Tag Archives: Fiction

In My Hands Today…

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Meet Me at the Cupcake Cafe – Jenny Colgan

Come and meet Issy Randall, proud owner of The Cupcake Cafe

Issy Randall can bake. No, more than that – Issy can create stunning, mouth-watering divine cakes. After a childhood spent in her beloved Grampa Joe’s bakery, she has undoubtedly inherited his talent.

When she’s made redundant from her safe but dull City job, Issy decides to seize the moment. Armed with recipes from Grampa, and with her best friends and local bank manager fighting her corner, The Cupcake Cafe opens its doors. But Issy has absolutely no idea of what she’s let herself in for. It will take all her courage – and confectionery – to avert disaster…

Plus delicious cupcake recipes inside the book!!

In My Hands Today…

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How to Be an American Housewife – Margaret Dilloway

When Shoko decided to marry an American GI and leave Japan, she had her parents’ blessings, her brother’s scorn, and a gift from her betrothed – a book titled How to Be an American Housewife.

As she crossed the ocean to America, Shoko also carried a secret she wanted to keep her entire life…

Half a century later, Shoko’s plans to finally return to Japan and reconcile with her brother are derailed by illness. Instead, she sends her grown American daughter, Sue, a divorced single mother with a teenage daughter of her own. As Sue and Helena take in Japan, with all its beauty and contradictions, they also discover another side to Shoko, and return to America irrevocably touched, irrevocably changed.

At heart, a mother-daughter story, How to Be an American Housewife explores the intricacies of assimilation, the price of secrets, and the enduring, healing power of familial love.

In My Hands Today…

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Last Man in Tower – Aravind Adiga

Ask any Bombaywallah about Tower A of the Vishram Co-operative Housing Society and you will be told that it is unimpeachably pucca. Despite its location close to the airport and bordered by slums, it has been pucca for some fifty years. But then Bombay has changed in half a century – not least its name – and the world in which Tower A was first built is giving way to a new city, a Mumbai of new development and new money; of wealthy Indians returning with fortunes made abroad.

When real estate developer Dharmen Shah offers to buy out the residents of Vishram Society, planning to use the site to build a luxury apartment complex, his offer is more than generous. Yet not everyone wants to leave; many of them have lived in Vishram for years, many of them are no longer young. But none can benefit from the offer unless all agree to sell.

As tensions rise, one by one those who oppose the offer give in to the pressure of the majority, until only one man stands in the way of Shah’s luxury high-rise: Masterji, a retired schoolteacher, once the most respected man in the building. Shah is a dangerous man to refuse, but as the demolition deadline looms, Masterji’s neighbours – friends who have become enemies, acquaintances turned co-conspirators – may stop at nothing to score their payday.

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The Yacoubian Building – Alaa Al Aswany, Translated by Humphrey Davies

This controversial bestselling novel in the Arab world reveals the political corruption, sexual repression, religious extremism, and modern hopes of Egypt today.

All manner of flawed and fragile humanity reside in the Yacoubian Building, a once-elegant temple of Art Deco splendor now slowly decaying in the smog and bustle of downtown Cairo: a fading aristocrat and self-proclaimed “scientist of women”; a sultry, voluptuous siren; a devout young student, feeling the irresistible pull toward fundamentalism; a newspaper editor helplessly in love with a policeman; a corrupt and corpulent politician, twisting the Koran to justify his desires.

These disparate lives careen toward an explosive conclusion in Alaa Al Aswany’s remarkable international bestseller. Teeming with frank sexuality and heartfelt compassion, this book is an important window on to the experience of loss and love in the Arab world.

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Only Time Will Tell – Jeffrey Archer

The Clifton Chronicles is Jeffrey Archer’s most ambitious work in four decades as an international best-selling author.

The epic tale of Harry Clifton’s life begins in 1919, in the back streets of Bristol. His father was a war hero, but it will be twenty-one tumultuous years before Harry discovers the truth about how his father really died and if, in fact, he even was his father.

Only Time Will Tell takes a cast of memorable characters from the ravages of the Great War to the outbreak of the Second World War, when Harry must decide whether to take his place at Oxford, or join the fight against Hitler’s Germany.

In Jeffrey Archer’s masterful hands, you will be taken on a journey that you won’t want to end, even after you turn the last page of this unforgettable yarn, because you’ll be faced with a dilemma that neither you, nor Harry Clifton could ever have anticipated.