November 29, 2024
New Fiction
Christmas with the Queen by Hazel Gaynor and Heather Webb – December 1952. While the young Queen Elizabeth II finds her feet as the new monarch, she must also find the right words to continue the tradition of her late father’s Christmas Day radio broadcast. But even traditions must evolve with the times, and the queen faces a postwar broadcast. But even traditions must evolve with the times, and the queen faces a postwar Britain hungry for change. As preparations begin for the royal Christmas at Sandringham Estate in Norfolk, old friends – Jack Devereux, a widowed chef with dreams to run his own restaurant, and Olive Carter, a single mother and aspiring reporter – are unexpectedly reunited by the occasion. As Jack’s and Olive’s paths continue to cross over the following five Christmases, they grow ever closer. Yet Olive carries the burden of a heavy secret that threatens to destroy everything. December 1957. As the nation eagerly awaits the Queen’s first televised Christmas speech, there is one final gift for the season to deliver.
Shell Games by Bonnie Kistler - Julie’s mother Kate is a force of nature––a glamorous woman of seventy, a self-made real estate developer, a grande dame in Florida society, and a power broker in Florida politics. It wasn’t easy for Julie to grow up in the shadow of such a dynamo, but she loves her mother, and she and her husband Eric are thrilled when Kate marries her long-lost high school sweetheart, a salt-of-the-earth man named Charlie.But their storybook romance ends abruptly. On their wedding night, Kate calls the police in hysterics to report that Charlie just confessed to a notorious unsolved crime from decades before. Charlie says she imagined it. Eric says that Kate has dementia. And the FBI says that Charlie couldn’t possibly have committed that crime. Julie doesn’t know what to believe. Is her brilliant mother losing her mind? Or is sweet, lovable Charlie gaslighting Kate to gain control of her fortune? As Julie tries to navigate through this maze of paranoia and mind games, cracks start to develop in her own marriage as it seems that Eric is keeping secrets .
The Collaborators by Michael Idov - Crisscrossing the globe on the way to this shocking revelation are disaffected millennial CIA officer Ari Falk, thrown into a moral and professional crisis by the death of his best asset; and brash, troubled LA heiress Maya Chou, spiraling after the disappearance of her Russian American billionaire father. The duo’s adventures take us to both classic and surprising locales—from Berlin, to Latvia, Belarus, and an abandoned technopark outside Moscow.
Fire on the Horizon by Wilbur Smith -South Africa, 1899 - the smouldering hostility between the Boers of the Transvaal and Orange Free State and the British colonies of the Cape and Natal is about to burst into flame. War is coming and no one can prevent it. Colonel Penrod Ballantyne, hero of Abu Klea and Omdurman, is sent to Mafeking, 'the place of stones', to recruit and train men for the fighting ahead. Amber, his wife, the successful novelist, accompanies him - eager to see more of the country her husband is about to risk his life for. But when war is declared, Amber must flee with their baby son and pray for her husband's survival against impossible odds. Eight hundred miles to the south, in Cape Town, Ryder Courtney - adventurer, maverick, industrialist - is using his wealth and connections to bankroll the British war effort. His artist wife Saffron, frustrated by stuffy Cairo society, has joined him with their three children. There is peace in the Courtney household, or so Saffron believes, until their eldest son, Leon, stows away on a train to the front line, determined to join his distinguished uncle, Penrod Ballantyne, in changing the course of history. Saffron and Ryder have no choice but to leave the safety of the Cape Colony and follow. Leon is convinced that his parents are without honour and courage. Little does he realise that he has no chance of escaping the people they used to be. Two families torn apart, caught up in a battle for the heart of a country at war with itself.