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60<br />
The Book Nook<br />
From historical fiction to dystopian<br />
literature plus new releases to older<br />
books that deserve more attention,<br />
there’s plenty to get your teeth stuck<br />
into this month.<br />
Gather the Daughters<br />
Jennie Melamed<br />
On the island, girls are little more<br />
than wives-in-training – following<br />
the decrees of the founding<br />
ancestors and submitting to every<br />
demand of their fathers. They have<br />
one brief period of freedom over<br />
the summer, when they live wild<br />
and do as they please. The summers are short-lived, and<br />
the girls know that they’re destined to be married once<br />
they hit puberty. But one day they decide to take back<br />
their freedom, at whatever cost. Gather the Daughters is<br />
pretty disturbing and there are a lot of triggers, but as<br />
dystopian literature goes, it’s one that will stick with you<br />
for a very long time.<br />
Little Fires Everywhere<br />
Celeste Ng<br />
Whether you’ve watched the<br />
Amazon Prime series or not, the<br />
book is well worth a read. To the<br />
outsider, Shaker Heights seems like<br />
the perfect town. And no one is<br />
more perfect than Elena Richardson.<br />
Her daughter Izzy, on the other<br />
hand, is impetuous and disinclined to follow the rigid<br />
path laid down by her mother. When artist Mia Warren<br />
arrives on the scene with her daughter Pearl, the fragility<br />
of a ‘perfect’ life becomes all too apparent. A manylayered<br />
read about motherhood, secrets, race and the<br />
many nuances of right and wrong.<br />
The Midnight Library<br />
Matt Haig<br />
Nora’s overdose doesn’t result in, as<br />
she’d hoped, nothingness. Instead,<br />
she’s transported to the Midnight<br />
Library, where she gets the chance<br />
to try the other lives she could have<br />
led if she’d made different choices.<br />
As she faces her regrets (from not marrying to not<br />
becoming an Olympic swimmer), Nora discovers that the<br />
path not taken isn’t always the panacea she thinks it is.<br />
A Room Made of Leaves<br />
Kate Grenville<br />
A Room Made of Leaves is the<br />
fictionalised account of a real<br />
woman’s life – Elizabeth Macarthur.<br />
It’s set in the late eighteenth century.<br />
Women had few prospects beyond<br />
marriage, so when Elizabeth marries<br />
the cold, ambitious John Macarthur<br />
she has little choice but to follow him wherever he decides<br />
to go, even if that’s to the other side of the world to live in<br />
a new settlement in Australia. A must for historical fiction<br />
fans.<br />
A Song for the Dark<br />
Times<br />
Ian Rankin<br />
Rebus is back, but this time it’s<br />
personal: his son-in-law is missing.<br />
Rebus heads out to solve the<br />
mystery. His daughter seems to be<br />
the obvious main suspect, so which<br />
role will Rebus prioritise – detective<br />
or father? Meanwhile, back in Edinburgh, DI Siobhan<br />
Clarke is on her own case, that of the murder of a wealthy<br />
Saudi student. These two very different cases may turn<br />
out to be part of the same tangled web. A Song for the<br />
Dark Times is a gripping crime thriller with plenty of twists<br />
to keep you turning the pages.
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