Vanishing – Gerard Woodward

Toward the end of the World War II, young British artist Kenneth Brill is arrested for painting landscapes near Heathrow Village; the authorities suspect his paintings contain coded information about the new military airfield that is being built. Brill protests that he is merely recording a landscape that will soon disappear.

Under interrogation a more complicated picture emerges as Brill tells the story of his life—of growing up among the market gardens of The Heath and of his life on the London art scene of the 1930s. But a darker picture also comes to light, of dealings with the prostitutes and pimps of the Soho underworld, of a break-in at a royal residence, and of connections with well-known fascist sympathizers at home and abroad.

So who is the real Kenneth Brill? The hero of El Alamein who, as a camouflage officer, helped pull off one of the greatest acts of military deception in the history of warfare, or the lover of Italian futurist painter and fascist sympathizer Arturo Somarco? Why was he expelled from the Slade School of Fine Art? And what was he doing at Hillmead, the rural community run by Rufus Quayle, a friend of Hitler himself?

Mr Chen’s Emporium – Deborah O’Brien

In 1872, seventeen-year-old Amy Duncan arrives in the Gold Rush town of Millbrooke, having spent the coach journey daydreaming about glittering pavilions and gilded steeples. What she finds is a dusty main street lined with ramshackle buildings.

That is until she walks through the doors of Mr Chen’s Emporium, a veritable Aladdin’s cave, and her life changes forever. Though banned from the store by her dour clergyman father, Amy is entranced by its handsome owner, Charles Chen …

In present-day Millbrooke, recently widowed artist Angie Wallace has rented the Old Manse where Amy once lived. When her landlord produces an antique trunk containing Amy’s intriguingly diverse keepsakes – both Oriental and European – Angie resolves to learn more about this mysterious girl from the past.

And it’s not long before the lives of two very different women, born a century apart, become connected in the most poignant and timeless ways.