Book Review - Quiet: The Power of Introverts by Susan Cain
Quiet by Susan Cain helps introverts to understands themselves and their place in the world in this engaging and validating book.
Desert Flowers - Paul Pen
A couple live with their five daughters in the remote Baja California desert in Mexico. They live a tranquil existence until one day a hiker turns up looking for a glass of water…..
Ordinary Human Failings - Megan Nolan
A child is murdered on an estate in London, and attention falls on a Irish family who had previously kept to themselves. Megan Nolan’s superbly written second book is about ‘ordinary families’ who find themselves having to face their secrets.
Being Aware of Being Aware by Rupert Spira
This is a compact and concise book on the nature of awareness, written in an easy to understand language.
Book Review - Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art James Nestor
This is an informative and useful book that will make you think about something you do 25,000 times a day - breathing. By investigating ancient techniques and using breathing exercises, James Nestor will help you to improve your health.
Book Review - Close to Home by Michael Magee
Michael Magee’s debut novel is about a young man returning to Belfast, when an altercation at a party leads to his life spiralling out of control.
Book Review - The Wind Knows My Name by Isabelle Allende
Isabelle allende weaves three different narratives of immigration, starting from WW2 up to the present day.
Book Review - The Last Days: A Memoir of Faith, Desire and Freedom by Ali Millar
Ali Millar’s memoir is a honest and raw account of her life as a Jehovah’s Witness.
Book Review - Anam Cara - A Book of Celtic Wisdom by John O’Donohue
The bestselling book on Celtic mysticism by the poet philosopher and scholar, John O’Donohue.
Book Review - Empire of Pain - The Secret History of The Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe
This is a meticulously researched, infuriating and astounding book about the opioid epidemic in the US.
Book Review - Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
Barbara Kingsolver’s updating of ‘David Copperfield’ is transposed to the modern day American South, told in the first person with exuberance and wit, is about surviving grinding poverty.
Book Review - Notes on an Execution by Danya Kukafka
Notes on an execution is a superb literary thriller about a serial killer on death row, his story largely told by the women in his life.
Book Review - Exiles by Jane Harper
Another superlative mystery thriller from Jane Harper, the third outing for Detective Aaron Falk. This time the setting is the lush wine country of South Australia, where a young woman has gone missing at a country fair, leaving her child in a pram.
Book Review - A Heart That Works by Rob Delaney
Rob Delaney’s memoir is a deeply personal account of the short life and death of his much loved son Henry, who died just before the age of three with a brain tumour. This is a raw, emotional, darkly funny and deeply moving book.
Book Review - I May Be Wrong: And Other Wisdoms From Life as a Forest Monk - Björn Natthiko Lindeblad
Bjorn Natthiko gives up a promising career as an economist to live 17 years as a forest monk in the buddhist tradition. He shares what he has learnt in this wise and moving book.
Book Review - Camp Zero - Michelle Min Sterling
Dystopian sci-fi thriller about a group of people trying to establish a new life in North America, as climate change causes society to break down. Set in 2049, this is a chilling look at the near future but there is hope in solidarity.
Book Review - Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton
‘Birnam Wood’ by Eleanor Catton is a page turning literary thriller driven by complex characters for whom the balance of power is constantly shifting.
Book Review - Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention - And How to Think Deeply Again - Johann Hari
‘Stolen Focus’ by Johann Hari is an impressively researched & passionately argued book about how our attention spans have collapsed, but it’s not our fault. Time to put the phone down and start the fight back.
Book Review - My Father’s House - Joseph O’Connor
Strong and atmospheric work of historical fiction that is loosely based on the true story of Hugh O’Flaherty, at the centre of a clandestine operation to smuggle Jews and escaped allied prisoners out of Nazi occupied Rome.
Book Review - All the Broken Places by John Boyne
‘All the broken places’ picks up where ‘The boy with the striped Pyjamas’ finished. Older sister Gretel and her mother are hoping to start again in Paris, but can they escape the past, and do they deserve to? This is an engrossing, thought provoking follow up from John Boyne that is another masterclass in empathetic storytelling.
