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Our wonderful team are back with another round of reviews and recommendations for you – here’s what kept them engrossed throughout the month of May.
Chosen by Michelle, Information Services Coordinator
This is the 20th title in the Temperance Brennan series from Kathy Reichs. Temperance Brennan was also immortalised in the long running TV show Bones, but this Tempe is very different. In Bone Code, two murders decades apart, but in close proximity to both Tempe and her work, bring to light a long hidden coverup. Can Tempe, her partner Ryan and her friends and colleagues solve the murders of a woman, two teens and a child, without being endangered themselves?
Wow, it was all happening in this title. Weather, disease and bodies from separate eras connected – but with the finest strands of recognition and pattern. Kathy Reichs as always writes a very good read and she keeps you thinking. Is the weather just an impediment to Brennan’s investigations, and what about the outbreak?
You don’t have to have read her other books to enjoy this one. A great whodunnit from the forensic perspective, but with law enforcement in the mix.
The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah
Chosen by Suzie, Customer Experience Officer
The Four Winds is the new historical fiction novel by Kristin Hannah set in the extremely hard times of the Great Depression and the dust bowl era in America. After a rough childhood, Elsa Martinelli grows up to have everything she ever wanted, family and a place to belong. She loves her life working on the land in Texas but during a prolonged period of intense drought and dust storms, staying there becomes impossible. Elsa decides to take her children to California on the promise of a better life.
However, California becomes difficult in different ways and will test Elsa’s strength and resilience. While this book was sad at times it also had themes about women friendship, love and hope. I loved it and found it fascinating to read about a period of American history which I knew little about. The descriptions of the drought and dust storms were fascinating and really helped the reader become immersed in the story. I found The Four Winds easy to read and would recommend it.
Chosen by Sue, Team Leader
Love Objects is a contemporary family drama told with compassion and sensitivity. Nic is a middle-aged single woman with a passion for stray cats and nail art. She is also a compulsive hoarder. Her only close relationship is with her much-loved niece, University student, Lena.
When Nic fails to arrive at a planned lunch date and doesn’t answer her phone, Lena visits her house and discovers her unconscious after a fall. She also discovers Nic’s shocking living conditions, and realises her home is not safe to return to until Lena does some cleaning up! Engaging the help of her estranged brother, Will, they work together to get Nic home and work through some of their own personal dramas at the same time.
A gorgeous front cover masks the harsh reality inside.
Chosen by Sandra, Branch Manager
I dont often read Crime/Suspense novels but I was drawn to this coming of age novel as the debut author evoked a time and place that I could relate to. Small country town Australia, the immersive culture of television, and the imaginations it created, the gender stereotyping of the time, but also a time when children ran free , and ate dinner in the “good room”.
In the long hot Summer of 1989, Ben and Fab were best friends. Growing up in a small town, they spent their days yabbying and playing cricket and dreaming of one day owning a pair of Nikes. Almost teenagers they new already that some things are better left unsaid.
But all is not what it should be when a stranger moves into town. The novels turns bleak but compelling as the characters that have been drawn so beautifully fall victim to the very dark side of evil.
Twenty years later Fab is still stuck in the same town going nowhere but hoping for better . Then a body is found and neither boy, now man, can ignore those unsaid things from their past and what happened back then is unravelled. A great fast realistic read.
You Need To Know by Nicola Moriarty
Chosen by Janine, Customer Experience Officer
This book begins with a fatal car accident involving multiple vehicles on Christmas Eve and then we turn back time 12 months earlier when the family took a similar route to their cabin in the mountains.
Multiple characters are involved with Jill the matriarch of the family and her three sons, their wives and girlfriends. All of them are hiding secrets from each other and themselves. Mimi and Pete have newborn twin daughters as well as two older children, and the pressure of being a mum of four is slowly getting to her. Tony is the published author of the family and he and his wife have made the decision to not have children (or have they?). Darren has just come out of a relationship with the love of his life and has writers block, his publisher is pressuring him to submit another manuscript, but between a lost dog and a decision to help with former girlfriend, life just seems too complicated.
This story is told in alternating chapters between all the characters and the timeline from a year ago and the twists and turns just kept on coming until even the very last page. Even though there were a lot of characters to keep track of I had no problem following the story.
This is a real page-turning domestic suspense set in Australia and I devoured it in a couple of days.