Repentance by Eloisa Diaz was our first read in April.
BUENOS AIRES, 1981.
Argentina is in the grip of a brutal military dictatorship. Inspector Joaquín Alzada’s work in the Buenos Aires police force exposes him to the many realities of life under a repressive regime: desperate people, terrified people and – worst of all – missing people. Personally, he prefers to stay out of politics, enjoying a simple life with his wife Paula. But when his revolutionary brother Jorge is disappeared, Alzada will stop at nothing to rescue him.
TWENTY YEARS LATER…
The country is in the midst of yet another devastating economic crisis and riots are building in the streets of Buenos Aires. This time Alzada is determined to keep his head down and wait patiently for his retirement. But when a dead body lands in a skip behind the morgue and a woman from one of the city’s wealthiest families goes missing, Alzada is forced to confront his own involvement in one of the darkest periods in Argentinian history – a time of collective horror and personal tragedy.
Repentance
The Old Ways by Robert Macfarlane was a belated #BigReview of March’s Book of the Month
Following the tracks, holloways, drove-roads and sea paths that form part of a vast ancient network of routes criss-crossing the British Isles and beyond, Robert Macfarlane discovers a lost world – a landscape of the feet and the mind, of pilgrimage and ritual, of stories and ghosts; above all of the places and journeys which inspire and inhabit our imaginations.
Following on from the excellent TV series last year we finally got round to reading Noughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman.
Sephy is a Cross: she lives a life of privilege and power. But she’s lonely, and burns with injustice at the world she sees around her.
Callum is a nought: he’s considered to be less than nothing – a blanker, there to serve Crosses – but he dreams of a better life.
They’ve been friends since they were children, and they both know that’s as far as it can ever go. Noughts and Crosses are fated to be bitter enemies – love is out of the question.
Then – in spite of a world that is fiercely against them – these star-crossed lovers choose each other.
But this is a love story that will lead both of them into terrible danger . . . and which will have shocking repercussions for generations to come.
We continued reading Steve Cavanagh in the wrong order when we read book number 4 in the series – TH1RT3EN
‘To your knowledge, is there anything that would preclude you from serving on this jury?’
Murder wasn’t the hard part. It was just the start of the game.
Joshua Kane has been preparing for this moment his whole life. He’s done it before. But this is the big one. This is the murder trial of the century. And Kane has killed to get the best seat in the house. But there’s someone on his tail. Someone who suspects that the killer isn’t the man on trial. Kane knows time is running out – he just needs to get to the conviction without being discovered.
A lighthouse in the middle of the ocean, a door locked from the inside and 3 lighthouse keepers missing gave us the perfect locked room mystery. Except it wasn’t – The Lamplighters by Emma Stonex.
Cornwall, 1972. Three keepers vanish from a remote lighthouse, miles from the shore. The entrance door is locked from the inside. The clocks have stopped. The Principal Keeper’s weather log describes a mighty storm, but the skies have been clear all week.
What happened to those three men, out on the tower? The heavy sea whispers their names. The tide shifts beneath the swell, drowning ghosts. Can their secrets ever be recovered from the waves?
Twenty years later, the women they left behind are still struggling to move on. Helen, Jenny and Michelle should have been united by the tragedy, but instead it drove them apart. And then a writer approaches them. He wants to give them a chance to tell their side of the story. But only in confronting their darkest fears can the truth begin to surface . . .
In The Company Of Men by Veronique Tadjo was a Blog Tour drawing the many voices of Ebola together.
In a series of moving snapshots, Véronique Tadjo illustrates the terrible extent of the Ebola epidemic: the doctor who tirelessly treats patients day after day in a sweltering tent, protected from the virus only by a plastic suit; the student who volunteers to work as a gravedigger while universities are closed, helping the teams overwhelmed by the sheer number of bodies; the grandmother who agrees to take in an orphaned young boy cast out of his village for fear of infection. And watching over them all is the ancient and wise Baobab tree, mourning the dire state of the earth yet providing a sense of hope for the future. Acutely relevant to our times in light of the coronavirus pandemic, In the Company of Men explores critical questions about how we cope with a global crisis and how we can combat fear and prejudice.
Which just gave us time to squeeze in Red Clocks by Leni Zumas.
In this ferociously imaginative novel, abortion is once again illegal in America, in-vitro fertilization is banned, and the Personhood Amendment grants rights of life, liberty, and property to every embryo.
In a small Oregon fishing town, five very different women navigate these new barriers alongside age-old questions surrounding motherhood, identity, and freedom. Ro, a single high-school teacher, is trying to have a baby on her own, while also writing a biography of Eivor, a little-known 19th-century female polar explorer.
Susan is a frustrated mother of two, trapped in a crumbling marriage. Mattie is the adopted daughter of doting parents and one of Ro’s best students, who finds herself pregnant with nowhere to turn. And Gin is the gifted, forest-dwelling herbalist, or “mender,” who brings all their fates together when she’s arrested and put on trial in a frenzied modern-day witch hunt.
Also in April
Our book’s of the month were Any Human Heart by William Boyd and The Polar Bear Explorer’s Club by Alex Bell. We didn’t add any books to our shelves (still not been to a book shop) but we did tell you how you could help dyslexic adults read.