Fiction
The Day the Falls Stood Still by Cathy Marie Buchanan
Niagara Falls, 1915. When Bess Heath returns to her family home near the picturesque falls, it is to an unfamiliar scene the elegance of the life she once knew has vanished. Her father - director of the Niagara Power Company - is a broken man, jobless and losing hope, and her mother is struggling to keep the family afloat. Isabel, the lively, charismatic sister Bess has always relied on is almost unrecognisable. Her engagement called off, she languishes in her bedroom, brooding and refusing to eat. Through all of this Bess finds solace in Tom Cole, a man she met by chance the night she returned home. Constant, gentle and devoted to Bess, he understands better than anyone the awesome and potentially devastating power of the falls and consoles her through a tragedy that nearly ruins her. But as their lives become more fully entwined, Bess is forced to make a painful choice between what she wants and what is best for her family. |
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The Tulip Virus by Daniëlle Hermans
In 1636 Alkmaar, Holland, Wouter Winckel's brutally slaughtered body is found with an anti-religious pamphlet stuffed in his mouth. Winckel was a respected tulip-trader and owned the most beautiful collection of tulips in the United Republic of the Low Countries. In 2007 London, history seems to be repeating itself. Dutchman Frank Schoeller is found in his home by his nephew, Alec. Severely wounded, he is holding a 17th-century book about tulips, seemingly a reference to the reason for his death moments later. With the help of his friend Damien Vanlint, an antique dealer from Amsterdam, Alec tries to solve the mystery, but soon comes to realize that he and his friend's own lives are now in danger. |
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Pearl of China by Anchee Min
In the small southern town of Chin-kiang, in the last days of the nineteenth century, two young girls bump heads and become thick as thieves. Willow is the only child of a destitute family, Pearl the headstrong daughter of zealous Christian missionaries. She will ultimately become the internationally renowned author Pearl S. Buck, but for now she is just a girl embarrassed by her blonde hair and enchanted by her new Chinese friend. The two embark on a friendship that will sustain both of them through one of the most tumultuous periods in Chinese history. |
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The Fourth Assassin (An Omar Yussef novel) by Matt Rees
Arriving to visit his youngest son, Ala, in a heavily Palestinian area of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, Omar Yussef discovers the beheaded body of one of the boy's room-mates. When his son is arrested as a suspect, Omar must prove his innocence. His investigation to uncover the real murderer leads him towards a deadly international conspiracy. |
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The Captive Queen by Alison Weir
It is the year 1152 and a beautiful woman of thirty, attended by only a small armed escort, is riding southwards through what is now France, leaving behind her crown, her two young daughters and a shattered marriage to Louis of France, who had been more like a monk than a king, and certainly not much of a lover. This woman is Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine, and her sole purpose now is to return to her vast duchy and marry the man she loves, Henry Plantagenet, a man destined for greatness as King of England. Theirs is a union founded on lust which will create a great empire stretching from the wilds of Scotland to the Pyrenees. |
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Mornings in Jenin by Susan Abulhawa
The Abulheja family are forcibly removed from their ancestral home in Ein Hod and sent to live in a refugee camp in Jenin. Through Amal, the bright granddaughter of the patriarch, we witness the stories of her brothers: one, a stolen boy who becomes an Israeli soldier; the other who in sacrificing everything for the Palestinian cause will become his enemy. Amal's own dramatic story threads its way through six decades of Palestinian-Israeli tension, eventually taking her into exile in Pennsylvania in America. Amal's is a story of love and loss, of childhood, marriage and parenthood, and finally the need to share her history with her daughter, to preserve the greatest love she has. |
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Accused by Mark Gimenez
After years of silence, Texan lawyer Scott Fenney receives a devastating phone call from his ex-wife. She has been accused of murdering her boyfriend, Trey - the man she left Scott for - and is being held in a police cell. Now she is begging Scott to defend her. Scott is used to high-stakes cases, but this one is bigger than anything he has handled before. If Rebecca is found guilty, under Texan law she will be sentenced to death. As he prepares to take the stand in the most dramatic courtroom appearance of his life, Scott is forced to question everything he believes to get to the truth - to save the life of the ex-wife he still loves. |
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Finding Monsieur Right by Muriel Zagha
This is a tale of two cities, two girls, and a life-altering swap. Daisy's just landed the perfect job: spending a year in Paris writing about fashion. Swapping homes with French student Isabelle seems like the perfect arrangement. Sensible Isabelle, however, finds London bewildering. But all her assumptions about crazy English guys are overturned when she meets hunky gardener Tom. Meanwhile, fun-loving Daisy discovers that Paris is the City of Love, and there is more than one Monsieur Right.< |
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Tome of the Undergates (The Aeons' gate, Book 1) by Sam Sykes
Lenk can barely keep control of his mismatched adventurer band at the best of times. When they're not insulting each other's religions they're arguing about pay and conditions. So when the ship they are travelling on is attacked by pirates things don't go very well. They get a whole lot worse when an invincible demon joins the fray. The demon steals the Tome of the Undergates - a manuscript that contains all you need to open the undergates. And whichever god you believe in you don't want the undergates open. On the other side are countless more invincible demons, the manifestation of all the evil of the gods, and they want out. |
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A Serving of Scandal by Prue Leith
Kate McKinnon is thirty-six and mother to Toby. She used to be a restaurant chef but that all stopped when Toby - now five - came along and changed everything. Now she has a small but thriving business catering for private clients, companies and some government departments. Her life is on an even keel. Then she gets a job cooking lunch at the Foreign Office and has her first fateful meeting with Oliver Stapler, Secretary of State. He's married and a father and totally out of bounds, yet she falls for him. She thinks she's hiding it beautifully, but there are people who would like to see her fail and to them her feelings are all too transparent. When someone alerts the gutter press, who cares whether Kate's affair with Oliver is true or not? It's a great story and will shift a ton of newspapers - and destroy several lives at the same time. |
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Notes by Norma Anderson, Technical Services Librarian |
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Non Fiction
| Awkward Family Photos, Mike Bender and Doug Chernak. (778.92) Features classic and never-before-seen photos and hilarious personal stories covering everything from uncomfortable moments with relatives, teen angst, sibling rivalry, and family vacations from hell. |
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| After Andrew: two Kiwis cross Australia, Bill Lennox. (994.2904) 109 years after Andrew Lennox rode a horse from Adelaide to Darwin, his grandson, Bill, rented a Commodore and did the trip a bit faster. He went to most of the places his grandfather had described in his diary and managed to track down the Aboriginal family that now occupies the site of Andrew's mission. A witty, moving and informative story with dashes of history and local colour. |
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| La Bella Lingua: my love affair with Italy and the most enchanting language in the world, Dianne Hales. (945 HAL) A joyous, funny and warmly affectionate celebration of Italy, it's history, literature, food, music, movies and it's people, who helped the author not only to learn the world's most loved and lovable language but how to really live like a true Italian. |
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| The Horse Boy: a father's quest to heal his son, Rupert Isaacson.(92 ISA) When his son Rowan was diagnosed with autism, Rupert was devastated. Then two things happened. Rowan made an unlikely connection with a group visiting traditional healers and Rupert went riding with his son. Noticing an improvement each time they went riding, Rupert came up with a crazy idea - Why not take Rowan to Mongolia - one place in the world where horses and Shamanic healing intersect. A deeply moving story of a family willing to go to he ends of the earth to help their son.< |
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| Beached As: our New Zealand beaches. Vol. 1, Craig Levers. (z993 LEV) Our beaches are special places of magic and mythology, of common ground and shared history. The meeting of ocean and land is unique here because the ocean and the land here are unique. The beach is part of our identity as New Zealanders, passed from generation to generation, and beach culture is enshrined in what we know as Kiwiana. |
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| Home is Where the Wine is: making the most of what you've got one stitch (and cocktail!) at a time, Laurie Perry. (920.72) Blogger extraordinaire Laurie Perry aka 'Crazy Aunt Purl' is back with her second instalment of life after divorce. Now in recovery, she has embraced a newfound philosophy: to make the best our of the "extra odd bits"- both in knitting and in life. |
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| Outrageous Yachts, Jill Bobrow and Kenny Wooton. (623.82314) Showcases 20 mega yachts, touring each magnificent vessel from stem to stern and providing fascinating information about it's builder, designer and owner. Magnificent illustrations accompany this incredible treasure trove of sailing vessels. |
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| Triumph: life after the cult: a survivor's lessons, Carolyn Jessop with Laura Palmer. (92 JES) Having fled with her children from the extremist Mormon cult in 2003, Carolyn Jessop revelled in her new identity as a devoted mum and loving partner. But the past came roaring back in 2008 in full view of millions of television viewers when a raid was staged on the 1700 acre compound run by her ex-husband. |
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| Designing with Plants, Piet Oudolf with Noel Kingsbury.(635.968) Piet Oudolf's gardens excite the senses and stir the emotions. Representing a giant step forward from the conventional colour-themed border, this new approach to gardening gives just as much emphasis to form, texture, light and movement as it does to colour. |
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| Tortoises & Tumbleweeds: journey through an African kitchen, Lannice Snyman. (641.5968) Dishes that define the South African table - rustic and refined, wholesome and hearty, simple and spicy - are inspired by early cookbooks as well as folk who opened their hearts, homes and huts to Lannice on her journey to the gastronomic heart of her homeland. |
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Notes by Barbara Evans, Cataloguing Librarian
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