The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver
Taylor Greer becomes the guardian of an abandoned baby girl she calls Turtle. In Tucson they meet the proprietor of an auto-repair shop with a safe-house for Central American refugees upstairs and there she builds a life for herself and her child.
The Glass Room by Simon Mawer
The Glass Room is a book about a culture slipping from decadence into catastrophic decline. It's a study of a marriage. It concerns itself with art, music, architecture, indignity, loneliness, terror, betrayal, sex. And the Holocaust. (Guardian)
The Help by Kathryn Sockett
A story of three women determined to start a movement of their own that has a profound effect upon a town and the way women--mothers, daughters and friends view one another. A poignant, humorous and hopeful novel. A timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don't.
The Other Boleyn Girl by Phillipa Gregory
Mary Boleyn catches the eye of Henry VIII when she comes to court as a girl of fourteen. The story of Anne’s less famous sister and a really good read.
The Prison of Perspective by Rudolf Bader.
The first novel, by a a renowned professor of literature and linguistics. (In the Mud met him in Waterstones where he was signing copies of his book) It follows the life of 3 main characters and how they intertwine with one another at different crucial times in their lives.
The back cover says" A chance encounter, a road accident, an aircrash, a hold up at a bank: How do such events connect people? How do people see the situations from their different perspectives?"
The Swimming Pool Season by Rose Tremain
An early Tremain, set in Dordogne and Oxford, it’s really 16 short stories intricately woven together as a novel. Nothing much happens but reading about it not happening is fascinating. She describes real life so beautifully and also creates in Nadia her own Polish Malaprop, for which alone the book is worth reading.
The White Queen by Phillipa Gregory
History (with the occasional dose of witchcraft thrown in) like you’ve never had it before but great fast moving fun.
This Thing of Darkness by Harry Thompson
All about Darwin and Fitzroy and the voyage of the beagle and their later adventures including Fitzroy's spell as Governor of New Zealand not very long before the date in which Rose Tremain's ‘The Colour’ is set.
The Piano Teacher by Janice Y K Lee
Janice Y. K. Lee’s first novel, “The Piano Teacher,” opens with the newlywed Claire travelling to Hong Kong in 1951 with her husband, Martin, an engineer. Soon Claire is hired as a piano teacher for the daughter of a wealthy Chinese couple, Victor and Melody Chen. Also in their employ, as a chauffeur, is an enigmatic Englishman, Will Truesdale.
