 12th mystery to feature Gemma and Scotland Yard’s Duncan Kincaid (after 2007’s Water Like a Stone). The suspicious hit-and-run death of Kristin Cahill, a young clerk involved in the brooch’s sale, is but the first in a series of fatalities to befall people connected to the auction. Crombie raises the suspense by alternating the contemporary story, which includes news of Gemma’s mother’s battle against cancer, with flashbacks to the investigation of David’s unsolved murder in 1952 while he was working on an exposé about Nazi sympathizers. With its echoes of Elizabeth George and even Danielle Steel, this entry will appeal as much to newcomers as to series fans. (Publishers Weekly, June 2008)
Well played / Jen DeLuca
DeLuca follows Well Met with this cute but shallow rom-com that sets a Cyrano de Bergerac–style plot against the backdrop of a Renaissance fair. At 22, Stacey Lindholm was on the road to a career in fashion merchandising in New York City when her mother fell ill and Stacey moved back to small-town Willow Creek, Md., to help out. Now almost 27, she feels her life stagnating in a routine broken only by the yearly Renaissance fair she and her friends help organize. For the past two years, Stacey’s scratched her sexual itch with one of the festival musicians, Dex MacLean, in a no-strings-attached arrangement that only lasts the few days he and his cousin are in town for the fair. Then one drunken night, she sends him a message that kicks off a yearlong exchange of flirtatious texts and emails that gives her insight not only into him, but into herself. With this year’s festival upon them, the pair are due to meet in person once more—but it turns out that someone else has been writing Dex’s sweet nothings. The laughs are frequent and the plot charms, but Stacey’s myopic self-pity detracts from the story. Still, the fresh setting and unusual twist make this well worth the time of any rom-com fan. (Publishers Weekly, July 2020)
The diviner’s tale / Bradford Morrow
Cassandra Campbell portrays Cassandra Brooks with just the right touch of wonder and edginess. As a single mother of twins with a gift for divining water sources for local landowners, Cassandra has her quiet world upturned when she begins to have inexplicable, horrifying visions that appear to be tied to a missing girl. Campbell voices the many secondary characters with the slightest changes of inflection, tone, and rhythm–from Cassandra’s sinister childhood acquaintance to her lively, sarcastic sons. Although listeners may feel some impatience with the protagonist’s choices as she unravels the mystery of her divinations, Campbell’s gravelly, sage-like reading keeps the story moving forward. (Audiofile 2011)
Love after love / Ingris Persaud
Persaud’s auspicious debut traces the gut-wrenching lives of a makeshift Trinidadian family over the past two decades. After Betty Ramdin’s abusive, alcoholic husband, Sunil, dies, Betty invites a reserved math teacher, Mr. Chetan, to rent a room in her house. Chetan, who knows Betty as an administrator at his school, accepts the offer and forms a bond with Betty’s five-year-old son, Solo. The three quickly form a de facto family, and Chetan shines in the kitchen (“She hand nowhere near sweet like mine,” he says). Cracks emerge later, as Betty’s attempt to initiate sex with Chetan falters when he reveals he is gay, and Solo, now a teenager, overhears Betty confess to Chetan that she caused Sunil’s death by pushing him down a set of stairs. After Solo graduates high school, he illegally immigrates to New York City and cuts off all contact with his mother. Though Solo’s uncle helps him find work, he isolates himself socially and descends into self-harm. Meanwhile, Chetan, who came of age when sodomy was illegal in Trinidad, navigates clandestine relationships with a controlling police officer and an old flame, now married. After Solo hears tragic news from Trinidad, he returns for a bittersweet reunion. In chapters alternately narrated by Solo, Betty, and Chetan in vibrant Trinidadian dialect, Persaud expertly maps the trio’s emotional development and builds a complicated yet seamless plot full of indelible insights and poignant moments. This affecting family saga shines brightly. (Publishers Weekly, January 2020)
Simmer down / Sarah Smith
Feuding food truck owners make a sizzling connection in this enthralling romance from Smith (Faker). Nikki DiMarco spent the last year and a half learning to run her family’s Maui food truck, Tiva’s Filipina Kusina, to fulfill a promise she made to her late father. Then a competitive new business, Hungry Chaps, breaks food truck etiquette by parking right next to Nikki’s spot and luring away her customers. The livid Nikki enters into a petty battle with Hungry Chaps’ handsome owner, Callum James—and their daily drama “becomes a top-selling menu item,” as viral videos of their shouting matches draw tourists from across the island. Nikki and Callum agree to settle their dispute once and for all by competing in the Maui Food Festival: whoever scores higher keeps the spot. But underpinning the rivalry is a burning chemistry neither can deny, leading to a casual affair that deepens into something more—but their connection could get them disqualified from the food festival if the organizers think they’re collaborating. Nikki desperately needs the prize money to keep her business afloat and continue her father’s legacy, forcing her to make a difficult choice. While the enemies-to-lovers romance is irresistible, it’s the sincere, well-developed characters and heart-tugging family dynamics that make this fulfilling love story stand out. This is a winner. (Publishers Weekly, July 2020)
Shuggie Bain / Douglas Stuart
Stuart’s harrowing debut follows a family ravaged by addiction in Glasgow during the Thatcher era. Agnes Bain yearns to move Shug, her taxi-driving, “selfish animal” of a second husband, and three children out of the tiny apartment they share with her parents in Glasgow in 1981. Shug secures them a council flat, but when they arrive he leaves them in a flurry of violence, blaming Agnes’s drinking. While Agnes’s daughter, Catherine, escapes the misery of Agnes’s alcoholism and the family’s extreme poverty by finding a husband, and her older son, Leek, retreats into making art, Hugh (nicknamed “Shuggie” after his absent father) assumes responsibility for Agnes’s safety and happiness. As the years pass, Shuggie suffers cruelty over his effeminate personality and endures sexual violence. He eventually accepts that he’s gay; meanwhile, Agnes finds some hope by entering A.A., landing a job, and dating another taxi driver named Eugene, but she later backslides. As Shuggie and his mother attempt to improve their lives, they are bound not just by one another but also to the U.K.’s dire economic conditions. While the languid pace could have benefited from condensing, there are flashes of deep feeling that cut through the darkness. This bleak if overlong book will resonate with readers. (Publishers Weekly, November 2019)
Never turn back / Christopher Swann
Private school English teacher Ethan Faulkner, the narrator of this unsettling thriller set in Atlanta from Swann (Shadow of the Lions), returns home one morning after spending the night with a colleague, Marisa Devereaux, to find his troubled sister, Susannah, awaiting him. Susannah often disappears from Ethan’s life for months at a time, and they share the trauma of having witnessed their parents’ shooting murder when he was 13 and she was 10. Ethan made a promise to his dying father to look after Susannah, but his ambivalent feelings about her have meant he hasn’t done as good a job as he might. His more immediate concern is Marisa, who becomes obsessed with him and infiltrates his life, befriending Susannah. Susannah’s subsequent kidnapping raises the stakes, as does a murder, in which Ethan becomes a suspect. Haunted by the unknown gunmen who killed his parents, Ethan discovers a link between them and the new murder. Faulkner has a gift for language (“The twin memories of my parents are like a pair of blades scissoring my heart”), and smoothly quotes the likes of Robert Frost and Shakespeare. Fans of literary crime fiction will want to take a look at this thoughtful outing. (Publishers Weekly, August 2020)
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New Books – November 2020
The new books for November 2020 are now available to borrow, with new ebooks and audiobooks.
We hope you enjoy them!
- New books may be borrowed for a period of two weeks only and may not be renewed.
- Books remain listed as “New Books” for two months.
Search the Library Catalogue
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