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Some books really hit the spot, and some just stay with you after you’ve finished them. Here’s a selection of our very favourite reads.

Daughters of Night

Laura Shepherd-Robinson £8.99

Cathy Y is reading - Daughters of Night

'The best historical crime novel I will read this year' - The Times' Spectacularly brilliant . . .

One of the most enjoyable and enduring stories I have ever read' - James O'Brien, journalist, author and LBC Presenter' This is right up there with the best of C. J. Sansom and Andrew Taylor' - Amanda Craig, author of The Golden Rule From the pleasure palaces and gin-shops of Covent Garden to the elegant townhouses of Mayfair, Laura Shepherd-Robinson's Daughters of Night follows Caroline Corsham as she seeks justice for a murdered woman whom London society would rather forget .

. . London, 1782.

Desperate for her politician husband to return home from France, Caroline 'Caro' Corsham is already in a state of anxiety when she finds a well-dressed woman mortally wounded in the bowers of the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens. The Bow Street constables are swift to act, until they discover that the deceased woman was a highly paid prostitute, at which point they cease to care entirely. But Caro has motives of her own for wanting to see justice done, and so sets out to solve the crime herself.

Enlisting the help of thieftaker Peregrine Child, their inquiry delves into the hidden corners of Georgian society, a world of artifice, deception and secret lives. But with many gentlemen refusing to speak about their dealings with the dead woman, and Caro's own reputation under threat, finding the killer will be harder, and more treacherous, than she can know . .

Devotion

Hannah Kent £9.99

Before, Hanne always felt apart from the local girls, but with Thea it all came easy.

Suddenly she could imagine a future for herself, a happy one, by Thea's side. But when their tight-knit community embarks on a long and brutal journey to Australia, in search of new freedoms on old land, Hanne and Thea's bond must find a way to survive the most impossible devastation. Will their love prove too strong for even Nature to break? 'Extraordinarily daring .

Leonard and Hungry Paul

Rónán Hession £9.99

Leonard and Hungry Paul is the story of two friends who ordinarily would remain uncelebrated. It finds a value and specialness in them that is not immediately apparent and prompts the idea that maybe we could learn from the people that we overlook in life.

One of our all-time favourite feel-good reads; funny, kind and makes you think a little differently about the people around you.

Paperback

Our Missing Hearts

Celeste Ng £9.99

Twelve-year-old Bird Gardner lives a quiet existence with his loving father, a former linguist who now shelves books in a university library. His mother Margaret, a Chinese American poet, left without a trace when he was nine years old.

 

He doesn't know what happened to her-only that her books have been banned-and he resents that she cared more about her work than about him. Then one day, Bird receives a mysterious letter containing only a cryptic drawing, and soon he is pulled into a quest to find her. His journey will take him back to the many folktales she poured into his head as a child, through the ranks of an underground network of heroic librarians, and finally to New York City, where he will finally learn the truth about what happened to his mother, and what the future holds for them both.

Our Missing Hearts is an old story made new, of the ways supposedly civilized communities can ignore the most searing injustice. It's about the lessons and legacies we pass on to our children, and the power of art to create change.

Our Missing Hearts is an old story made new, of the ways supposedly civilized communities can ignore the most searing injustice. It's about the lessons and legacies we pass on to our children, and the power of art to create change.

The Fish

Joanne Stubbs £10.99

The debut novel from Wotton author Jo Stubbs.

 

'There is a fish on the sand; I see it clearly. But it is not on its side, lying still. It is partly upright.

 

It moves. I can see its gills, off the ground and wide open. It looks as though it's standing up.'A few decades into the twenty-first century, in their permanently flooded garden in Cornwall, Cathy and her wife Ephie give up on their vegetable patch and plant a paddy field instead.

Thousands of miles away, expat Margaret is struggling to adjust to life in Kuala Lumpur, now a coastal city. In New Zealand, two teenagers marvel at the extreme storms hitting their island. But they are not the only ones adapting to the changing climate.

The starfish on Cathy's kitchen window are just the start. As all manner of sea creatures begin to leave the oceans and invade the land, the new normal becomes increasingly hard to accept.

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