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  The Pavilion in the Clouds

  Alexander McCall Smith

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  It is 1938 and the final days of the British Empire. In a bungalow high up in the green hills above the plains of Ceylon, under a vast blue sky, live the Ferguson family: Bella, a precocious eight-year-old; her father Henry—owner of Pitlochry, a  
  tea plantation—and her mother Virginia. The story centres around the Pavilion in the Clouds, set in the idyllic grounds carved out of the wilderness. But all is not as serene as it seems. Bella is suspicious of her governess Miss White’s intentions.  
   
  Her suspicion sparks off her mother’s imagination and after an unfortunate series of events, a confrontation is had with Miss White and a gunshot rings off around the hills. 
   
  Years later, Bella, now living back in Scotland at university in St Andrews, is faced once again with her past. Will she at last find out what happened between her father and Miss White? And will the guilt she has lived with all these years be reconciled by a long overdue apology?

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  The Queen of Steeplechase Park

  David Ciminello

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  The Queen of Steeplechase Park is the absolutely, positively, practically, almost-true story of infamous burlesque queen and magic meatball maker Belladonna Marie Donato. 
   
   
   
  Pregnant at fifteen after gleefully losing her virginity to pansexual neighborhood strongman Francis Anthony Mozzarelli, she is robbed of her baby by a pack of nefarious nuns and her embittered papa has her sterilized without her consent (legal in 1935). With the help of a besotted Francis and her top-secret meatball recipe, a devastated Bella embarks on a riotous quest through Depression-era Coney Island sideshows, the tawdry world of peek-a-boo striptease routines, a queer mob marriage, and a tasty collection of wisdom-filled recipes to find her lost child, herself, and maybe even true love. It all leads Bella back home, to the scene of her Original Sin, where she boldly faces matters of life and death, questions of forgiveness, and a holy mess only the healing properties of great Italian cooking can fix. 
   
   
   
  Contains mature themes.

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  The Shadow of the Bell Tower -...

  Stefano Vignaroli

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  Year 2017: the young scholar Lucia Balleani, arranging and classifying the texts of the library of the Hoenstaufen Foundation, starts working in the old palace that had been the residence of the noble Baldeschi-Balleani family, of which she is a direct descendant. A series of visions linked to what happened to Lucia Baldeschi, of the same name, will lead the reader to discover with her an interesting story that took place in the same place 500 years before. During the Renaissance Jesi is rich in art and culture and where new and sumptuous palaces are built on the ruins of the ancient Roman city, lives a young countess, Lucia Baldeschi. The girl is the granddaughter of an evil Cardinal, weaver of obscure plots aimed at centralizing both temporal and ecclesiastical power in his own hands. Lucia, a person with a strong intelligence, becomes friend with a printer, Bernardino, with whom she share the passion for the rebirth of the arts, sciences and culture, which are characterizing the period throughout Italy. She will find herself caught between the duty to obey her uncle, who made her grow up and educate her in the palace in the absence of her parents, and the passionate love for Andrea Franciolini, son of the People`s Capitan and designated victim of the Cardinal`s tyranny. The story is also told through the eyes of Lucia Balleani, a young scholar descendent of the noble family. In 2017, exactly 500 years after the events, she discovered ancient documents in the family palace, and reconstructed the complex history of which traces had been lost.

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  The Revolt of Mother - A wife...

  Mary Wilkins E Freeman

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  Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman was born in Randolph, Massachusetts on the 31st October 1852 to parents who were strict and orthodox Congregationalists. 
   
  When she was a teenager the family moved to Brattleboro, Vermont and it was there she finished her education and began writing verse and stories for children. 
   
  When the family’s dry-goods store closed in 1873 the family, now impoverished, returned to Randolph where her mother was to die mother three years later. 
   
  She published ‘The Ghost Story’ in 1881 after it won a short story competition.  With elements of the supernatural and domestic realism she had hit upon a solid formula for success. 
   
  Two years later her father died and with no immediate family and only a small estate she now committed to writing full-time to secure an income.  For the times it was a brave move but her undoubted talent meant success would follow. 
   
  Over her career she published more than two dozen volumes of short stories and novels and is most well-known for ‘A New England Nun’.  Her works were mainly set in New England and many of her female characters are strong and assertive, challenging contemporary stereotypes over their then roles, values and relationships in society.  As a feminist she was keen to engage her audience in a discussion about the lack of control women had over many issues including the family finances. 
   
  A meeting with the younger Dr. Charles Manning Freeman began a slow, decade long, courtship that endured many obstacles and delays until they eventually married on New Years Day, 1902.   
   
  They built a home in Metuchen, where Mary was something of a local celebrity. Sadly her husband suffered from alcoholism and addiction to sleeping powders, fast horses and was also prone to womanizing.  He was committed to the New Jersey State Hospital for the Insane and with that the couple separated.  After his death in 1923, he left his estate to his chauffeur and one dollar to Mary.  
   
  On 13th March 1930, Mary E Wilkins Freeman suffered a fatal heart attack in Metuchen. She was 77.

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  Black Seas

  T.K. Blackwood

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  The year is 1992. Europe is in flames. Scandinavia is under siege. Only Norway holds out against the Soviet war machine. And now the pride of the Soviet Navy, the Red Banner Northern Fleet, sallies out to finish the job. 
   
   
   
  With their armies facing annihilation, and World War III at a tipping point, the combined navies of NATO stand ready to receive their enemy. Europe's greatest naval battle since Jutland, the first carrier battle since World War II, is about to begin.

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  Yell Sam If You Still Can - Le...

  Maylis Besserie

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  This novel by Maylis Besserie, the first of her Irish trilogy, shows us Samuel Beckett at the end of his life in 1989, living in Le Tiers-Temps retirement home. It is as if Beckett has come to live in one of his own stage productions, peopled with strange, unhinged individuals, waiting for the end of days.
  Yell, Sam, If You Still Can is filled with voices. From diary notes to clinical reports to daily menus, cool medical voices provide a counterpoint to Beckett himself, who reflects on his increasingly fragile existence. He remains playful, rueful, and aware of the dramatic irony that has brought him to live in the room next door to Winnie, surrounded by grotesques like Hamm or Lucky, abandoned by his wife Suzanne who died before him.
  Besserie delights in Beckett's bilingualism and plays back and forth between the francophone and anglophone properties of language, summoning James Joyce as Beckett reminisces about evenings the two spent together singing, talking and drinking. Largely written in the library of the Centre Culturel Irlandais, Besserie has kept the hum of Irish voices throughout this work.
  Yell, Sam, If You Still Can won the "Goncourt du premier roman", the prestigious French literary prize for first time novelists, just before the country went into lockdown. Besserie is now planning a further two novels that will explore the links between Ireland and France and is touted as the new star of the French literary world.
  
  Financial Times Book of the Year 2022

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