I’m always interested to see which books make it onto Richard and Judy’s Book Club and the autumn list is now out.
There are two on here that I’ve already read and another three or four that had made it onto my radar and will now probably make the TBR for sure.
When a teenage girl goes missing her mother discovers she doesn’t know her daughter as well as she thought in Jane Shemilt’s haunting debut novel, Daughter.
The Night Of The Disappearance – She used to tell me everything. They have a picture. It’ll help. But it doesn’t show the way her hair shines so brightly it looks like sheets of gold. She has a tiny mole, just beneath her left eyebrow. She smells very faintly of lemons. She bites her nails. She never cries. She loves autumn, I wanted to tell them. She collects leaves, like a child does. She is just a child. Find her. One year later – Naomi is still missing. Jenny is a mother on the brink of obsession. The Malcolm family is in pieces. Is finding the truth about Naomi the only way to put them back together? Or is the truth the thing that will finally tear them apart?
My review of Daughter by Jane Shemilt can be read here
Harry August is on his deathbed. Again. No matter what he does or the decisions he makes, when death comes, Harry always returns to where he began, a child with all the knowledge of a life he has already lived a dozen times before. Nothing ever changes. Until now. As Harry nears the end of his eleventh life, a little girl appears at his bedside. ‘I nearly missed you, Doctor August,’ she says. ‘I need to send a message.’ This is the story of what Harry does next, and what he did before, and how he tries to save a past he cannot change and a future he cannot allow.
In 1875, Sisi, the Empress of Austria is the woman that every man desires and every woman envies. Beautiful, athletic and intelligent, Sisi has everything – except happiness. Bored with the stultifying etiquette of the Hapsburg Court and her dutiful but unexciting husband, Franz Joseph, Sisi comes to England to hunt. She comes looking for excitement and she finds it in the dashing form of Captain Bay Middleton, the only man in Europe who can outride her. Ten years younger than her and engaged to the rich and devoted Charlotte, Bay has everything to lose by falling for a woman who can never be his. But Bay and the Empress are as reckless as each other, and their mutual attraction is a force that cannot be denied.
I’m stranded on Mars. I have no way to communicate with Earth. I’m in a Habitat designed to last 31 days. If the Oxygenator breaks down, I’ll suffocate. If the Water Reclaimer breaks down, I’ll die of thirst. If the Hab breaches, I’ll just kind of explode. If none of those things happen, I’ll eventually run out of food and starve to death. So yeah. I’m screwed.
Called to a woman’s refuge to take a routine witness statement, DI Marnie Rome instead walks in on an attempted murder. Trying to uncover the truth from layers of secrets, Marnie finds herself confronting her own demons. Because she, of all people, knows that it can be those closest to us we should fear the most…
Read my review of Someone Else’s Skin here
When time is running out every moment is precious…When Claire starts to write her Memory Book, she already knows that this scrapbook of mementoes will soon be all her daughters and husband have of her. But how can she hold onto the past when her future is slipping through her fingers…?
London, 1727 – and Tom Hawkins is about to fall from his heaven of card games, brothels and coffee-houses into the hell of a debtors’ prison. The Marshalsea is a savage world of its own, with simple rules: those with family or friends who can lend them a little money may survive in relative comfort. Those with none will starve in squalor and disease. And those who try to escape will suffer a gruesome fate at the hands of the gaol’s rutheless governor and his cronies. The trouble is, Tom Hawkins has never been good at following rules – even simple ones. And the recent grisly murder of a debtor, Captain Roberts, has brought further terror to the gaol. While the Captain’s beautiful widow cries for justice, the finger of suspicion points only one way: to the sly, enigmatic figure of Samuel Fleet. Some call Fleet a devil, a man to avoid at all costs. But Tom Hawkins is sharing his cell. Soon, Tom’s choice is clear: get to the truth of the murder – or be the next to die.
‘All men should strive to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why.’ Rick Stein’s childhood in 1950s rural Oxfordshire and North Cornwall was idyllic. His parents were charming and gregarious, their five children much-loved and given freedom typical of the time. As he grew older, the holidays were filled with loud and lively parties in his parents’ Cornish barn. But ever-present was the unpredicatible mood of his bipolar father, with Rick frequently the focus of his anger and sadness. When Rick was 18 his father killed himself. Emotionally adrift, Rick left for Australia, carrying a suitcase stamped with his father’s initials. Manual labour in the outback followed by adventures in America and Mexico toughened up the naive public schoolboy, but at heart he was still lost and unsure what to do with his life. Eventually, Cornwall called him home. From the entrepreneurial days of his mobile disco, the Purple Tiger, to his first, unlikely unlikely nightclub where much of the time was spent breaking up drink-fuelled fights, Rick charts his personal journey in a way that is both wry and perceptive; engaging and witty.
Have you read any of these, or do you think you might?
To get the reviews features and more go visit Richard and Judy’s Book Club here.
These all look like interesting books, Cleo. The Hodgson and the Hilary have especially got my attention and I’ll be interested in what you think of them.
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Margot – Someone Else’s Skin was a great read, I’m quite intrigued by the Rick Stein autobiography… The Devil of Marshalsea is on my radar so I’m sure I’ll read this before long.
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They certainly look like interesting reads.
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I’ve not read anything on the list, but I have a couple of books on hand, and the list itself does look diverse and interesting.
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I absolutely adored The Martian – best adventure book in years! Don’t know if it would be your kind of thing though. Otherwise I’m really only mildly attracted by a couple of these – Someone Else’s Skin and The Devil in the Marshalsea. But not tempted strongly enough to push them onto the overcrowded TBR, I think…
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Mm.. The Martian is the one book on this list that didn’t take my fancy. I’m a little bit tempted by The Devil in the Marshalea and strangely the Rick Stein autobiography.
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Some of these do sound quite good. I think I’d be most interested in Daughter.
-Lauren
http://www.shootingstarsmag.blogspot.com
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Daughter was an absorbing read and I’m glad my daughter has passed the teenage stage as this is almost a cautionary tale of what could happen if you take your eye of the ball.
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I’m looking forward to following the list again this Autumn Cleo! Great to read your post and remind myself what I’m excited about. Reading Daughter next and really looking forward to it.
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Daughter was a great read, if a little bleak at times… but I do love family secrets and there are quite a few buried in these pages.
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