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  Walking Dunes - A Novel

  Sandra Scofield

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  The sandhills stretch across the West Texas plains for 60 miles. As much as ten miles wide in places, they are a gleaming, sugary whiteness. The winds keep a trickle of sand moving on their peaks; in high winds the sand shifts so fast they say the dunes walk. So, too, can a handsome young man’s intellect and sensibility belie his unreliable character; so, too, can his sense of identity shift as he is buffeted by the storm of circumstance a single fateful year brings. Eighteen year old David Puckett is torn between his desire for and his fear of intimacy—between his yearning for two very different definitions of success. Artistry and passion are embodied in one girl, the avoidance of intimacy and the path to power in another. His story is set in the late 1950s, an era that has become mythologized as an age of carefree innocence and conservative consensus. Walking Dunes gives us another glimpse of life as it lay on the lip of the ’60s, life as beset by poverty, violence, and misery as it was buoyed by rock and roll, television, and the explosion of the suburbs. There is, too, in David’s story the poignancy of a failed family, the sweet awkwardness of young love, the fierceness of early ambition, the bitterness of loss. The lives of teenagers, so often perceived as trivial and commonplace, surprise and ultimately shock the reader, as a boy sets the course on which he will become a man.  

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  The House of the Mosque

  Kader Abdolah

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  This “beautifully written,” international bestselling novel charts the triumphs and tragedies of an Iranian family on the brink of national revolution (Daily Mail, UK).  Senejan, Iran, 1969. The family of Aqa Jaan has lived for eight centuries in the house of the mosque. Now it is occupied by the families of three cousins: Aqa Jaan, a merchant and head of the city's bazaar; Alsaberi, the imam of the mosque; and Aqa Shoja, the mosque's muezzin. The house itself teems with life, as each of their families grows up with their own triumphs and tragedies.   Sadiq is waiting for a suitor to knock at the door to ask for her hand, while her two grandmothers sweep the floors each morning dreaming of travelling to Mecca. Meanwhile, Shahbal longs only to get hold of a television to watch the first moon landing. All these daily dramas are played out under the watchful eyes of the storks that nest on the minarets above. But this family will experience upheaval unknown to previous generations.   For in Iran, political unrest is brewing. The shah is losing his hold on power; the ayatollah incites rebellion from his exile in France; and one day the ayatollah returns. The consequences will be felt in every corner of Aqa Jaan's family.  “Abdolah’s is a powerful voice.”—The Times Saturday Review, UK

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  The Flowering Thorn - A Novel

  Margery Sharp

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  A Jazz Age socialite impulsively adopts an orphaned boy in this humorous, heartwarming tale   In 1929 London, twenty-eight-year-old Lesley Frewen lives a privileged, cultured life. But one thing is missing: love. When her aunt’s female companion suddenly dies, leaving behind a young son, Lesley decides on a whim to adopt four-year-old Patrick—though she doesn’t have any particular affection for children.   As soon as Patrick moves in with her, Lesley gets to work using her connections to enroll him in the finest boys’ school. But she quickly discovers London is no place to raise a child, and they relocate to the tiny village of High Westover.   The hamlet boasts a post office, a church, and a vicarage. There’s an apple orchard and children for Patrick to play with. However, the country comes with its own set of daunting challenges: Lesley can’t imagine how she’ll entertain her friends there! But ultimately life with Patrick will change her, bringing out her capacity to love and showing her the difference between pleasure and happiness.

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  The Second Sight of Zachary...

  Sean Lusk

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  In 1755, Abel Cloudesley, a London watchmaker and creator of remarkable mechanical automata, is mourning his wife, Alice, who died giving birth to their son, Zachary. Six years later, Abel is further devastated when a freak workshop accident takes Zachary’s eye. With his new eye made of gold and lapis by Abel’s soft-spoken apprentice Tom, Zachary, now with an astonishing gift of second sight, is sent to live with his eccentric Aunt Franny in the country. Abel buries himself in work until he is coerced by shadowy figures into designing a chess-playing automaton and delivering it to Constantinople to spy on the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. After meeting the Sultan, Abel is not heard from again. Years later, teenage Zachary receives a letter suggesting that his father is still alive, a prisoner of the Sultan. Zachary sets off on a perilous journey to the Levant, determined to find Abel and bring him safely home.

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  A Decline in Prophets

  Sulari Gentill

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  It’s 1932, a time of crisis and doubt. Returning home on a luxury ocean liner after months abroad, Rowland Sinclair and his companions dine with a suffragette, a Bishop and a retired World Prophet. The Church encounters less orthodox religion in the Aquitania’s chandeliered ballroom, where men of God rub shoulders with mystics in dinner suits. The elegant atmosphere on board is charged with tension, but civility prevails… until people start to die.

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  Set The Night On Fire - A '60s...

  Libby Fischer Hellmann

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  Lila Hilliard returns home to Chicago for the holidays only to find someone is stalking her. Her father and brother are trapped in a fire, and a man on a motorcycle tries to shoot her. As she desperately tries to figure out who is after her and why, she uncovers information about her father’s past indicating he was part of the volatile movement of young people during the late Sixties. Which means her parents were not the people she thought they were. Part thriller, part historical novel, part love story, Set The Night on Fire tells an extraordinary tale about the stormy late Sixties, and a group of idealists who were sure they would change the world. 
  A tremendous book—sweeping but intimate, elegiac but urgent, subtle but intense. This story really does set the night on fire. Lee Child 
  A top-rate thriller that taps into the antiwar protests of the 1960s… A jazzy fusion of past and present, Hellman’s insightful, politically charged whodunit explores a fascinating period in American history. Publishers Weekly 
  A brilliantly-paced thriller, transitioning seamlessly from modern-day Chicago to the late ’60s. First-rate characterization… Best to start early in the day, as it is easy to stay up all night reading it. Foreword Magazine 
  Electric… a marvelous novel. RT Book Reviews 
  Haunting… Rarely have history, mystery, and political philosophy blended so beautifully… could easily end up on the required reading list in college-level American History classes. Betty Webb, Mystery Scene

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