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Books with over 10 copies at the Cambridge Central Library The Brutal Art by Jesse Kellerman , 23 copies Ethan Muller is struggling to establish his reputation as a dealer in the cut-throat world of contemporary art when he is alerted to a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: in a decaying New York slum, an elderly tenant has disappeared, leaving behind a staggeringly large trove of original drawings and paintings. Ordinary Thunderstorms by William Boyd It is May in Chelsea, London. The glittering river is unusually high on an otherwise ordinary afternoon. Adam Kindred, a young climatologist in town for a job interview, ambles along the Embankment, admiring the view. He is pleasantly surprised to come across a little Italian bistro down a leafy side street. During his meal he strikes up a conversation with a solitary diner at the next table, who leaves soon afterwards. With horrifying speed, this chance encounter leads to a series of malign accidents through which Adam will lose everything - home, family, friends, job, reputation, passport, credit cards, mobile phone - never to get them back. The police are searching for him. There is a reward for his capture. A hired killer is stalking him. He is alone and anonymous in a huge, pitiless modern city. Adam has nowhere to go but down - underground. He decides to join that vast army of the disappeared and the missing that throng London's lowest levels as he tries to figure out what to do with his life and struggles to understand the forces that have made it unravel so spectacularly. His quest will take him all along the River Thames, from affluent Chelsea to the sink estates of the East End, and on the way he will encounter all manner of London's denizens - aristocrats, prostitutes, evangelists and policewomen amongst them - and version after new version of himself. William Boyd's electric follow-up to Costa Novel of the Year Restless is a heart-in-mouth conspiracy novel about the fragility of social identity, the corruption at the heart of big business, and the secrets that lie hidden in the filthy underbelly of everyday city. The hidden child - Camilla Lackberg, 2011, 400 pages – 10 copies Crime writer Erica Falck is shocked to discover a Nazi medal among her late mother's possessions. Haunted by a childhood of neglect, she resolves to dig deep into her family's past and finally uncover the reasons why. The Tenderness of Wolves – Stef Penney (2008) – Won the 2006 Costa 1st novel award – 466 pages – 10 copies 1867, Canada: as winter tightens its grip on the isolated settlement of Dove River, a man is brutally murdered and a 17-year old boy disappears. Tracks leaving the dead man's cabin head north towards the forest and the tundra beyond. In the wake of such violence, people are drawn to the township - journalists, Hudson's Bay Company men, trappers, traders - but do they want to solve the crime or exploit it? One-by-one the assembled searchers set out from Dove River, pursuing the tracks across a desolate landscape home only to wild animals, madmen and fugitives, variously seeking a murderer, a son, two sisters missing for 17 years, a Native American culture, and a fortune in stolen furs before the snows settle and cover the tracks of the past for good. In an astonishingly assured debut, Stef Penney deftly weaves adventure, suspense, revelation and humour into a panoramic historical romance, an exhilarating thriller, a keen murder mystery and ultimately, with the sheer scope and quality of her storytelling, one of the books of the year. The Innocent Traitor Alison Weir (2007) – 320 pages – 8 copies
Alison Weir, our pre-eminent popular historian, has now fulfilled a life's ambition to write historical fiction. She has chosen as her subject the bravest, most sympathetic and wronged heroine of Tudor England, Lady Jane Grey. Lady Jane Grey was born into times of extreme danger. Child of a scheming father and a ruthless mother, for whom she was merely a pawn in a dynastic power game with the highest stakes, she lived a live in thrall to political machinations and lethal religious fervour. Jane's astonishing and essentially tragic story was played out during one of the most momentous periods of English history. As a great-niece of Henry VIII, and the cousin of Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I, she grew up realize that she could never throw off the chains of her destiny. Her honesty, intelligence and strength of character carry the reader through all the vicious twists of Tudor power politics, to her nine-day reign and its unbearably poignant conclusion. Spies - Michael Frayn (2002) 240 pages 12 copies 2002 Whitbread Prize
In the quiet cul-de-sac where Keith and Stephen live there is very little evidence of the Second World War. But the two friends suspect that the inhabitants of the Close are not what they seem. As Keith authoritatively informs the trusting Stephen, the whole district is riddled with secret passages and underground laboratories - hideaways for any number of murderers, unsung war heroes and secret agents. Then one day Keith announces an even more disconcerting discovery: the Germans have infiltrated his own family. And when the secret underground world they have postulated emerges from the shadows they find themselves engulfed in mysteries far deeper and more painful than they had bargained for. In this beautiful new novel Michael Frayn evokes a time and characters which are as vivid now as if they had appeared before us today. Sister - Rosamund Lupton (2011) 432 pages 20 copies Nothing can break the bond between sisters ...When Beatrice gets a frantic call in the middle of Sunday lunch to say that her younger sister, Tess, is missing, she boards the first flight home to London. But as she learns about the circumstances surrounding her sister's disappearance, she is stunned to discover how little she actually knows of her sister's life - and unprepared for the terrifying truths she must now face. The police, Beatrice's fiance and even their mother accept they have lost Tess but Beatrice refuses to give up on her. So she embarks on a dangerous journey to discover the truth, no matter the cost. Life Class - Pat Barker (2007) 352 pages 18 copies
It is spring, in 1914. A group of students at the Slade School of Art have gathered for a life-drawing class. Paul Tarrant is easily distracted by an intriguing fellow student, Elinor Brooke, but when Kit Neville - himself not long out of the Slade but already a well-known painter - makes it clear that he, too, is attracted to Elinor, Paul withdraws into a passionate affair with an artist's model. As spring turns to summer, Paul and Elinor each reach a crisis in their relationships until finally, in the first few days of war, they turn to each other. Paul's new life as a volunteer for the Belgian Red Cross is a world away from his days at the Slade. The longer he remains in Ypres, the greater the distance between himself and home becomes, and by the time he returns, Paul must confront the fact that life, and love, will never be the same again. Afterwards - Rosamund Lupton (2011) 480 pages 14 copies
There is a fire and they are in There. They are in there ...Black smoke stains a summer blue sky. A school is on fire. And one mother, Grace, sees the smoke and runs. She knows her teenage daughter Jenny is inside. She runs into the burning building to rescue her. Afterwards, Grace must find the identity of the arsonist and protect her family from the person who's still intent on destroying them. Afterwards, she must fight the limits of her physical strength and discover the limitlessness of love. The art of racing in the rain - Garth Stein (8 copies) The Island by Victoria Hislop
The story of Cretan Eleni and her daughters and a family rent by tragedy, war and passion. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khalad Hosseini
Set against the backdrop of a country constantly at war it revolves around the lives of two women. Highlighting the ;oight of women in a Taliban governed Afghanistan. The Other Hand, by Chris Cleave
Set in Nigeria, by the author of 'Incendiary'. Deeply moving, yet light in touch, it explores the nature of loss, hope, love and identity with atrocity as its backdrop
Travels in the scriptorium, Auster, Paul
Each day an old man awakes with no memory, unsure of whether or not he is locked into the room. A middle-aged woman called Anna enters and talks of pills and treatment, but also of love and promises. Who is this Mr Blank, and what is his fate? What does Anna represent from his past - and will he ever make sense of the clues that arise?
The elegance of the Hedgehog by Barbery, Muriel
Renée is the concierge of a grand Parisian apartment building, home to members of the great and the good. But beneath this façade lies the real Renée: passionate about culture and the arts, and more knowledgeable in many ways than her employers with their outwardly successful but emotionally void lives
The girl on the landing by Torday, Paul
Is Michael ill, or could the disturbing events he is witnessing possibly be real? A thrilling novel about identity and love from the author of 'Salmon Fishing in the Yemen
The gathering, Enright, Anne, 1962-
The nine surviving children of the Hegarty clan gather in Dublin for the wake of their wayward brother Liam. It wasn't the drink that killed him - although that certainly helped - it was what happened to him as a boy in his grandmother's house, in the winter of 1968. "The Gathering" is a novel about love and disappointment, about thwarted lust and limitless desire, and how our fate is written in the body, not in the stars.
Home Robinson, Marilynne.
Hundreds of thousands of readers were enthralled and delighted by the luminous, tender voice of John Ames in Gilead, Marilynne Robinson's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Now comes HOME, a deeply affecting novel that takes place in the same period and same Iowa town of Gilead. This is Jack's story. Jack - prodigal son of the Boughton family, godson and namesake of John Ames, gone twenty years - has come home looking for refuge and to try to make peace with a past littered with trouble and pain. A bad boy from childhood, an alcoholic who cannot hold down a job, Jack is perpetually at odds with his surroundings and with his traditionalist father, though he remains Boughton's most beloved child. His sister Glory has also returned to Gilead, fleeing her own mistakes, to care for their dying father. Brilliant, loveable, wayward, Jack forges an intense new bond with Glory and engages painfully with his father and his father's old friend John Ames.
Every man for himself , Bainbridge, Beryl.
This novel, told through the eyes of Morgan, nephew of the owner of the shipping line, recaptures the four fateful days of the Titanic's voyage before disaster struck. Beryl Bainbridge has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times and has won both the Guardian and Whitbread Prizes.
The secret scripture : Barry, Sebastian, 1955-
Nearing her one-hundredth birthday, 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. Told through their respective journals, the story that emerges is at once shocking and deeply beautiful. 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. The outcast Jones, Sadie
1957, and Lewis Aldridge is travelling back to his home in the South of England. He is straight out of jail and nineteen years old. His return will trigger the implosion not just of his family, but of a whole community. A decade earlier, his father's homecoming casts a different shape. The war is over and Gilbert has recently been demobbed. He reverts easily to suburban life - cocktails at six thirty, church on Sundays - but his wife and young son resist the stuffy routine. Lewis and his mother escape to the woods for picnics, just as they did in wartime days. Nobody is surprised that Gilbert's wife counters convention, but they are all shocked when, after one of their jaunts, Lewis comes back without her. Not far away, Kit Carmichael keeps watch. She has always understood more than most, not least from what she has been dealt by her own father's hand. Lewis' grief and burgeoning rage are all too plain, and Kit makes a private vow to help. But in her attempts to set them both free, she fails to predict the painful and horrifying secrets that must first be forced into the open. As menacing as it is beautiful, "The Outcast" is a devastating portrait of small-town hypocrisy from an astonishing new voice. Beauty / Raphael Selbourne.
Beauty, in name and appearance, is a 20 year-old Bangladeshi, back in England having shocked her family by fleeing an abusive marriage. Now she is forced onto the jobseekers' treadmill. With honesty and compassion, Beauty moves ever closer towards resolving her dilemma about family duty and parental care.
61 Hours by Lee Child
Winter in South Dakota. Blowing snow, icy roads, a tired driver. A bus skids and crashes and is stranded in a gathering storm. There's a small town twenty miles away, where a vulnerable witness is guarded around the clock. There's a strange stone building five miles further on, all alone on the prairie. There's a ruthless man who controls everything from the warmth of Mexico. Jack Reacher hitched a ride in the back of the bus. A life without baggage has many advantages. And crucial disadvantages too, when it means facing the arctic cold without a coat. But he's equipped for the rest of his task. He doesn't want to put the world to rights. He just doesn't like people who put it to wrongs
Double fault Shriver, Lionel.
Summary 'Love me, love my game' says twenty-three year-old Willy Novinsky. Ever since she picked up a racquet at the age of four, tennis has been Willy's one love, until the day she meets Eric Oberdorf. She's a middle-ranked professional tennis player and he's a Princeton graduate who took up playing tennis at the age of eighteen. Low-ranked but untested, Eric, too, aims to make his mark on the international tennis circuit. Willy beholds compatibility spiced with friendly rivalry, and discovers her first passion outside a tennis court. They marry. Married life starts well but soon gives way to full-tilt competition over who can rise to the top first. Driven and gifted, Willy maintains the lead until she severs her knee ligaments in a fall. As Willy recuperates, herranking plummets whilst her husband's climbs, until he is eventually playing in the US Open. Anguished at falling short of her lifelong dream and resentful of her husband's success, Willy slides irresistibly toward the first quiet tragedy of her young life. 'A brilliant tale of doomed love..."Double Fault" is a compelling and playfully ironic take on the sex wars - "Observer Review". 'Shriver is a truly remarkable star in the literary firmament...I doubt there is any thoughtful woman who does not recognise herself somewhere in Shriver's writing - Lisa Jardine, "Financial Times".
Wolf Hall Mantel, Hilary, 1952-
Summary Winner of the Man Booker Prize 2009 'Lock Cromwell in a deep dungeon in the morning,' says Thomas More, 'and when you come back that night he'll be sitting on a plush cushion eating larks' tongues, and all the gaolers will owe him money.' England, the 1520s. Henry VIII is on the throne, but has no heir. Cardinal Wolsey is his chief advisor, charged with securing the divorce the pope refuses to grant. Into this atmosphere of distrust and need comes Thomas Cromwell, first as Wolsey's clerk, and later his successor. Cromwell is a wholly original man: the son of a brutal blacksmith, a political genius, a briber, a charmer, a bully, a man with a delicate and deadly expertise in manipulating people and events. Ruthless in pursuit of his own interests, he is as ambitious in his wider politics as he is for himself. His reforming agenda is carried out in the grip of a self-interested parliament and a king who fluctuates between romantic passions and murderous rages. From one of our finest living writers, 'Wolf Hall' is that very rare thing: a truly great English novel, one that explores the intersection of individual psychology and wider politics. With a vast array of characters, and richly overflowing with incident, it peels back history to show us Tudor England as a half-made society, moulding itself with great passion, suffering and courage
The hidden Hill, Tobias, 1970-
Summary In Sparta, southern Greece, a close-knit group search for the buried traces of a formidable ancient power. A latecomer, Ben Mercer finds himself drawn to their brilliance and charisma: to the double-edged friendship of his countryman Jason, the unsettling beauty of the women, Natsuko and Eleschen, and the menace of Max and Eberhard, who idealise the extremes of the ancient Spartans. Thrilled by the possibility of acceptance and excited by the dangerous games they play, Ben gradually wins his way into the circle. But there is more to the group than he understands, and Ben finds out too late that some things should remain hidden. He must decide where his loyalties lie - before the decision is taken for him. Written with astonishing grace and power, "The Hidden" is a nov
Name to a face Goddard, Robert.
Summary This work presents the sequence of extraordinary events over the past 300 years. It is a chain of intrigue, deceit, greed and murder. It covers: the loss of H.M.S. Association with all hands in 1707; an admiralty clerk's secret mission thirty years after; a fatal accident during a dive to the wreck in 1996; and an expatriate's reluctant return home ten years later. The simple task he has come to accomplish, shown to be anything but. A woman he recognises but cannot identify. A conspiracy of circumstances that is about to unravel his life. And with it, the past. el about the secrets we keep, the ties that bind us and the true cost of fulfilling our desires.
The sixth lamentation Brodrick, William.
Summary What should you do if the world has turned against you? When Father Anselm is asked this question by an old man at Larkwood Priory, his response, to claim sanctuary, is to have greater resonance than he could ever have imagined. For that evening the old man returns, demanding the protection of the church. His name is Eduard Schwermann and he is wanted by the police as a suspected war criminal. With her life running out, Agnes Aubret feels it is time to unburden to her granddaughter Lucy the secrets she has been carrying for so long. Fifty years earlier, Agnes had been living in Occupied Paris, a member of a small group risking their lives to smuggle Jewish children to safety - until they were exposed by a young SS Officer: Eduard Schwermann. As Anselm attempts to uncover Schwermann's past, and as Lucy's search into her grandmother's history continues, their investigations dovetail to reveal a remarkable story. 'Brodrick keeps the story going at a cracking pace, flitting back and forth between its various elements, characters and eras with timing so expert the reader is compelled to keep turning the pages' Time Out
The promise of happiness Cartwright, Justin.
Summary Charles Judd meanders round his local Cornish beach, contemplating the turns his life has taken. His wife Daphne struggles hopelessly with the latest fish recipe, trying to keep something in her life under control. Two of their children are keeping it all together - just. But they are all still recovering from the shock of the prodigal daughter, Juliet, being imprisoned in New York State for her part in an art theft. Since then, Charles appears to have lost his entire family. Now Juliet is being released, the family is about to be reunited and the wounds her imprisonment has caused are being re-opened.
Dead like you James, Peter, 1948-
Summary Don't imagine for one moment that I'm not watching you...The Metropole Hotel, Brighton. After a heady New Year's Eve ball, a woman is brutally raped as she returns to her room. A week later, another woman is attacked. Both victims' shoes are taken by the offender ... Detective Superintendent Roy Grace soon realises that these new cases bear remarkable similarities to an unsolved series of crimes in the city back in 1997. The perpetrator had been dubbed 'Shoe Man' and was believed to have raped five women before murdering his sixth victim and vanishing. Could this be a copycat, or has Shoe Man resurfaced? When more women are assaulted, Grace becomes increasingly certain that they are dealing with the same man. And that by delving back into the past - a time in which we see Grace and his missing wife Sandy still apparently happy together - he may find the key to unlocking the current mystery. Soon Grace and his team will find themselves in a desperate race against the clock to identify and save the life of the new sixth victim...
Deliver us from evil Baldacci, David.
Summary Evan Waller is a monster. He has built a fortune from his willingness to buy and sell anything ...and anyone. In search of new opportunities, Waller has just begun a new business venture: one that could lead to millions of deaths all over the globe. On Waller's trail is Shaw, the mysterious operative from The Whole Truth, who must prevent Waller from closing his latest deal. Shaw's one chance to bring him down will come in the most unlikely of places: a serene, bucolic village in Provence. But Waller's depravity and ruthlessness go deeper than Shaw knows. And now, there is someone else pursuing Waller in Provence - Reggie Campion, an agent for a secret vigilante group headquartered in a musty old English estate - and she has an agenda of her own. Hunting the same man and unaware of each other's mission, Shaw and Reggie will be caught in a deadly duel of nerve and wits. Hitchcockian in its intimate buildup of suspense and filled with the remarkable characters, breathtaking plot turns, and blockbuster finale that are David Baldacci's hallmarks, "Deliver Us From Evil" will be one of the most gripping thrillers of the year.
Doors open Rankin, Ian
. Summary Mike Mackenzie is a self-made man with too much time on his hands and a bit of the devil in his soul. He is looking for something to liven up the days and settles on a plot to rip-off one of the most high-profile targets in the capital - the National Gallery of Scotland. So, together with two close friends from the art world, he devises a plan to a lift some of the most valuable artwork around. But of course, the real trick is to rob the place for all its worth whilst persuading the world that no crime was ever committed...
Worst case Patterson, James, 1947-
Summary The son of one of New York's wealthiest families is snatched off the street and held hostage. His parents can't save him, because this kidnapper isn't demanding money. Instead, he quizzes his prisoner on the price others pay for his life of luxury. In this exam, wrong answers are fatal. Detective Michael Bennett leads the investigation. With ten kids of his own, he can't begin to understand what could lead someone to target anyone's children. As another student disappears, one powerful family after another uses their leverage and connections to turn up the heat on the mayor, the press, anyone who will listen, to stop this killer. Their reach extends all the way to the FBI, who send their top Abduction Specialist, Agent Emily Parker. Bennett's work life - and love life - suddenly get even more complicated. Before Bennett has a chance to protest the FBI's intrusion on his case, the mastermind changes his routine. His plan leads up to the most deadly demonstration yet - one that could bring cataclysmic devastation to every inch of New York.
“The private patient” James, P. D.
Summary The scar on Rhoda Gradwyn's face was to be the death of her ...When the notorious investigative journalist, Rhoda Gradwyn, books into Mr Chandler-Powell's private clinic in Dorset for the removal of a disfiguring and long-standing scar, she has every prospect of a successful operation and the beginning of a new life. But the Manor holds a secret and deadly enemy. While she lies drowsily recovering from the anaesthetic a white-shrouded figure stealthily enters her bedroom and within minutes Rhoda is dead. Dalgliesh and his team, called in to investigate the murder, and later a second equally horrific death, find themselves confronted with problems even more complicated than the question of innocence or guilt. "Perfume"by Patrick Suskind, Born in sweaty, fetid 18th-century Paris, Grenouille is distinctive even in infancy. He has a sense of smell more powerful than any other human's and no personal odour. Suskind develops this idea into a tale of murder controlled by a loathing of humanity
BOOKER PRIZE 2011 SHORTLISTED to keep an eye out for:
The Sense of an Ending - Julian Barnes Jamrach’s Menagerie - Carol Birch The Sisters Brothers - Patrick deWitt Half Blood Blues - Esi Edugyan Pigeon English - Stephen Kelman Snowdrops - A D Miller
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