Other books that might interest you

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  The Sea From Above

  David Goudge

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  This is a novel that portrays a love affair between two men in the late 1950s. In turn, they each tell their story in their own voices. 
  The men are British. One of them is a young wardrobe assistant. The other is a stuntman who had served in action during World War Two. The pair meet on the set of a film being shot on location in Italy. 
  The younger man – 19 when the book begins – is from a working-class background in the north of England. He is newly inducted into London’s furtive gay scene at a time when sex between men is illegal and there's an ever-present risk of arrest or assault. 
  The other man is 32, troubled by his sexuality and ill at ease with his stunt colleagues on the film. Deeply shaken by an accident that kills another stunt performer, the stuntman first encounters the younger man casually. 
  Then, by chance, the two meet later at The War Cemetery at Salerno. Stranded on their return to the location base, they spend a night together in Amalfi, and - on this occasion - a tender relationship develops. But they must keep their affair a secret, and just as the stuntman begins to experience an emotional awakening, he is talked into performing a perilous stunt. 
  David Goudge is a former member of the BBC Radio Drama Company. He narrates his own novel.

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  Homestead - A Novel

  Sara Donati

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  High in the Austrian alps, surrounded by a perfect ring of mountains, the village of Rosenau is made up of a scattering of dairy farms. This is a place so isolated that the arrival of a postcard from the outside world is an event that triggers everyone’s imaginations. The novel opens in 1909 with Anna of Bengat homestead and her love for rough, beautiful Peter, her husband, and for their children, and for her dead sister’s twin boys, Stante and Michel, one intellectually and the other physically disabled. As the years pass, the story unfolds through the eyes of the women of Anna’s family and the interconnected families of Bent Elbow homestead and the Wainwright’s clan: Bent Elbow’s Johanna, finding sudden, late love in the summer of 1916 in the most unexpected place; Isabella, Peter’s mother, who cannot bring herself to look at his ravaged face when he comes home from the Great War; Wainwright’s Katharina, half-sister to Stante and Michel, careless and self-centered, who unwittingly betrays them in return for a ride in a Nazi’s beautiful automobile; Anna’s Olga, who grows up to marry someone she loves, only to lose him and her four brothers in the maw of the Second World War. 
  As we listen, each chapter adds layers of meaning from a different character’s point of view, and the life of Rosenau gathers force and complexity, like a living thing. We don’t notice while we’re watching, but when the tale is done we’re stunned by the fullness and beauty of a world as remote as another planet, as near as our own longings and loves.

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  Clever Girl - A Nellie Bly Novella

  David Blixt

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  “A professional lobbyist is a plague-spot upon the body politic.”—Judiciary Committee, State of New York 
  "Tell a story to catch a story."—Nellie Bly 
  From International Bestselling Author David Blixt! Nellie Bly sets out to trap the greatest villain she has ever encountered: the King of the Lobby! 
  March 1888. A blizzard has frozen all of New York, and Nellie Bly is going stir-crazy, stuck at home with her mother and her detestable brother Albert. When a political speech inspires her, she and Colonel Cockerill plot out her most daring undercover assignment since she emerged from the Blackwell's Island insane asylum: she's going to trap the most crooked man in politics, Edward R. Phelps, the self-styled "King" of the Albany lobby. 
  But catching a fox as wily as Phelps will take all her nerve, and she's learning that her meteoric rise has left her with few allies in the newspaper world. On her own, she must first trap Phelps, then confront him before a jury of his allies: the state senators of New York. 
  Based on the real-life events and her own reporting, Clever Girl shows Nellie Bly at her furious best!

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  The Orphans of Mersea House

  Marty Wingate

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  England, 1957. Olive Kersey’s only love never returned from World War II, and now she’s alone and penniless. Then the last person she ever expected to see again returns to Southwold. Olive’s childhood friend, Margery Paxton, arrives to claim her inheritance: Mersea House, a stately old home she plans to turn into the town’s only lodging. Olive’s life takes a sunny turn when Margery hires her to run the establishment. But Mersea House holds its own mysteries—and its own dangers. First, rumors begin to fly when two enigmatic lodgers move in: Hugh Hodson, manager of the town cinema, and Mrs. Abigail Claypool, a recluse and war widow. And then the completely unexpected happens: Margery is informed she has a new ward, eleven-year-old Juniper Wyckes, the orphaned daughter of Margery’s first love. Mrs. Lucie Pagett, Children’s Officer at the local authority, informs Margery that Juniper was severely stricken with polio as a child and makes clear that she could be taken away if her welfare is in jeopardy. The past is never far behind for the inhabitants of Mersea House, and looming secrets may destroy the friendships they've created.

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  Villette Volume 1

  Charlotte Brontë

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  "Villette" by Charlotte Bronte follows the journey of Lucy Snowe, a young Englishwoman who, after a series of personal tragedies, travels to the fictional town of Villette in Belgium. There, she becomes a teacher at a girls' school, facing loneliness and challenges in a foreign land. As Lucy navigates the complexities of human relationships and societal expectations, she finds herself drawn to an enigmatic professor, M. Paul Emanuel. Amidst emotional turmoil and conflicting feelings, Lucy must confront her past and make difficult choices about love and independence. Brontë's exquisite prose weaves themes of self-discovery, feminism, and the human spirit, leaving readers captivated by Lucy's transformation and the novel's exploration of the complexities of life and the pursuit of happiness.

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  Funeral in Berlin

  Len Deighton

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  "Deighton, Greene and John le Carré comprise the reigning triumvirate of fictional spymasters beside whom all others pale." —Seattle Times 
   
   
   
  In 1963, Berlin is dark and dangerous. Len Deighton's skilled, jaded, anony­mous hero of The IPCRESS File is now set to arrange the defection—and fake the death—of a leading Soviet scien­tist. "A ferociously cool fable" (New York Times) and one of the first novels written after the construction of the Berlin Wall, Funeral in Berlin revels in the fraught, chilling atmosphere of a divided city.

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