The bookshop of yesterdays
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A woman inherits a beloved bookstore and sets forth on a journey of self-discovery in this poignant debut about family, forgiveness and a love of reading. Miranda Brooks grew up in the stacks of her eccentric Uncle Billy's bookstore, solving the inventive scavenger hunts he created just for her. But on Miranda's twelfth birthday, Billy has a mysterious falling-out with her mother and suddenly disappears from Miranda's life. She doesn't hear from him again until sixteen years later when she receives unexpected news: Billy has died and left her Prospero Books, which is teetering on bankruptcy - and one final scavenger hunt.
Days at the Morisaki Bookshop
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The moving international sensation about new beginnings, human connection, and the joy of reading. Hidden in Jimbocho, Tokyo is a booklover's paradise. On a quiet corner in an old wooden building lies a shop filled with hundreds of second-hand books. Twenty-five-year-old Takako has never liked reading, although the Morisaki bookshop has been in her family for three generations. It is the pride and joy of her uncle Satoru, who has devoted his life to the bookshop since his wife Momoko left him five years earlier.When Takako's boyfriend reveals he's marrying someone else, she reluctantly accepts her eccentric uncle's offer to live rent-free in the tiny room above the shop. Hoping to nurse her broken heart in peace, Takako is surprised to encounter new worlds within the stacks of books lining the Morisaki bookshop.As summer fades to autumn, Satoru and Takako discover they have more in common than they first thought. The Morisaki bookshop has something to teach them both about life, love, and the healing power of books.
Salt River Road
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In the aftermath of their mother's death, the lives of the five Tetley siblings fall apart. Rose is abandoned by her beloved brother Frank, while their father, Eddie, is undone by his grief. When Noongar Elders Patsy and Herbert encounter Rose marching away from the mess, they take her home in a storm of red gravel dust that stirs up memories Eddie Tetley would rather forget. Rose finds herself welcomed into a home where she has the chance to discover the true power of belonging. With the help of Patsy and Herbert, she'll find a way to begin to heal not only her family's pain but wounds hidden for a generation.
The Door-to-Door Bookstore
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Small-town German bookseller Carl Kollhoff delivers his books to special customers in the evening hours after closing time, walking through the picturesque alleys of the city. These people are almost like friends to him, and he is their most important connection to the world. When Kollhoff unexpectedly loses his job, it takes the power of books and a nine-year-old girl to make them all find the courage to rebuild their bonds with each other.
Another Life
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Angie DeSaria was always the princess of the family, a girl who thought she knew how her life would unfold. School. College. Marriage. Motherhood. That was how it had gone for her sisters, her cousins, her friends. But it didn't work out that way for Angie. She and her husband tried desperately to have a child; year after year, their perfectly decorated nursery remained empty. Finally, their marriage collapsed under the weight of lost dreams. After the divorce, Angie moves back to her hometown to help run the family restaurant with her loud, loving, slightly crazy relatives. In West End, a place where life rises and falls in time with the tides, she will find a man who once again will open her heart to love-- and meet a girl who will change her life forever. Seventeen-year-old Lauren Ribido lives in a bad part of town and has aspirations she knows will never come to pass. But from the moment they meet, Angie sees something special in Lauren and wants to help her. However, nothing could ever prepare Angie for the far-reaching repercussions of an act of kindness. Together, they embark on a journey to the very heart of what it means to be family.
The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot
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Life is short - no one knows that better than seventeen year-old Lenni Petterssen. On the Terminal Ward, the nurses are offering their condolences already, but Lenni still has plenty of living to do. When she meets 83-year-old Margot Macrae, a fellow patient offering new friendship and enviable artistic skills, Lenni's life begins to soar in ways she'd never imagined. As their bond deepens, a world of stories opens up: of wartime love and loss, of misunderstanding and reconciliation, of courage, kindness and joy. Stories that have led Lenni and Margot to the end of their days.
The keeper of lost things
by
Lime green plastic flower-shaped hair bobbles—Found, on the playing field, Derrywood Park, 2nd September.
Bone china cup and saucer—Found, on a bench in Riveria Public Gardens, 31st October.
Anthony Peardew is the keeper of lost things. Forty years ago, he carelessly lost a keepsake from his beloved fiancée, Therese. That very same day, she died unexpectedly. Brokenhearted, Anthony sought consolation in rescuing lost objects—the things others have dropped, misplaced, or accidentally left behind—and writing stories about them. Now, in the twilight of his life, Anthony worries that he has not fully discharged his duty to reconcile all the lost things with their owners. As the end nears, he bequeaths his secret life’s mission to his unsuspecting assistant, Laura, leaving her his house and and all its lost treasures, including an irritable ghost.
Recovering from a bad divorce, Laura, in some ways, is one of Anthony’s lost things. But when the lonely woman moves into his mansion, her life begins to change. She finds a new friend in the neighbor’s quirky daughter, Sunshine, and a welcome distraction in Freddy, the rugged gardener. As the dark cloud engulfing her lifts, Laura, accompanied by her new companions, sets out to realize Anthony’s last wish: reuniting his cherished lost objects with their owners.
Long ago, Eunice found a trinket on the London pavement and kept it through the years. Now, with her own end drawing near, she has lost something precious—a tragic twist of fate that forces her to break a promise she once made.
As the Keeper of Lost Objects, Laura holds the key to Anthony and Eunice’s redemption. But can she unlock the past and make the connections that will lay their spirits to rest.
Kookaburra Creek Café
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Welcome to the Kookaburra Creek Cafe. THE PAST For Hattie, the cafe has been her refuge for the last fifty years - her second chance at a happy ending after her dreams of being a star were shattered. But will the ghosts of her past succeed in destroying everything she's worked so hard to build? THE PRESENT For Alice, the cafe is her livelihood. After Hattie took her in as a teenager, Alice has slowly forged a quiet life as the cafe's manager (and chief cupcake baker). But with so many tragedies behind her, is it too late for Alice's story to have a happy ending? THE FUTURE For Becca, a teenager in trouble, the cafe could be the new start she yearns for. That is, if she can be persuaded to stop running from her secrets. Can Becca find a way to believe in the kindness of strangers, and accept that this small town could be the place where she finally belongs? One small town. Three lost women. And a lifetime of secrets.
The Borrowed Life of Frederick Fife
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Frederick Fife was born with an extra helping of kindness in his heart. If he borrowed your car he'd return it washed and polished, with a full tank of petrol. The problem is, he has no one left to borrow from. At 82, he's desperately lonely, broke and on the brink of homelessness. But Fred's luck changes when, in a bizarre case of mistaken identity, he takes the place of cranky Bernard Greer at Wattle River Nursing Home. Suddenly he has a roof over his head, warm meals in his belly and most importantly, the chance to be part of a family again. Fingers crossed his poker face is in better nick than his prostate or the jig is up. As Fred walks in Bernard's shoes (and underpants), he discovers more about the man's past and what it would take to return a broken life to mint condition.
Stone Yard Devotional
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A woman abandons her city life and marriage to return to the place of her childhood, holing up in a small religious community hidden away on the stark plains of the Monaro. She does not believe in God, doesn't know what prayer is, and finds herself living this strange, reclusive life almost by accident. As she gradually adjusts to the rhythms of monastic life, she finds herself turning again and again to thoughts of her mother, whose early death she can't forget. Disquiet interrupts this secluded life with three visitations. First comes a terrible mouse plague, each day signalling a new battle against the rising infestation. Second is the return of the skeletal remains of a sister who left the community decades before to minister to deprived women in Thailand -- then disappeared, presumed murdered. Finally, a troubling visitor to the monastery pulls the narrator further back into her past. With each of these disturbing arrivals, the woman faces some deep questions. Can a person be truly good? What is forgiveness? Is loss of hope a moral failure? And can the business of grief ever really be finished? (Publisher)
Not Meeting Mr Right
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Alice Aigner is successful, independent and a confirmed serial dater - but at her ten-year school reunion she has a sudden change of heart. Bored rigid by her married, mortgaged and motherly former classmates, Alice decides to prove that a woman can have it all: a man, marriage, career, kids and a mind of her own. She sets herself a goal: meet the perfect man and marry him before her thirtieth birthday, just under two years away. Together with her best friends Dannie, Liza and Peta, Alice draws up a ten-point plan.
Tom Lake
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In the spring of 2020, Lara's three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theatre company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.
Normal People
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Connell and Marianne grow up in the same small town in rural Ireland. The similarities end there; they are from very different worlds. When they both earn places at Trinity College in Dublin, a connection that has grown between them lasts long into the following years. This is an exquisite love story about how a person can change another person's life - a simple yet profound realisation that unfolds beautifully over the course of the novel. It tells us how difficult it is to talk about how we feel and it tells us - blazingly - about cycles of domination, legitimacy and privilege.
An Eligible Bachelor
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Eversleigh Manor provides the perfect location for hit new television show, Lady Jane Investigates. But when the film crew descends en masse, no one could have predicted that romance would be brewing before the clapperboard had snapped its last. Least of all Guy Portias, heir to the manor and favourite beau of leading lady, Richenda Fox. party is only the first of his worries. After all, his mother has her heart set on running Country House Weekends for the discerning holidaymaker and her new employee, Honor, has a talent for mass catering ... and for making Guy feel a little warm under the collar. hovering in the wings and her best friend, Henty, seems inordinately distracted by her smouldering new groom, Travis. Throw in a long-lost mother, a philandering husband and a floozy of a florist and watch the residents of Eversleigh village work themselves into a lather of epic proportions
Crazy rich Asians
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When Rachel Chu agrees to spend the summer in Singapore with her boyfriend, Nicholas Young, she envisions a humble family home, long drives to explore the island, and quality time with the man she might one day marry. What she doesn't know is that Nick's family home happens to look like a palace, that she'll ride in more private planes than cars, and that with one of Asia's most eligible bachelors on her arm, Rachel might as well have a target on her back. Initiated into a world of dynastic splendor beyond imagination, Rachel meets Astrid, the It Girl of Singapore society; Eddie, whose family practically lives in the pages of the Hong Kong socialite magazines; and Eleanor, Nick's formidable mother, a woman who has very strong feelings about who her son should -- and should not -- marry.
Mirror mirror
by
You were her best friend. You let her down. And now she's missing.
They say appearances can be deceiving.
And Red knows this better than anyone, especially now Naomi has disappeared.
She left without warning, and Red is devastated. They're meant to be there for one another, know all about each other. Maybe everything she said was just a lie?
But when a series of clues leads Red to suspect that all is not as it seems, it becomes clear it's not just their friendship that's at stake, but their lives.
Nothing will ever be the same again.
Because once a mirror is broken, it can't be fixed.
Past the shallows
by
Brothers Joe, Harry and Miles live with their father, an abalone fisherman, on the south-east coast of Tasmania. Everyday their dad battles the unpredictable ocean to make a living. He is a hard man, a bitter drinker who harbours a devastating secret that is destroying him. Unlike Joe, Harry and Miles are too young to leave home and so are forced to live under the dark cloud of their father's mood, trying to stay as invisible as possible whenever he is home. Harry, the youngest, is the most vulnerable and it seems he bears the brunt of his father's anger.
Often alone, Harry finds joy in the small treasure he discovers, in the shark eggs and cuttlefish bones. In a kelpie pup, a big mug of Milo, and a secret friendship with a mysterious neighbour. But sometimes small treasures, or a brother's love, are not enough.
Olga Dies Dreaming
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It's 2017, and Olga and her brother, Pedro "Prieto" Acevedo, are bold-faced names in their hometown of New York. Prieto is a popular congressman representing their gentrifying Latinx neighborhood in Brooklyn while Olga is the tony wedding planner for Manhattan's powerbrokers.
Despite their alluring public lives, behind closed doors things are far less rosy. Sure, Olga can orchestrate the love stories of the 1%, but she can't seem to find her own...until she meets Matteo, who forces her to confront the effects of long-held family secrets...
Twenty-seven years ago, their mother, Blanca, a Young Lord-turned-radical, abandoned her children to advance a militant political cause, leaving them to be raised by their grandmother. Now, with the winds of hurricane season, Blanca has come barreling back into their lives.
Set against the backdrop of New York City in the months surrounding the most devastating hurricane in Puerto Rico's history, Olga Dies Dreaming is a story that examines political corruption, familial strife and the very notion of the American dream--all while asking what it really means to weather a storm.
Earth
by
It's the tabloid sensation of the year: two well-known footballers standing in the dock, charged with sexual assault, a series of vile text messages pointing towards their guilt. As the trial unfolds, Evan Keogh reflects on the events that have led him to this moment. Since leaving his island home, his life has been a lie on many levels. He's a talented footballer who wanted to be an artist. A gay man in a sport that rejects diversity. A defendant whose knowledge of what took place on that fateful night threatens more than just his freedom or career. The jury will deliver a verdict but, before they do, Evan must judge for himself whether the man he has become is the man he wanted to be.
The Twilight Garden
by
In a small pocket of London between the houses of No. 77 and No. 79 Eastbourne Road, lies a neglected community garden. Once a sanctuary, the garden's gate is now firmly closed. And that's exactly how Winston at No. 79 likes it-- anything to avoid his irritating new next-door neighbour. But when a mystery parcel drops on Winston's doormat-- a curious bundle of photographs of a community garden, his garden, bursting with life years ago-- a seed of an idea is planted. Somewhere out there, a secret gardener made a decades-old promise to keep the community's spirit alive. And now it's time for The Twilight Garden to come out of hibernation.
The Collected Regrets of Clover
by
In her work as a 'death doula', Clover Brooks ushers people peacefully through their last days, collecting their final words into three notebooks: Advice, Confessions and Regrets. But Clover spends so much time with the dying that she's forgotten how to live. Can her clients' hard-won wisdom -- and the inspiring love story of a spirited old woman named Claudia -- show Clover the way to a happy ending? After all, what's the point of giving someone a beautiful death if you can't give yourself a beautiful life?
One True Loves
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In her twenties, Emma marries her high school sweetheart, Jesse. They build a life for themselves, living life to the fullest and seizing every opportunity for adventure. On their first wedding anniversary, Jesse is on a helicopter over the Pacific when it goes missing. Just like that, Jesse is gone forever.
Years later, now in her thirties, Emma runs into an old friend, Sam, and finds herself falling in love again. When Emma and Sam get engaged, it feels like Emma's second chance at happiness.
That is, until Jesse is found. He's alive, and all these years he's been trying to come home to her. With a husband and a fiancé, Emma has to now figure out who she is and what she wants.
Who is her one true love? Emma knows she has to listen to her heart. She's just not sure what it's saying.
The Yield
by
The yield in English is the reaping, the things that man can take from the land. In the language of the Wiradjuri yield is the things you give to, the movement, the space between things: baayanha. Knowing that he will soon die, Albert 'Poppy' Gondiwindi takes pen to paper. His life has been spent on the banks of the Murrumby River at Prosperous House, on Massacre Plains. Albert is determined to pass on the language of his people and everything that was ever remembered. He finds the words on the wind. August Gondiwindi has been living on the other side of the world for ten years when she learns of her grandfather's death. She returns home for his burial, wracked with grief and burdened with all she tried to leave behind. Her homecoming is bittersweet as she confronts the love of her kin and news that Prosperous is to be repossessed by a mining company. Determined to make amends she endeavours to save their land -- a quest that leads her to the voice of her grandfather and into the past, the stories of her people, the secrets of the river. ... The Yield is the story of a people and a culture dispossessed. But it is as much a celebration of what was and what endures, and a powerful reclaiming of Indigenous language, storytelling and identity.
Notes:This novel contains the language of the Wiradjuri people. Before colonisation there were two hundred and fifty distinct languages in Australia that subdivided into six hundred dialects. The Wiradjuri language is a Pama-Nyungan language of the Wiradhuric subgroup and has been reclaimed and preserved through the efforts of Dr Uncle Stan Grant Snr AM and linguist Dr John Rudde
Maggie's going nowhere
by
Can someone please tell me how to navigate life? Maggie Cotton is a hot mess. In one day, she's dumped by her boyfriend, disinherited by her mum, and kicked off the three-year degree course she'd stretched to a decade. And that was before she received the letter saying she owed the government 70,000 dollars. But that's no reason to grow up, is it? With a decrepit 1960s caravan to call home, Maggie has to prove to her mother she can survive without a safety net, stop her loyal best friend Jen from marrying a scumbag, and convince her sexy workmate Rueben that she's not a walking disaster. For someone who's spent her life avoiding hard work, she sure can move mountains when she's got a little motivation just don't ask her to move the caravan.