WHERE DOES THE TIME GO? It only seems a couple of reviews ago that we were giving you the Richard and Judy Spring Collection, now here we are with their summer reads. As usual the husband and wife team have suggested some interesting and different novels with some new talent in the mix.
Small Great Things
by Jodi Picoult
RUTH IS A WIDOWED black woman living with her 16-year-old son in Connecticut. Always bright and clever, she regards herself as middle-class and well-educated. She lives in a ‘good’, predominately white neighbourhood; her son attends an excellent school, where his best friends are both rich and white.
Ruth herself is a hugely experienced and capable midwife in a small maternity unit. She has an impeccable record and is highly regarded as a competent professional.
She is, however, the only African-American nurse on her unit. She assumed everyone there feels she is their equal. She has a lot of quiet pride and dignity. And then, purely because of her colour, her life falls apart…
The Trespasser
by Tana French
THERE’S THE MURDER SQUAD you set your sights on at the beginning: the one where you’re playing knife-edge mind-games with psychopathic geniuses. And there’s the one you actually work on. The night shifts. The vicious pranks that go too far. Sifting the dregs for the case that might just be special. Tonight’s case isn’t it.
Uniforms call it in as a slam-dunk domestic. Except when Detective Antoinette Conway of the Dublin Murder Squad, takes a good look at the victim’s face, she realises she’s seen her somewhere before. And she knows there’s a different answer. And it takes her breath away.
The Essex Serpent
by Sarah Perry
LONDON 1893: When Cora Seaborne’s husband dies, she steps into her new life as a widow with as much relief as sadness. Retreating to the countryside with her son, she encounters rumours of the ‘Essex Serpent’, a creature of folklore said to have returned to roam the marshes.
Cora is enthralled, believing it maybe an undiscovered species. Setting out on its trail, she collides with William Ransome, Aldwinter’s vicar, who thinks the cure for hysteria lies in faith, while Cora is convinced that science offers the answers.
Despite disagreeing on everything, he and Cora find themselves drawn together, changing each other’s lives in unexpected ways…
Conclave
by Robert Harris
THE POPE IS DEAD. Behind the locked doors of the Sistine Chapel, 118 cardinals from all over the globe will cast their votes in the world’s most secretive election.
They are holy men. But they have ambition. And they have rivals.
Over the next 72 hours one of them will become the most powerful spiritual figure on earth. Which one of them will it be?
DVD Corner
The Replacement (DS389)
WHEN ELLEN, a successful architect in her mid-30s, becomes pregnant, she finds maternity cover in Paula: brilliant and enthusiastic.
But Ellen quickly begins to feel uneasy, as she is convinced something is not right about Paula. Are her suspicions simply a result of female rivalry and her own insecurity or do they speak of something deeper?
This three-part psychological thriller set in Glasgow examines a workplace rivalry, motherhood and the issues that arise from making the ‘right choice’.
