Reading Well
Health and wellbeing collections chosen by librarians and health professionals
August New Reads
Check out our new reads for the Summer! Each of these books are available for order online!
Bridge by Lauren Beukes
Bridge’s maverick scientist mother Jo is dead.
Now she’s examining everything Jo left behind.
Which is when she finds her big secret.
Is it a drug?
A gateway to other worlds?
Jo believed so.
Bridge is desperate to see her mother again.
Will do anything, risk anything.
Including search for her in those other realities.
What she doesn’t know is that others
are after Jo’s secret. And some believe anyone
it touches must be destroyed.
Bridge? She just wants to find her mom …
The Sentence by Christina Dalcher
A law intended to end capital punishment. Prosecutors who seek the death penalty put their lives on the line if the guilty are later found innocent. A lawyer convinced beyond reasonable doubt. Justine Boucher is presented with overwhelming evidence in a brutal murder case. Her request for execution is granted. But what if she’s wrong?
A Twisted Love Story by Samantha Downing
Wes and Ivy are madly in love.
It’s the kind of romance people write stories about. But what kind of story? Because when it’s good, it’s very very good. But when it’s bad, it’s bad.
But their breakneck cycle of catastrophic vengeful break-ups and head-over-heels reconnections needs to end fast. Because suddenly, Wes and Ivy have a common enemy – and she’s a detective. One wrong move will be fatal – so if Wes and Ivy can’t stick together, this break-up might just be their last.
The Fine Art of Uncanny Prediction by Robert Goddard
Umiko Wada never set out to be a private detective, let alone become the one-woman operation behind the Kodaka Detective Agency. But so it has turned out, thanks to the death of her former boss, Kazuto Kodaka, in mysterious circumstances.
Keen to avoid a similar fate, Wada chooses the cases she takes very carefully. A businessman who wants her to track down his son offers what appears to be a straightforward assignment. But she should have known that the simplest cases are never simple at all. Soon she finds herself pulled into a labyrinthine conspiracy with links to a 27-year-old investigation by her late employer and to the chaos and trauma of the dying days of the Second World War.
As Wada uncovers a dizzying web of connections between then and now, it becomes clear that someone has gone to extraordinary lengths to keep the past buried. And the deeper Wada digs, the more danger she finds herself in.
Reasonable People by Caroline Hulse
After a kid’s party faux-pas, mother Janine anonymously vents about her father-in-law’s behaviour on internet forum Am I The Villain Here?
When the community is invited to take sides the post goes viral, with mild-mannered Roy ending up in the national newspapers and sparking protests at his local library.
‘Reasonable People’ explores how judging others reveals our deepest, most unreasonable selves.
The Book of Fire by Christy Lefteri
A family from two nations, England and Greece, live a simple life on a tiny Greek island: Irini, Tasso and their daughter, lovely, sweet Chara, whose name means joy. Their life goes up in flames in a single day when one man starts a fire out of greed and indifference.
In the wake of the fire, Chara bears deep scars across her back and arms. Tasso is frozen in trauma, devastated that he wasn’t there when his family needed him most. And Irini is crippled by guilt at her part in the fate of the man who started the fire. But this family has survived, and slowly green shoots of hope and renewal will grow from the smouldering ruins of devastation. Christy Lefteri has crafted a novel which is intimate and epic, sweeping and delicate.
‘The Book of Fire’ explores not only the damage wrought by human folly, but also – and ultimately – our powers of redemption and renewal.
Farewell to the little Coffee Shop of Kabul by Deborah Rodriguez
Kabul, August 2021.
Sunny Tedder is back in her beloved coffee shop.
After eight years away, she’s thrilled to reunite with her Kabul ‘family’: Yazmina now runs a pair of women’s shelters from the old cafe, and dreams of a bright future for her two young daughters.
Her sister Layla has become an outspoken women’s rights activist and, thanks to social media, is quite the celebrity. Kat, Sunny’s friend from America, is wrapping up her year-long stay in the land of her birth, but is facing some unfinished business. And finally there’s elderly den mother Halajan, whose secret new hobby is itself an act of rebellion. Then the US troops begin to withdraw – and the women watch in horror as the Taliban advance on the capital at ferocious speed.
The Bone Hacker by Kathy Reichs
Called in to examine what is left of a body struck by lightning, Tempe traces an unusual tattoo to its source and is soon embroiled in a much larger case.
Young men – tourists – have been disappearing on the islands of Turks and Caicos for years. Seven years ago, the first victim was found with both hands cut off; the other visitors vanished without a trace. But recently, tantalizing leads have emerged and only Tempe can unravel them. Maddeningly, the victims seem to have nothing in common – other than the unusual locations where their bodies are eventually found, and the fact that the young men all seem to be the least likely to be involved in foul play.
Do these attacks have something to do with the islands’ seething culture of gang violence? Tempe isn’t so sure. And then she turns up disturbing clues that what’s at stake may actually have global significance.
Anatomy of a Killer by Romy Hausmann
Berlin, 2017: several young girls have been disappearing for the past fourteen years.
Red ribbons show the police the way to their bodies, but there’s no trace of the killer. One evening, internationally renowned philosophy professor and anthropologist Walter Lesniak is arrested on the suspicion of the murders in the presence of his daughter, Ann.
‘Professor Death’ becomes the headline of the tabloid press and Lesniak himself refuses to cooperate with the police. Ann is certain this is all some kind of mistake. And she will prove it. Yet, with the arrest of her father, she begins a journey into the unknown.
Good Bad Girl by Alice Feeney
Sometimes bad things happen to good people, so good people have to do bad things.
Twenty years after a baby is stolen from her push-chair, a woman is murdered in a care home. The two crimes are somehow linked, and a good bad girl may be the key to discovering the truth. Edith may have been tricked into a nursing home, but at eighty-years-young, she’s planning her escape. Patience works there, cleaning up mess and bonding with Edith, a kindred spirit. But Patience is lying to Edith about almost everything. Edith’s own daughter, Clio, won’t speak to her. And someone new is about to knock on Clio’s door – and their intentions aren’t good.
With every reason to distrust each other, the women must solve a mystery with three suspects, two murders, and one victim. If they do, they might just find out what happened to the baby who disappeared, the mother who lost her, and the connections that bind them.
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