RNIB National Library Service

Giant Print 24Biographical, General, Humour and War fiction

Biographical fiction.

Barnes, Julian. Arthur & George. 2006. 5v. Arthur and George grow up worlds apart in late nineteenth century Britain: Arthur in shabby-genteel Edinburgh, George in the vicarage of a small Staffordshire village. Arthur becomes a doctor, then a writer; George a solicitor in Birmingham. Arthur is to become one of the most famous men of his age, while George remains in hard-working obscurity. However as the new century begins, they are brought together by a sequence of events which made sensational headlines at the time as The Great Wyrley Outrages.

Syal, Meera.Anita and me. 1997. 3v.Like every nine-year-old girl, Meena can't wait to grow up and break free from her parents. But as the daughter of the only Punjabi family in the British mining village of Tollington, her fight for independence is far from typical.

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General

Albom, MitchThe five people you meet in heaven. 2004. 2v. Eddie is a grizzled war veteran who dies in a tragic accident, trying to save a little girl from a falling cart. He awakens in the afterlife, where your earthly life is explained to you by five people who were in it. These people may have been loved ones or distant strangers. Yet each of them changed your path forever.

Adiga, Aravind.White tiger. 2008. 2v.Balram gets his break when a rich man hires him as a chauffeur, and takes him to live in Delhi. As he drives his master to shopping malls and call centres, Balram becomes increasingly aware of immense wealth and opportunity all around him, while knowing that he will never be able to gain access to that world. As Balram broods over his situation, he realizes that there is only one way he can become part of this glamorous new India - by

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murdering his master. This book was a booker prize winner in 2008.

Ahern, Cecelia.A place called here. 2007. 4v.Sandy is obsessed with missing things. Finding becomes her goal, and she dedicates her life to finding missing people. But when she herself goes missing, and stumbles upon the place - and people - she's been looking for all of her life, will she be able to find her way back home?

Ahern, Cecelia.If you could see me now. 2006. 3v.Elizabeth's sister Saoirse is a red-haired whirlwind, always leaving behind pieces that Elizabeth struggles to pick up. One of these pieces is Saoirse's 6-year-old son Luke, a quiet, contemplative boy. When Luke is playing in Elizabeth's garden one day, witnessing the latest scene between his mother and his aunt, a friend named Ivan walks into his life. This unexpected and rather mysterious friend will change Luke - but will have an even greater impact on Elizabeth.

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Ahern, Cecelia Thanks for the memories. 2008. 4v. Joyce Conway remembers things she shouldn't. She knows about tiny cobbled streets in Paris, which she has never visited. And every night she dreams about an unknown girl with blonde hair. When Joyce leaves hospital after a terrible accident, with her life and her marriage in pieces, she moves back in with her elderly father. All the while, a strong sense of deja vu is overwhelming her and she can't figure out why.

Andrews, Lynda MThe house on lonely street. 2002. 3v. When Katherine's father is murdered in the unrest surrounding the docker's strike, she fears for her life and flees to Liverpool with Ceppi, an emotional orphan. Using her father's money to rent a ramshackle lodging house, Katherine discovers one of her tenants is a murderer.

Anthony, Michael.Green days by the river. 2000. 2v.A novel about a boy on the edge of adult responsibilities, this is the story of Shell, a

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Trinidadian boy who moves to a new village and meets two girls.

Barry, Sebastian.The secret scripture. 2008. 3v.Roseanne McNulty faces an uncertain future, as the Roscommon Regional Mental hospital where she's spent the best part of her adult life prepares for closure. Over the weeks leading up to this upheaval, she talks often with her psychiatrist Dr Grene, and their relationship intensifies and complicates. Refracted through the haze of memory and retelling, Roseanne's story becomes an alternative, secret history of Ireland's changing character and the story of a life blighted by terrible mistreatment and ignorance, and yet marked still by love and passion and hope.

Binchy, MaeveCircle of friends. 2006. 7v. On their first day at University College, Dublin, a fatal accident draws together a group of students from different backgrounds and with different aspirations.

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Binchy, Maeve. Heart and soul. 2008. 5v. Clara Casey has more than enough on her plate with her daughters' problems, a new job to cope with and now her ex-husband wants something from her. For Ania, meeting Clara is a miracle. She never intended to leave Poland, but perhaps a new job in a new country will mend her broken heart?

Hoffman, Alice. The third angel: a novel. 2009. 3v. Unravelling the years from the present to the 1950s, The Third Angel is a compelling novel, set mainly in London, about girls and women who make the wrong choices and have to live with the sometimes unbearable consequences.

Boyd, WilliamBrazzaville beach. 1991. 4v. Hope Clearwater lives on an African beach. She examines the complex circumstances that brought her there, reassessing the violent, complicated and tragic events which have occurred in her life.

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Brookner, Anita Hotel du Lac. 1993, c1984. Edith Hope has been banished by her friends to a stately hotel in Switzerland. During her stay she befriends some of the other guests, each of whom has his or her own tale.

Buchan, ElizabethThe second wife. 2007. 3v. What happens when the mistress gets her man? Against the odds, that's what happened to Minty. She stole her best friend Rose's husband Nathan and made him her own. But now that she's got what she wanted - marriage, kids, a family home - she's discovering a few things she didn't bargain on: the cold shoulder from Nathan's other family, her husband's middle age and growing distance...and accepting that first wives don't just go away.

Byatt, A S The children's book. 2009. 8v. Olive Wellwood, a famous writer, writes for each of her children a separate private book, bound in

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different colours and placed on a shelf. In their rambling house near Romney Marsh the children play in a story-book world - but their lives, and those of their rich cousins, children of a city stockbroker, and their friends, the son and daughter of a curator at the new Victoria and Albert Museum, are already inscribed with mystery.

Collins, JackieDeadly embrace. 2002. 5v. Distraught after finding out her father has been hiding secrets from her all her life - and is possibly involved with the mob - Madison flies to L.A. only to find herself held hostage by masked gunmen. Michael Castelli is being accused of murder. But has he been set up as pay-back for a deed in his past? And could his daughter's life or death situation be connected?

Collins, Jackie Lethal seduction. 2000. 5v. Fashion designer Jamie Nova has chosen the glitz of Las Vegas as the setting for celebrating her impending divorce. Joined by her two best

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friends - Jamie plans to make the most of her hard-earned holiday and forget all about her controlling ex.

Doyle, Roddy.Paddy Clarke ha, ha, ha. 1993. 2v.Paddy Clarke is ten in 1968 and loves George Best, Geronimo and the smell of his hot water bottle. He hates zoos, kissing and boys from the Corporation houses and his brother. He knows that his mother is crying, that Da leaves the house in silence, but he doesn't know why...

Desai, Kiran.The inheritance of loss. 2006. 2v.At the foot of Mount Kanchenjunga in the Himalayas, lives an embittered old judge who wants nothing more than to retire in peace. But with the arrival of his orphaned granddaughter, Sai, and his cook's son trying to stay a step ahead of US immigration services, this is far from easy. When a Nepalese insurgency threatens Sai's blossoming romance with her handsome tutor they are forced to consider their colliding interests. The judge must revisit his past, his own

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journey and his role in this grasping world of conflicting desires every moment holding out the possibility for hope or betrayal.

Doyle, Roddy.Not just for Christmas. 1999. 1v. Danny Murphy is going to meet his brother, Jimmy. They haven't seen each other in more than 20 years. On the way to the meeting, Danny remembers the fun and the fights - and the one big fight that drove them apart. Will they fight again, or will they become the friends they used to be.

Dunmore, HelenBurning bright. 2008. 3v. A 16-year-old girl leaves home to live with her Finnish lover, Kai and his business partner, Tony. Nadine is bright but naive, she likes feeling looked after and doesn't question where the money comes from. The story charts her growing friendship with the elderly Enid who is a sitting tenant.

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Elton, Ben.Chart throb. 2006. 5v."Chart throb" is the ultimate pop quest. Ninety five thousand hopefuls. Three judges. Just one winner. And that's Colin Simms, the genius behind the show. Colin always wins because Colin writes the rules. But the 'real' is about to be put back into 'reality' television and Colin and his fellow judges are about to become ex-factors themselves!

Elton, Ben.Past mortem. 2004. 3v.With old friends like these, who needs enemies? It's a question detective Edward Newson is forced to ask himself having in romantic desperation logged on to the Friends Reunited website searching for girlfriends from his past. Meanwhile, back in the present, Newson is secretly in love with Natasha, his lovely but very attached sergeant, and completely failing to solve a series of baffling and gruesome murders. When a school reunion is planned, history begins to repeat itself.

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Faulks, Sebastian. A week in December. 2009. 4v. General fiction.London, the week before Christmas, 2007. Over seven days, we follow the lives of seven major characters: a hedge fund manager trying to bring off the biggest trade of his career; a professional footballer recently arrived from Poland; a young lawyer with little work and too much time to speculate; a student who has been led astray by Islamist theory; a hack book-reviewer; a schoolboy hooked on skunk and reality TV; and, a Tube train driver whose Circle Line train joins these and countless other lives together in adaily loop. The novel pieces together the complex patterns and crossings of modern urban life. Greed, the dehumanising effects of the electronic age and the fragmentation of society are some of the themes dealt with in this book.

Ferris, Joshua.Then we came to the end. 2008. 4v.They spend their days - and too many of their nights - at work. There's Chris Yop, clinging to his ergonomic chair; Lynn Mason, the boss, whose breast cancer everyone pretends not to talk

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about; Carl Garbedian, secretly taking someone else's medication; Marcia Dwyer, whose hair is stuck in the eighties; and Benny, who's just - well, just Benny. Amidst the boredom, redundancies, water cooler moments, meetings, flirtations and pure rage, life is happening, to their great surprise, all around them.

Fforde, Katie.Life skills. 2004. 3v. When Julia breaks off her engagement to boringly safe Oscar, she decides to go for a complete change of life, as cook on a narrow boat. But even afloat, Julia's past catches up with her and she must contend with not only Oscar and his awful mother but also the arrival of the enigmatic Fergus.

Ford, Richard The sportswriter. 2006. 4v. Frank Boscombe; book 1. Frank Boscombe, sportswriter is experiencing the end of a marriage. He suffers the pangs of emotional dislocation and discovering a new way of life.

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Gayle, Mike The life and soul of the party. 2008. 2v. Set across a year of leaving dos, birthday parties and anniversaries celebrating love, life and those special moments we've all spent in the kitchen at parties. Contains strong language.

Grant, Linda.The clothes on their backs. 2008. 3v.In a red brick mansion block off the Marylebone Road, Vivien, a sensitive, bookish girl grows up sealed off from both past and present by her timid refugee parents. Then one morning a glamorous uncle appears, dressed in a mohair suit, with a diamond watch on his wrist and a girl in a leopard-skin hat on his arm. Why is Uncle Sandor so violently unwelcome in her parents' home?

Gregson, Julia. East of the sun. 2008. 8v Autumn 1928. Three young women are on their way to India, each with a new life in mind. Rose, a beautiful but naive bride-to-be, is anxious about leaving her family and marrying a man she hardly knows. Victoria, her bridesmaid couldn't be

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happier to get away from her overbearing mother, and is determined to find herself a husband. And Viva, their inexperienced chaperone, is in search of the India of her childhood,

Haddon, Mark.The curious incident of the dog in the night-time. 2004. 2v.The detective, and narrator, is Christopher Boone, who is fifteen and has Asperger's, a form of autism. He knows a very great deal about maths and very little about human beings. He has never gone further than the end of the road on his own, but when he finds a neighbour's dog murdered he sets out on a terrifying journey which will turn his whole world upside down.Contains language that some readers may find offensive.

Hall, Sarah. How to paint a dead man. 2009. 3v. Italy in the early 1960s: a dying painter considers the sacrifices and losses that have made him an enigma, both to strangers and those closest to him. He begins his last life painting, using the

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same objects he has painted obsessively for his entire career - a small group of bottles. In Cumbria 30 years later, a landscape artist and admirer of the Italian recluse – finds himself trapped in the extreme terrain that has made him famous. And in present-day London, his daughter, an art curator struggling with the sudden loss of her twin brother while trying to curate an exhibition about the lives of the twentieth-century European masters, is drawn into a world of darkness and sexual abandon. Covering half a century, this is a luminous and searching novel, and Hall's most accomplished work to date. Warning: contains sex scenes.

Heller, ZoeNotes on a scandal. 2007. 3v. When the new teacher first arrives, Barbara immediately senses that this woman will be different from the rest of her staff-room colleagues. But Barbara is not the only one to feel that Sheba is special, and before too long Sheba is involved in an illicit affair with a pupil.

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Hensher, Philip.The northern clemency. 2008. 8v.Set in Sheffield, this epic charts the relationship between two families: Malcolm and Katherine Glover and their three children; and their neighbours the Sellers family, In the background, England is changing: from a manufacturing and industrial based economy into a new world of shops, restaurants and service industries, a shift particularly marked in the North with the miners' strike of 1984, which has a dramatic impact on both families.

Hill, Susan.I’m the king of the castle. 1974. 2v.Used to roaming alone through the large house in which he lives with his father, Edmund, aged 11, bitterly resents the arrival of the new housekeepers son and sets about ridding himself of the intruder with malicious relentlessness.

Hill, Susan.Strange meeting. 1974. 2v.John Hilliard, a subaltern returning to the Western Front after a period of sick leave back in an

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England blind to the horrors of the trenches, finds his battalion tragically altered. His commanding officer finds escape in alcohol, there is a new adjutant and even Hilliard's batman has been killed.

Hislop, Victoria. The return. 2008. 5v.In a quiet cafe, a chance conversation and an intriguing collection of old photographs draw Sonia Cameron into the extraordinary tale of Spain's devastating civil war. Seventy years earlier, the cafe is home to the close-knit Ramirez family. In 1936, an army coup led by Franco shatters the country's fragile peace, and in the heart of Granada the family witnesses the worst atrocities of conflict. Divided by politics and tragedy, everyone must take a side, fighting a personal battle as Spain rips itself apart.

Hosseini, Khaled.A thousand splendid suns. 2007. 4v.Mariam is only fifteen when she is sent to Kabul to marry the troubled and bitter Rasheed, who is thirty years her senior. Nearly two decades later,

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in a climate of growing unrest, tragedy strikes fifteen-year-old Laila, who must leave her home and join Mariam's unhappy household. Laila and Mariam are to find consolation in each other, their friendship to grow as deep as the bond between sisters, as strong as the ties between mother and daughter.

Hosseini, Khaled The kite runner. 2004. 3v. Amir is desperate to win the approval of his father and win the local kite-fighting toumament. His loyal friend Hassan promises to help him but neither of the boys could foresee what would happen to Hassan on the afternoon of the tournament, which was to shatter their lives. After the Russians invade and the family is forced to flee to America, Amir realizes that one day he must return, to find the one thing that his new world cannot grant him: redemption.

Irving, JohnUntil I find you. 2005. 10v. Jack Burns' mother, Alice, is a tattoo artist in search of the boy's father. To fund her journey,

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she plies her trade in the seaports of the North Sea as she tries to track her four-year-old son's errant father. Jack studies in Canada and New England, but his life is still shaped by the events of his childhood quest. It is only when he becomes a Hollywood actor that what he has experienced in the past comes into telling play in his present.

James, Erica. It's the little things. 2009. 4v. Dan and Sally Oliver and their friend Chloe Hennessey are lucky to be alive. Three years on, after surviving one of the world's biggest natural disasters - the Boxing Day tsunami - their lives have changed dramatically. Dan and Sally are now parents. Dan is enjoying being a stay-at-home father taking care of their young son, and Sally is the bread winner and loves her job as a partner in a Manchester law firm. The arrangement has so far worked well, but when Dan starts to question whether Sally has got her priorities right, the cracks in their marriage begin to appear. Dan and Sally have everything Chloe wishes for in life - a happy marriage and a

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beautiful child. Dumped by her long term boyfriend just weeks after the tsunami, she's been on a mission ever since to find the perfect father for the child she craves. When she meets Seth Hawthorne, she thinks she may have hit the jackpot. But is Seth the man she thinks he is?

Jonker, Joan. The girl from number 22. 2004. 5v. This novel tells the entertaining story of Hetty Watson and Ada Fenwick. Neighbours for over 20 years, there's not a lot they haven't seen when it comes to the goings-on of their families. That is, until the girl from No. 22 turns the life of Ada's son, Danny, upside down.

Jones, Lloyd.Mister Pip. 2007. 2v.It is Bougainville in 1991 - a small village on a lush tropical island in the South Pacific. When the villagers' safe, predictable lives come to a halt, Bougainville's children are surprised to find the island's only white man, a recluse, re-opening the school. Pop Eye, aka Mr Watts, explains he will introduce the children to Mr Dickens. But on an

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island at war, the power of fiction has dangerous consequences and imagination and beliefs are challenged by guns.

Kelly, Cathy.Someone like you. 2001. 2v.For just-married Emma, happiness means escaping the control of her domineering father and conceiving a much longed-for child with her beloved husband. For Leonie, divorced mother of three teenagers, it means finding the true love that was missing from her ten-year marriage. And for Hannah, striking out alone after the man she loved abandoned her, it means independence and security. Contains language that some readers may find offensive.

Kerouac, Jack. On the road. 2000. 3v. On the road swings to the rhythms of 1950s underground America, jazz, sex, generosity, chill dawns and drugs, with Sal Paradise and his hero Dean Moriarty, traveller and mystic, the living epitome of Beat.

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Keyes, Marian Sushi for beginners. 2001. 5v. Who will have the nervous breakdown? Will it be Clodagh who awaits her beautiful husband's homecoming, or Lisa, hard and brittle and recently demoted? Or perhaps it will be Ashling who is so normal that she is actually weird.

Lee, Harper. To kill a mockingbird. 1989. 1v.Told with humour and drama through the eyes of an eight year old girl, and set in a sleepy town in South Alabama during the great depression in the 1930s, this is a multi-layered story which dissects the white and black communities of the American South.

Lively, PenelopeMoon tiger. 2006. 2v. Claudia Hampton is dying. As memories crowd in, she re-creates the mosiac of her life, her own story enmeshed with those of her brother, her lover and father of her daughter, and the centre of

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her life, Tom, her one great love both found and lost in the "mad fairyland" of war-torn Egypt.

Lott, Tim.Fearless. 2007. 2v. Behind the City Community Faith School walls hides a disturbing secret. One thousand girls are forced to labour in the city's laundry, separated from their families and deprived of their freedom. One of these girls is Little Fearless, a courageous and indomitable spirit who never gives up hope that one day they will be rescued. Unafraid of the punishment she will face, Little Fearless escapes the institute to tell her story to the world. But why does nobody believe she is telling the truth?

Matar, Hisham.In the country of men. 2006. 2v.On a white-hot day in Tripoli in the summer of 1979, nine-year-old Suleiman is shopping in the market square with his mother. His father is away on business - but Suleiman is sure he has just seen him, standing across the street. Why doesn't he come over when he knows Suleiman's mother is falling apart? Whispers intensify around

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Suleiman as his friend's father disappears and his mother frantically burns his father's books. As Suleiman begins to wonder whether his father has gone for good, it feels as if the walls of his home will break with the secrets held within.

MacLaverty, Bernard. Cal. 2000, 2v. The setting is Ulster and the 'star-crossed' lovers a sensitive youth, drawn unwillingly into IRA violence as the driver of a getaway car, and the local librarian whose husband has been mortally wounded by the Republicans.

Mawer, Simon The glass room. 2009. 5v.High on a Czechoslovak hill, the Landauer House shines as a wonder of steel and glass and onyx built specially for newlyweds Viktor and Liesel Landauer, a Jew married to a gentile. But the house, with its unique Glass Room, quickly tarnishes as the storm clouds of WW2 gather, and eventually the family must flee. But the house's story is far from over, and as it passes from hand to hand.

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Miller, Rebecca The private lives of Pippa Lee. 2008. 2v. Pippa suddenly finds her world beginning to unravel. Amid the buzzing lawnmowers and suburban coffee mornings, she starts to wonder how she came to be in this place. The answer is a story of wild youth, unexpected encounters, affairs and betrayals, and the dangerous security of marriage.

Miller, Sue The senator's wife. 2009. 4v. Meri, and Nathan are moving to New England to a new life that Meri is not sure she even wants. Nathan, however, is boyishly excited that their next-door neighbour is the eminent Senator Tom Naughton. The Senator is nowhere to be seen, but Meri strikes up an unexpected friendship with his wife, the elegant Delia, sensing that she has much to learn from her - about marriage, love and motherhood.

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Morrison, Toni. Song of Solomon. 2005. 4v. This is the story of Macon "Milkman" Dead, heir to the richest black family in a Midwestern town, as he makes a voyage of rediscovery, travelling southwards geographically and inwards spiritually. Through the enlightenment of one man, the novel recapitulates the history of slavery and liberation.

Murakami, Haruki and Rubin, Jay. After dark. 2007. 2v. General fiction.Mari, a nineteen year old girl, is sitting alone in a coffee bar reading a novel and waiting for the night to pass. Takahashi a jazz musician is savouring his bands last all-night rehearsal and has stopped in for some coffee. It is almost midnight. As the strange events of the dense night unfold it is as if the night has been personified, and the people are just encroaching on its time. Revelation and transition is in the air, it is `After Dark' and the possibilities are endless.

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Nabokov, Vladimir. Lolita. 1995. 4v. General fiction.Originally written in 1955, this comic satire of sex and the American ways of life focuses on the love of a middle-aged European for an American nymphet.

O'Loughlin, EdNot untrue and not unkind. 2009. 3v. In Dublin, a newspaper editor called Cartwright is found dead. One of his colleagues, Owen Simmons, discovers a dossier on Cartwright's desk. And in the dossier Owen finds a photograph, which brings him back to a dusty road in Africa and to the woman he once loved.

Paton, AlanCry, the beloved country: a story of comfort in desolation. 2002. 3v. This novel depicting the social and racial problems of South Africa, is of a humble Zulu pastor whose son is involved in the murder of a white man.

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Pearse, Lesley Faith. 2008. 6v. Laura Brannigan is in jail for murder. For two years she's been battling for justice - insisting that she didn't kill her best friend, Jackie. With her spirits at their lowest ebb, she receives a letter that takes her back to a different time and memory of an old love. Twenty years ago was a heady time for Laura: she'd escaped an abusive home and together with new best friend Jackie she'd made a fresh start. The pair had sworn to be sisters for ever. And Stuart had come into their lives - giving Laura a brilliant summer of love.

Proulx, Annie. The shipping news. 2006. 4v. Quoyle is a hapless, hopeless hack journalist living and working in New York. When his no-good wife is killed in a spectacular road accident, Quoyle heads for the land of his forefathers - the remotest corner of the far-flung Newfoundland. With his delinquent daughters, Bunny and Sunshine, in tow, Quoyle finds himself a part of an unfolding, exhilarating Atlantic drama.

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Salinger, J.D.The catcher in the rye. 1994. 2v.A sixteen-year-old boy relates his experiences as he goes through school and after, and reveals with unusual candour the workings of his own mind. What does a boy in his teens think and feel about his teachers, parents, friends and acquaintances?

Sallis, Susan. Rachel's secret. 2008. 3v. In 1943 two schoolgirls, Rachel and Meriel, best friends in the Gloucestershire city where they have grown up, amuse themselves by tracking down imaginary German spies. It all seems a harmless way of whiling away the long school holidays, until their game turns into a frightening reality, the consequences of which affect their whole lives. Rachel becomes a reporter on the local paper while Meriel, a GI bride, goes to live in Florida. But the bonds which hold them together can never be broken, as the secrets and scandals which first surfaced in those far-off wartime days eventually come to light.

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Sayle, Alexei.The weeping women hotel. 2006. 2v.Northern girl Harriet lives and works on a London estate which is a battleground between the white working class plus the immigrants versus the newly arrived middle class focaccia-eaters. Unhappy and overweight, she hires a personal trainer who lures her into joining the martial arts class he runs. There she learns the regime of the completely phoney martial arts 'master' and embarks on a spiritual and literal journey which leads her to a hotel opposite the railway station at Crewe, the 'Weeping Women Hotel'.

Scanlan, Patricia.Divided loyalties. 2008. 2v.Shauna and Greg's marriage is under pressure. She wants another baby - he doesn't. She also has to endure her obnoxious in-laws and their spoilt kids. Shauna's glad to be moving abroad. She'll be free of them at last - won't she?

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Read, Miss. Friends at Thrush Green. 1991. 3v. When retired schoolteachers Dorothy Watson and Agnes Fogerty return to visit their friends at Thrush Green they find the village abuzz with gossip. The old schoolhouse has just been sold and everyone is eager to welcome the new owners, the Lesters.

Rendell, RuthA new lease of death. 2009. 2v. Inspector Wexford; book 2. Of course Chief Inspector Wexford remembered the Painter case; it was the first murder case he had handled on his own. More than fifteen years later, the case is to be dug up again; there is someone who wants it retraced and re-examined and who wants Wexford proved wrong.

Scudamore, JamesHeliopolis. 2009. 3v. Ludo undergoes a remarkable transformation, he first leaves, then returns to Sao Paulo city of his birth - but on the opposite sides of its social divide. Now twenty-seven, he works for a vacuous

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'communications company', marketing unwanted, unaffordable products aimed at the very underclass into which he was born. He has developed an obsessive, adulterous love for his adoptive sister, whose husband is his only

Self, Will The Butt: an exit strategy. 2008. 3v. Flipping the butt of his final cigarette off the balcony of his holiday apartment, Tom is appalled when it lands on the head of Reggie Lincoln. The local authorities are obliged to regard Tom's action as an assault. Worse is to follow: Lincoln is married to a native from one of the rigorous, mystical tribes of the desert interior. In order to make reparations to Mrs Lincoln's people, Tom will have to leave his family behind, and carry the appropriate goods and chattels deep into the arid heart of this strange, island continent.

Sinha, Indra.Animal's people. 2007. 4v.Ever since he can remember, Animal has gone on all fours, the catastrophic result of what happened on That Night when, thanks to an American

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chemical company, the Apocalypse visited his slum. Now not quite twenty, he leads a hand-to-mouth existence with his dog Jara and a crazy old nun called Ma Franci.

Sittenfeld, Curtis. American wife: a novel. 2008. 7v. On one of the most important days of her husband's presidency, Alice Blackwell considers the strange and unlikely path that has led them to the White House. Thrust into a position she did not seek - one of power and influence, privilege and responsibility - Alice must face contradictions years in the making: how can she at once love and fundamentally disagree with her husband? How complicit has she been in the trajectory of her own life?

Smith, ZadieWhite teeth. 2001. 6v. This is the story of three families, one Indian, one white, one mixed, in North London and Oxford from World War II to the present day. It deals with friendship, love, war, three cultures and three families over three generations, one brown

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mouse, and the tricky way the past has of coming back.

Steinbeck, John The grapes of wrath. 2000. 6v. Set against the background of dust bowl Oklahoma and Californian migrant life, it tells of the Joad family, who, like thousands of others, are forced to travel West in search of the promised land. Their story is one of false hopes, thwarted desires and broken dreams.

Swarup, Vikas Slumdog millionaire. 2009. 3v. Former tiffinboy Ram Mohammad Thomas has just got twelve questions correct on a TV quiz-show to win a cool one billion rupees. But he is brutally slung in prison on suspicion of cheating. In the order of the questions on the show, Ram tells us which amazing adventures in his street-kid life gave him the answers.

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Syal, Meera.Life isn’t all ha ha hee hee. 2000. 3v.Tania, Sunita and Chila have been close and somewhat unlikely friends since their schooldays. Sunita, a former law student and activist, married her university sweetheart Akash, and is settled, unsatisfied, into a life of overweight, underappreciated motherhood. Tania, top girl fighter at school, is a raven-maned beauty, who has rejected marriage and anything traditionally Asian, for a high-flying TV career and a compliant Indophile boyfriend called Martin. And then there's Chila. Innocent, kind, funny qualification-less Chila, with her glass animal collection, considered backward by her family, has just, to everyone's amazement, snared Deepak--the richest, most eligible bachelor within a 50-mile radius.

Toibin, ColmBrooklyn. 2009. 3v. Leaving her family and home in Ireland in the 1950s, Eilis sets off to forge a new life for herself in Brooklyn, USA. But when tragic news summons her back to Ireland, she finds herself

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facing a terrible choice: between love and happiness in the land where she belongs and the promises she must keep on the far side of the ocean.

Tremain, Rose.The road home. 2007. 5v.Like so many others, Lev is on his way to Britain to seek work, so that he can send money back to Eastern Europe to support his mother and little daughter. Now, in front of him, lies the deep strangeness of the British: Their hostile streets, their obsession with celebrity, their clannish pubs and their lonely flats.

Trevor, WilliamLove and summer. 2009. 2v. It's summer and nothing much is happening in Rathmoye. So it doesn't go unnoticed when a dark-haired stranger appears on his bicycle and begins photographing the mourners at Mrs Connulty's funeral. But Mrs Connulty's daughter, liberated at last by the death of her imperious mother, resolves to keep an eye on Florian

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Kilderry, and it's she who comes to witness the events that follow.

Trollope, Joanna A village affair. 1990. 3v.Alice moves with her family to a peaceful village in Gloucestershire where she hopes to overcome post-natal depression.

Tyler, Anne. Noah's compass. 2009. 3vWidowed, re-married, divorced and the father of three daughters, Liam is a man who is proud of his recall but has learned to dodge issues and skirt adventure. An unpleasant event occurs, though, to jolt him out of his certainty. Obsessed with a frightening gap in his memory, he sets out to uncover what happened, and finds instead an unusual woman with secrets of her own, and a late-flowering love that brings its own thorny problems.

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Updike, John Terrorist. 2007. 3v. Set in contemporary New Jersey, this novel traces the journey of one young man, from radicalism to fundamentalism to terrorism, against the backdrop of a fraying urban landscape and an increasingly fragmented community.

Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-five or The children's crusade: a duty-dance with death. 2000. 2v. Science fiction.Billy Pilgrim, an American captured by the Germans in the Second World War, is billetted in a slaughterhouse in Dresden and survives the annihilation of the city by the RAF. He later becomes rich and successful, only to find himself transported to another planet from which he returns radiant and full of desire to preach his message.

Welsh, Irvine.Trainspotting. 1999. 3v.Trainspotting is a loosely knotted string of jagged, dislocated tales that lay bare the hearts of

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darkness of the junkies, wide-boys and psychos who ride in the down escalator of opportunity in the nation's capital. Contains language and scenes of a nature that some readers may find offensive.

Humorous fiction.

Bennett, Alan.The uncommon reader. 2007. 1v.It was the corgis' fault. When they strayed through the grounds of Buckingham Palace, the Queen discovered the City of Westminster travelling library. One book leads to another and the Queen is soon engrossed in the delights of reading. However, the royal household dislikes the Queen's new interest, it makes them uneasy because books are devices that ignite the imagination.

Clarke, Stephen. Merde happens. 2007. 4v. Paul West is in deep financial merde. His only way out of debt is to accept a decidedly dodgy job

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that involves him crossing the USA in a Mini, while pretending to be typically British. Adding to the crush in the car is Paul's French girlfriend, Alexa, and his American poet friend Jake whose main aim in life is to sleep with a woman from every country in the world. Preferably in the back of Paul's Mini. But as the little car battles from New York to Miami, and then heads west, legroom turns out to be the least of Paul's troubles. His work is being sabotaged, his tour plans are in tatters, and his love life becomes a Franco-American war zone. And as Paul knows better than anyone, when you mix love and war - merde happens...

Gayle, Mike.My legendary girlfriend. 1998. 2v.A weekend in the life of struggling teacher Will Kelly, still in love with "The One" and desperately seeking An-Other One, and his discovery that with a phone call, friends can lift you up from the depths of depression or muck up your entire weekend.

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Hornby, Nick.About a boy. 2000. 2v.Will doesn't want children and can't see why everyone keeps recommending them, but he likes single mothers, especially if they look like Julie Christie. As a result he gets involved in a single parents' group and invents a two year old son whose absence needs constant explanations.

Kinsella, Sophie.Shopaholic and baby. 2008. 4v.Becky's life is blooming! She's working at London's newest fashion store The Look, house-hunting with husband Luke (her secret wish is a Shoe Room)... and she's pregnant! She couldn't be more overjoyed - especially since discovering that shopping cures morning sickness. But when the celebrity obstetrician turns out to be her husband Luke's glamorous, intellectual ex-girlfriend, Becky's perfect world starts to crumble.

Kinsella, Sophie.Shopaholic and sister. 2004. 4v.Rebecca Bloomwood is now happily married to Luke Brandon, and all her problems seem to be at

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an end. But suddenly into her life steps...a sister, of whose existence Becky had hitherto been completely unaware. Becky is only too anxious to welcome her into the bosom of the family. But there is only one snag - she HATES shopping.

Mortimer, John. The anti-social behaviour of Horace Rumpole. 2007. 1v. ASBOs may be the pride and joy of New Labour, but they don't cut much ice with Horace Rumpole - he takes the old-fashioned view that if anyone is going to be threatened with a restriction of their liberty then some form of legal proceeding ought to be gone through first. When one of the Timson children is given an ASBO for playing football in the street he realizes something fishy is going on. Why are the residents pursuing their vendetta against the Timson boy quite so strongly?

Orwell, George. Keep the aspidistra flying. 2000. 3v. Satire.Gordon Comstock loathes dull, middle-class respectability and worship of money. He gives up a 'good job' in advertising to work part-time in a

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bookshop, giving him more time to write. But he slides instead into a self-induced poverty that destroys his creativity and his spirit. Only Rosemary, ever-faithful Rosemary, has the strength to challenge his commitment to his chosen way of life. Through the character of Gordon Comstock, Orwell reveals his own disaffection with the society he once himself renounced.

Russell, Willy.Educating Rita. 1981. 1v.Frank is a tutor of English at a Northern university, a man in his fifties whose disillusioned outlook on life drives him to seek refuge in whisky. Rita is a forthright twenty-six year-old hairdresser who is hungry to find some meaning to life and "know everything". With Frank as her tutor, Rita embarks on an Open University course, and her education begins.

Sharpe, Tom. The Gropes. 2009. 2v. The Gropes are an old English family based in Northumberland, separated from the rest of

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society and as eccentric as they come. It is a line dominated by strong-willed and oversexed women, determined to produce more female heirs regardless of whether their desired partners are willing...

Townsend, Sue.The secret diary of Adrian Mole aged 13 3/4. 2008. 4v.Dogged by misfortunes common to anyone above the age of 13, from spots to cracks in his parents' marriage, Adrian's life is brightened by his passion for a 14 year-old feminist, and his forceful grandmother who can be relied upon to bring order to the chaotic Mole household - and even sort out the school bully!

Townsend, Sue.The growing pains of Adrian Mole. 2008. 4v.Further adventures of the newly 15-year-old: his nose is still swollen from its humiliating encounter with a model aeroplane; he has 38 spots, 28 on his face and the rest on his shoulders; perhaps worst of all, he has "never seen a dead body or a real female nipple. This is what comes of living in

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a cul-de-sac." He is to experience love and the pangs of its loss, blind dates and neuroses - in short, all the agonies of growing up.

Sea stories

Bowling, TomThe antigallican. 2008. 3v. Jersey fishing captain, Jean Cotterell is rescued by a French frigate - The Hortense - off the Grand Banks of Nova Scotia in May 1794. His fishing vessel has foundered and he is the sole survivor. The Hortense is part of Republican Admiral Jan Van Stabel's great fleet of over 100 ships bringing American corn to France. Lord Howe's Channel Fleet is off the French coast, hoping to intercept them.

Forester, C.S. The happy return. 2006. 3v. Sailing the frigate "Lydia" in South American waters, Captain Hornblower has orders to sink the "Natividad", a Spanish two-decker. But this proves the least of his worries, for he is also

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commanded to aid the revolutionary El Supremo, a madman whose bestialities stagger the Spanish authorities.

Short Stories

Binchy, Maeve.This year it will be different. 2008. 2v. Binchy evokes power shifts in families,unwelcome discoveries, conspiracies, affairs, forgiveness sorrow and the rebirth of optimism with her usual warmth and sympathy.

Boyd, William.Fascination. 2004. 2v. The stories in this collection move from 1930s Germany to Los Angeles in the Second World War, from contemporary Oxford to19th century Russia. Whether in London or Amsterdam, they explore and expose the fraught, funny, absurd, poignant and lovelorn lives of their many and varied characters.

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Proulx, AnnieFine just the way it is. 2008. 2v.A return to the Wyoming of Brokeback Mountain and the familiar cast of hardy, unsentimental prairie folk, from the native Indian tribes to the modern day ranch owners and politicians, and their cowboy forebears. These are stories of desperation and hard times, often marked by an inescapable sadness, set in a landscape both brutal and magnificent.

Big night out. 2002. 4v. Adams, Jessica. (Editor)Over 30 short stories from bestsellers like Marian Keyes and Candace Bushnell, and award-winners such as Patrick Neate, plus party tips from celebs who really know how to have a good time....

Boyd, William The dream lover: c2008. 3v. Funny, moving and sharply observed, twenty-four gripping tales told in bold, distinct voices from Brazil to Africa and from Nice to Hollywood.

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Du Maurier, Daphne.Don't look now and other stories. 2006. 2v.John and Laura have come to Venice to try and escape the pain of their young daughter's death. But when they encounter two old women who claim to have second sight, they find that, instead of laying their ghosts to rest, they become caught up in a train of increasingly strange and violent events.

Du Maurier, Daphne.The birds and other stories. 2004. 2v.The birds become hostile after a harsh winter with little food - first the seagulls, then birds of prey, and finally even small birds - all turn against mankind.

Proulx, Annie Fine just the way it is. 2008. 2v. A return to the Wyoming of Brokeback Mountain and the familiar cast of hardy, unsentimental prairie folk, from the native Indian tribes to the modern day ranch owners and politicians, and their cowboy forebears. These are stories of desperation and hard times, often marked by an

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inescapable sadness, set in a landscape both brutal and magnificent.

Ford, Richard A multitude of sins. 2006. 3v. On the ski slopes of Michigan, a white-trash ex-husband assaults his rich in-law. Outside New Orleans, a teenager goes duck-hunting with the father that abandoned his family the year before to live with another man. In suburban Connecticut, a young wife glibly confesses to her husband her one-night stand with the host of the party they are about to attend.

Ishiguro, KazuoNocturnes: five stories of music and nightfall. 2009. 2v. From the piazzas of Italy to the Malvern Hills, a London flat to the 'hush-hush floor' of an exclusive Hollywood hotel, the characters we encounter range from young dreamers to cafe musicians to faded stars, all of them at some moment of reckoning.

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Proulx, Annie Fine just the way it is. 2008. 2v. A return to the Wyoming of Brokeback Mountain and the familiar cast of hardy, unsentimental prairie folk, from the native Indian tribes to the modern day ranch owners and politicians, and their cowboy forebears. These are stories of desperation and hard times, often marked by an inescapable sadness, set in a landscape both brutal and magnificent.

War

Barker, Pat. Regeneration. 1997. 2v.Set during the First World War, this highly acclaimed novel centres on a real-life encounter that occurred at Craiglockhart in 1917 between W.H.R. Rivers, an army psychiatrist and Siegfried Sassoon.

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Bates, H EFair stood the wind for France. 2005. 3v. A bomber crashes in Occupied France returning from a raid in 1943. The crew escape and return eventually to England. Their story is that of France and of the men who flew with the RAF, a story of love, compassion and the triumph of the human spirit.

Black, Rory. Iron Eyes makes war. 2009. 1v. The infamous bounty hunter, Iron Eyes, is forced to chase the wanted outlaw Joe Brewster down into an arid desert even though he has been badly wounded in a showdown with Brewster's brothers. Losing his pony, Iron Eyes is forced to follow on foot. To his surprise, he discovers an oasis in a valley. Iron Eyes trails the outlaw into the valley and soon finds that a few families are living there under threat of death by Don Miguel Sanchez and his army of vaqueros. Will Iron Eyes leave or fight until the bloody showdown?

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Chambers, Aidan.Postcards from no man's land. 2007. 3v.Two interwoven stories, separated by 50 years. Set in Holland, one story tells of the passionate love between a young Dutch woman and Jacob Todd, a wounded English soldier. The other story finds the English soldier's grandson visiting Amsterdam for the commemoration of The Battle of Arnhem.

De Bernieres, Louis.Captain Corelli's mandolin. 1998. 2v.Set on the Greek island of Cephalonia during World War II, this is the story of a beautiful young woman and her two suitors. Her fiance, gentle fisherman turned ruthless guerrilla, and the charming Captain Corelli, head of the Italian garrison on the island, a consummate mandolin player. Can this second, fragile love survive the bestial savagery of war?

Faulks, Sebastian.Birdsong. 1994. 4v.Amiens, 1910, and young Stephen Wraysford has been sent by his employer to study the textile

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trade. His host, Azaire, is a prosperous manufacturer. Stephen and Isabelle, Azaire's second wife, are immediately aware of a bond between them which oversteps any considerations of propriety. The Somme, 1916, and Stephen is now a lieutenant in the British Army, lonely and brooding and France has become a bloody battlefield. In 1978 a woman finds a diary and begins to relive the horrors of trench warfare with the writer.Contains scenes of a sexual nature that some readers may find offensive.

Hemingway, Ernest. For whom the bell tolls. 1999. 5v. A passionate evocation of the civil war that tore Spain apart. High in the pine forests of the Spanish Sierra, a guerilla band prepares to blow up a vital bridge. Robert Jordan, a young American volunteer, has been sent to handle the dynamiting. There, in the mountains, he finds the dangers and the intense comradeship of war and there he discovers Maria, a young woman who has escaped from Franco's rebels.

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Hewson, Sherrie. The tannery. 2009. 1v.It's 1938 and times are already hard. Then war comes and everything changes. Dolly's father leaves his job at the local tannery and joins the war effort. When Wilf finally comes home he returns to a teenage daughter who has been forced to grow up too soon, and a wife who is destroyed by what she's become. With the tannery fires still burning the hatred, resentment and secrets simmer beneath the attempts to restore a normal life for them all until finally, one night - things spiral out of control.

Kennedy, A L. Day. 2008. 3v. Before Hitler and the bombs Aldred Day was a boy in Staffordshire, helpless to defend his mother, to resist his abusive father. The RAF taught him how to burn through lifetimes on night ops and brief, sweet leaves, surviving the unsurvivable. But it didn't prepare him for capture, for the prison camp and the chaos as the war wound down. Now it's 1949 and Alfred is doing the impossible again,

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winding back time to see where he lost himself. He has taken the role of an extra in a Pow film. Shipped out to Germany and an ersatz camp, he picks his way through the cliches that will become all that's left of his war and begins to do what he's never dared - to remember.

McGraw, Philip CSilveroo. 2008. 1v. Daco Ward is a drifter with just seventy cents in his pants' pocket when Bill Dodds offers him a job. But Dodds has a way of making enemies. He bests Tucker Lankton at cards and Lankton vows to get even. And Daco too didn't like the feeling that Dodds had made a fool of him. Now Daco would find himself in the middle of a deadly game of deceit and murder; the prize being the riches of Silveroo.

McMahon, Katherine.The rose of Sebastopol. 2007. 4v.In 1855 Rosa Barr, a headstrong young woman, travels to the Crimea, against the wishes of her family, determined to work as a nurse. She does not return. Uncover the truth about what has

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happened to her and uncover the secrets of those who loved her.

Nemirovsky, Irene. Suite Française. 2007. 5v. Set during a year that begins with France's fall to the Nazis in June 1940 and ends with Germany turning its attention to Russia, "Suite Francaise" falls into two parts. The first is a depiction of a group of Parisians as they flee the Nazi invasion and make their way through the chaos of France; the second follows the inhabitants of a small rural community under occupation who find themselves thrown together in ways they never expected.

Peet, Mal.Tamar: a story of secrecy and survival. 2005. 5v.When Tamar's grandfather, an intensely private man, falls from a balcony to his death, he leaves behind a box with Tamar's name on it. For a long time Tamar refuses even to think about it...until one day she opens it to reveal a series of clues and hidden messages from her grandfather. She and her cousin Johannes follow the clues and

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discover that her name also belonged to someone involved in the terrifying world of resistance fighters in Nazi-occupied Holland during the Second World War.

Waters, Sarah.The night watch. 2006. 6v.This is the story of four Londoners - three women and a young man with a past. Kay, who drove an ambulance during the war and lived life at full throttle, now dresses in mannish clothes and wanders the streets with a restless hunger, searching. Helen, clever, sweet, much-loved, harbours a painful secret. Viv, glamour girl, is stubbornly, even foolishly loyal, to her soldier lover. Duncan, an apparent innocent, has had his own demons to fight during the war. Their lives, and their secrets connect in sometimes startling ways. Contains language and scenes of a sexual nature that some readers may find offensive.

Westall, Robert.The machine gunners. 1977. 2v.'Some bright kid's got a gun and 2000 rounds of live ammo. It'll go through a brick wall at a quarter

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of a mile.' Chas McGill has the second-best collection of war souvenirs in Garmouth, and he desperately wants it to be the best.

Zusak, Markus.The book thief. 1977. 3v.Liesel, a nine-year-old girl, is living with a foster family on Himmel Street. Her parents have been taken away to a concentration camp. She befriends blond-haired Rudy Steiner, and the mayor's wife, who hides from despair in her library. Together Liesel and Rudy steal books - from Nazi book burning piles, from the mayor's library, from the richer people of Molching. By 1943, the Allied bombs are falling, and the sirens begin to wail. Liesel shares out her books in the air-raid shelters. But one day in the life of Himmel street, the wail of the sirens comes too late.

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