Norwegian Wood – Haruki Murakami, translated by Jay Rubin
Toru, a quiet and preternaturally serious young college student in Tokyo, is devoted to Naoko, a beautiful and introspective young woman, but their mutual passion is marked by the tragic death of their best friend years before. Toru begins to adapt to campus life and the loneliness and isolation he faces there, but Naoko finds the pressures and responsibilities of life unbearable. As she retreats further into her own world, Toru finds himself reaching out to others and drawn to a fiercely independent and sexually liberated young woman.
Only one woman can save her world from barbarian invasion but to do so will mean sacrificing everything she holds dear – love, loyalty and maybe life itself . . .
In the early 1920s, in the remote village of Ghamsar, Talla and Sardar, two teenagers dreaming of a better life, fall in love and marry. Sardar brings his young bride with him across the mountains to the suburbs of Tehran, where the couple settles down and builds a home. From the outskirts of the capital city, they will watch as the Qajar dynasty falls and Reza Khan rises to power as Reza Shah Pahlavi.
Fiona Sweeney wants to do something that matters, and she chooses to make her mark in the arid bush of northeastern Kenya. By helping to start a travelling library, she hopes to bring the words of Homer, Hemingway, and Dr Seuss to far-flung tiny communities where people live daily with drought, hunger, and disease. Her intentions are honourable, and her rules are firm: due to the limited number of donated books, if any one of them is not returned, the bookmobile will not return.
A riveting new biography of a much neglected Queen – the doomed child-bride of Henry VIII. Joanna Denny, the author of Anne Boleyn, reveals another sensational episode in Tudor history – illuminating the true character of Katherine Howard, the young girl caught up in a maelstrom of ambition and conspiracy which led to her execution for high treason while still only seventeen years old.
