Lovereading Latest: Family Drama

Rescue - Anita Shreve

Rescue
Anita Shreve

Format: Paperback - Released: 02/02/2012
Lovereading Price: £5.99 - Saving £2.00 (25%)

February 2012 Book of the Month. A tale of love, banishment and renewal, Rescue is a perfectly paced novel, written with Shreve's skilful lightness of touch and perceptive characterisation. Alternating between the life-and-death scenarios Peter regularly encounters and the fraught family tension between father and daughter, the read is gripepd by the drama and emotion that Shreve so expertly builds. Shreve is the bestelling author of Testimony, A Change in Altitude and the Orange prize shotlisted The Weight of Water.

Care of Wooden Floors - Will Wiles

Care of Wooden Floors
Will Wiles

Format: Hardback - Released: 02/02/2012
Lovereading Price: £9.74 - Saving £3.25 (25%)

February 2012 Debut of the Month. Inhabiting the spaces in-between everyday events - a place where tiny oversights can have disastrous, farcical and even fatal consequences. This is a unique, bold and brilliant debut from a darkly funny new voice - which has a little bit of floorcare in it as well.

The Legacy of Eden - Nelle Davy

The Legacy of Eden
Nelle Davy

Format: Paperback - Released: 03/02/2012
Lovereading Price: £5.99 - Saving £2.00 (25%)

February 2012 Debut of the Month. A ‘Piece of Passion’ from Nelle’s editor, Jenny Hutton:When we first read The Legacy of Eden we were left breathless. Nelle is a phenomenal talent, writing with emotion and drama while still capturing the stark reality of the life of a dark, dysfunctional family in the American Midwest. The Legacy of Eden is a magnificent, sweeping epic that charts the rise and fall of the infamous Hathaway dynasty, the reader is drawn back through history into a tangled web of ambition and power, destruction and freedom, love and betrayal. Long-buried family secrets and scandal unfurl with a quiet, mesmerising power and the characters, who stay with you long after you’ve put the book down, are a testament to Nelle’s skill as a writer and storyteller. This is a captivating debut."

The Book of Lies - Mary Horlock

The Book of Lies
Mary Horlock

Format: Paperback - Released: 16/02/2012
Lovereading Price: £5.99 - Saving £2.00 (25%)

February 2012 Debut of the Month. A well-written insight into the twisted mind of an unashamed murderer, as she admits in the second paragraph of this book (see link to the Opening Extract on this page). In fact, The Book of Lies is so easy and approachable, and makes you so familiar with the writer, it feels like you are reading a personal letter from her to you. Alongside the subtly-woven, insightful narrative, throughout this book there are interesting footnotes about the island of Guernsey which add an interesting historical perspective as well as underpin the credibility of the story. A compelling read.

The Soldier's Wife - Joanna Trollope

The Soldier's Wife
Joanna Trollope

Format: Hardback - Released: 02/02/2012
Lovereading Price: £14.24 - Saving £4.75 (25%)

Can a man trained to fight adjust again to family and domestic life? And how will the family cope, if he can't? Through the well observed, astute yet sensitive eye of the author this novel takes a keen look at the home lives of the modern Army. What happens, these days, when love and a vocation collide, head on?

Fighting Dirty - June Hampson

Fighting Dirty
June Hampson

Format: Paperback - Released: 16/02/2012
Lovereading Price: £5.99 - Saving £2.00 (25%)

The final, heart-pounding instalment in June Hampson's compelling gangland saga series. Our Editorial guru Sarah Broadhurst says of the series 'It’s Evocative and gritty and it's got heart, violence, sex and an underground current which is very atmospheric.' See the links below to read the books in order. 1 Trust Nobody 2 Broken Bodies 3 Damaged Goods 4 Fatal Cut 5 Jail Bait 6 Fighting Dirty

The Copper Beech - Maeve Binchy

The Copper Beech
Maeve Binchy

Format: Paperback - Released: 20/02/2012
Lovereading Price: £5.99 - Saving £2.00 (25%)

A Special Edition of The Copper Beech by Maeve Binchy to celebrate Orion's 20th anniversary. Maeve Binchy's marvellous portrait of a small Irish town whose untroubled surface conceals the passions, rivalries, friendships, ambitions and jealousies beneath.

Daughters-in-law - Joanna Trollope

Daughters-in-law
Joanna Trollope

Format: Paperback - Released: 05/01/2012
Lovereading Price: £5.99 - Saving £2.00 (25%)

January 2012 Book of the Month. Shortlisted for the Galaxy Popular Fiction Book of the Year Award 2011. Rachel has always been at the centre of her family of three sons but now the youngest is getting married. She must learn to adjust to the changing dynamics within the various new relationships. This is the author at her absolute best, a first rate read. Featured on The Book Show on Sky Arts on 17 March 2011. The Lovereading view... Joanna Trollope cleverly weaves together an involving family drama in which the matriarchal mother finds herself suddenly bereft of her 3 sons as they marry and their wives try to create some distance between them and the mother-in-law. A power struggle develops and as it does people are going to get hurt. As with all of Joanna Trollope's novels they are packed with emotion and the characters incredibly well drawn.

The Other Family - Joanna Trollope

The Other Family
Joanna Trollope

Format: Paperback - Released: 09/12/2010
Lovereading Price: £5.99 - Saving £2.00 (25%)

Oh this is a tough one. Joanna certainly knows how to put her thumb on a bruise and continually push till it hurts. Why Richie never divorced his first wife to marry the mother of his three girls, his partner for twenty-three years, is beyond me. Now he’s dead and there is a Will to sort out … oh dear. This is Joanna writing at the top of her game, as astute and sensitive as ever. Comparison: Libby Purves, Lionel Shriver, Elizabeth Buchan. To view a Q & A with Joanna, click the link below: Q&A with Joanna about The Other Family.

The Beginning of Spring - Penelope Fitzgerald

The Beginning of Spring
Penelope Fitzgerald

Format: Paperback - Released: 01/09/2003
Lovereading Price: £5.99 - Saving £2.00 (25%)

One of Katharine McMahon's favourite books. Highly evocative of time and place this wonderful novel set in the early 20th century is funny, touching and curious. A real treasure of a novel. A "Piece of Passion" from the publisher... Perhaps Penelope Fitzgerald’s finest novel, The Beginning of Spring is the story of Frank Reid, an ex-pat Englishman struggling to run his printing firm and keep his family together in turn-of-the-century Moscow. Written in Fitzgerald’s beautifully light, careful and evocative style and packed with her perfectly observed portraits of human nature (particularly of Frank’s young, but precociously intelligent, children), it is a wonderfully touching novel, about the confusions that life can throw at any of us. April 2010 Guest Editor Katharine McMahon on Penelope Fitzgerald... I was introduced to this author just as I began to be published, and I love her wit, and her quirky approach to plot. The Beginning of Spring is a delicious novel, and it's as if the entire book is pitched towards the very last few lines. This reads like a small, perfectly formed, Russian novel, but amazingly is written by a very English author.

A Village Affair - Joanna Trollope

A Village Affair
Joanna Trollope

Format: Paperback - Released: 21/09/1990
Lovereading Price: £5.99 - Saving £2.00 (25%)

To all intents and purposes this was Joanna’s first novel and it was the start of a genre labelled ‘aga saga’ – upper-middleclass country families getting into all sorts of messes. Joanna is queen of this type of novel and has grown with each new one. She’s lovely. She actually started her writing career penning historical novels under the name of Caroline Harvey. A "Piece of Passion" from the publisher... ‘A funny, intelligent and wonderfully involving novel for anyone who’s ever thought of leaving the rat race for the peace of village life – or who’s wondered if their present existence really contains all that life has to offer.' Linda Evans, Senior Editorial Director at Transworld

Brother and Sister - Joanna Trollope

Brother and Sister
Joanna Trollope

Format: Paperback - Released: 01/02/2005
Lovereading Price: £5.99 - Saving £2.00 (25%)

A hugely popular author that has her finger right on the pulse of family relationships. In this novel she tackles adoption.

The Pile of Stuff at the Bottom of the Stairs - Christina Hopkinson

The Pile of Stuff at the Bottom of the Stairs
Christina Hopkinson

Format: Paperback - Released: 16/02/2012
Lovereading Price: £5.99 - Saving £2.00 (25%)

Mary Gilmour is struggling to cope. Her job is part time but housework is full time, leaving no time at all for her two young sons - let alone herself. For Mary, there is only one thing standing between her and a life of organised contentment: her husband, Joel. Since star charts worked wonders improving their children's behaviour, she commits her unknowing husband to the same fate. A spreadsheet, detailing every dirty tissue, every lost sock, and every wet towel on the bed. Joel has six months to prove his good behaviour outweighs the bad. Or else...

Five Days to Die - Katia Lief

Five Days to Die
Katia Lief

Format: Paperback - Released: 02/02/2012
Lovereading Price: £5.24 - Saving £1.75 (25%)

Your time is up...Emily Parker is missing, kidnapped from a car park in broad daylight and the police are clueless as to her whereabouts. The only man her family can turn to for help is retired FBI profiler John Geary. But Geary suspects she's been taken by a serial killer who targets mothers. Every seven years he strikes, enacting a gruesome ritual. And Geary knows that there's much worse to come...

The Snow Child - Eowyn Ivey

The Snow Child
Eowyn Ivey

Format: Hardback - Released: 01/02/2012
Lovereading Price: £11.24 - Saving £3.75 (25%)

A bewitching tale of heartbreak and hope set in 1920s Alaska. Jack and Mabel have staked everything on making a fresh start for themselves in a homestead 'at the world's edge' in the raw Alaskan wilderness. But as the days grow shorter, Jack is losing his battle to clear the land, and Mabel can no longer contain her grief for the baby she lost many years before. The evening the first snow falls, their mood unaccountably changes. In a moment of tenderness, the pair are surprised to find themselves building a snowman - or rather a snow girl - together. The next morning, all trace of her has disappeared, and Jack can't quite shake the notion that he glimpsed a small figure - a child? - running through the spruce trees in the dawn light. And how to explain the little but very human tracks Mabel finds at the edge of their property? Written with the clarity and vividness of the Russian fairytale from which it takes its inspiration, The Snow Child is an instant classic - the story of a couple who take a child into their hearts, all the while knowing they can never truly call her their own.