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A killer harvest : a thriller
by Paul Cleave
A blind teen receives a corneal donation that restores his sight but gives him an eerie capacity to experience the memories of their previous owner, his homicide detective father.
Reader rating: 9/10
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Family likeness
by Caitlin Davies
In a small town in the 1950s, a bewildered little girl is growing up. Ostracised because of her colour, she tries her best to fit in, but nobody wants anything to do with her. Meanwhile, a nanny climbs the steps of a smart London address. She's convinced that her connection to the family behind the door is more than professional. And on the walls of an English stately home, amongst the family portraits, hangs an eighteenth-century oil painting of a mysterious black woman in a silk gown. In ways both poignant and unexpected, the three lives are intertwined in a heartbreaking story of prejudice and motherless children, of chances missed, of wartime secrets and the search for belonging.
Reader rating: 10/10
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Life in the garden
by Penelope Lively
A philosophical and poetic memoir by the award-winning author of Moon Tiger explores themes of time and memory as well as the lives of influential writers and her own enduring passions for art, literature and gardening.
Reader rating: 8/10
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The weekend
by Charlotte Wood
Gathering to help renovate a late friend's memory-filled home, Jude, Wendy and Adele ponder a collective lifetime of loves, grievances, disappointments and successes over the course of a transformative weekend.
Reader rating: 10/10
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Warlight
by Michael Ondaatje
After growing up in the care of a group of mysterious protectors who served during World War II, a young man endeavors to piece together the truth about his unconventional upbringing.
Reader rating: 10/10
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The four winds
by Kristin Hannah
A Depression-era woman confronts a wrenching choice between fighting for the Dust Bowl-ravaged land she loves in Texas or pursuing an uncertain future in California.
Reader rating: 8/10
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Girl A
by Abigail Dean
Bequeathed the house from where she escaped her brutally abusive parents, eldest child Lex Gracie navigates complicated family loyalties in her efforts to renovate the property into a safe place for her traumatized siblings.
Reader rating: 10/10
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The other woman
by Daniel Silva
A spy thriller that catapults former Israeli intelligence operative Gabriel Allon into a web of espionage, passion and betrayal.
Reader rating 5/10
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The butterfly and the violin
by Kristy Cambron
An art dealer and her wealthy client discover the tragic story behind a portrait of a Holocaust survivor, a violin prodigy who was imprisoned in Auschwitz for helping Jewish citizens and who relied on her faith and musical talents to endure the camp's horrors.
Reader rating: 7/10
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Raney : a novel
by Clyde Edgerton
Raney is the comic love story of a marriage between Raney, a small-town Southern Baptist, and Charles, a librarian with liberal leanings from Atlanta, united by their shared enthusiasm for country music. The novel both interrogates and honors the faiths and foibles of its subjects as the relationship is tested through trials and revelations. Despite the couple's differences, their marriage slowly evolves into a relationship of equals in which both are willing to compromise for the good of the other and the marriage.
Reader rating: 7/10
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Six Days in Leningrad
by Paullina Simons
Paullina Simons gives us a work of non-fiction as captivating and heart-wrenching as the lives of Tatiana and Alexander. Only a few chapters into writing her first story set in Russia, her mother country, Paullina Simons travelled to Leningrad (now St Petersburg) with her beloved Papa. What began as a research trip turned into six days that forever changed her life, the course of her family, and the novel that became The Bronze Horseman.
Reader rating: 8/10
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