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recommendations 2012 title the thousand autumns of jacob de zoet by david mitchell details be transported to a place like no other a tiny man-made island in the bay of nagasaki for two hundred years the sole gateway between japan and the west here in the dying days of the 18th-century a young dutch clerk arrives to make his fortune instead he loses his heart the barbarian nurseries by hector tobar for those who love tortilla curtain they will love barbarian nurseries the morning after the fight maureen torresthompson picked up the baby and left scott left too when scott and maureen finally return home the children have gone shocked at their own behaviour and terrified by what people will think of them they do what any right-minded middle-class parents would do they lie and accuse the maid half blood blues by esi edugyan the aftermath of the fall of paris 1940 hieronymous falk a rising star on the 11 townyard lane malahide 8455073 www.villagebooks.ie info@villagebooks.ie

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cabaret scene was arrested in a cafe and never heard from again he was twenty years old he was a german citizen and he was black fifty years later sid hiero s bandmate and the only witness that day is going back to berlin persuaded by his old friend chip sid discovers there s more to the journey than he thought when chip shares a mysterious letter bringing to the surface secrets buried since hiero s fate was settled caribou island by david vann on a small island in a glacier-fed lake on alaska s kenai peninsula a marriage is unravelling gary driven by thirty years of diverted plans and irene haunted by a tragedy in her past are trying to rebuild their life together following the outline of gary s old dream they re hauling logs out to caribou island in good weather and in terrible storms in sickness and in health to patch together the kind of cabin that drew them to alaska in the first place the borrowers by rebecca makkai in this delightful funny and moving first novel a librarian and a young boy obsessed with reading take to the road lucy hull a 26-year-old children s librarian in hannibal missouri finds herself both kidnapper and kidnapped when her favourite patron 10year-old ian drake runs away from home the precocious ian is addicted to reading but needs lucy s help to smuggle books past his overbearing mother who has enrolled ian in weekly anti-gay classes paris july 1942 sarah a ten year-old sarah s key by tatiana de rosney 11 townyard lane malahide 8455073 www.villagebooks.ie info@villagebooks.ie

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jewish girl is arrested by the french police in the middle of the night along with her mother and father desperate to protect her younger brother she locks him in a cupboard and promises to come back for him as soon as she can the tiger s wife by tea obrecht having sifted through everything i have heard about the tiger and his wife i can tell you that this much is fact in april of 1941 without declaration or warning the german bombs started falling over the city and did not stop for three days the tiger did not know that they were bombs a tiger escapes from the local zoo padding through the ruined streets and onwards to a ridge above the balkan village of galina his nocturnal visits hold the villagers in a terrified thrall rebellious mixed-race and solitary jasper is a distant figure of danger and intrigue for charlie so when jasper begs for his help charlie eagerly steals into the night by his side terribly afraid but desperate to impress jasper takes him to his secret glade in the bush and it is here that charlie bears witness to a horrible discovery jasper jones by craig silvey the missing louisiana is the setting for this riveting tale 11 townyard lane malahide 8455073 www.villagebooks.ie info@villagebooks.ie

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by tim gautreaux of a kidnapped child and the man on her trail sam simoneaux who feels honour-bound to help find her leaving his stalwart wife behind he works his passage on a pleasure steamer up the mississippi entering a wild world of jazz moonshine and lawlessness it is a journey that will lead sam to confront not only violent criminals but his own past and to make some hard decisions about the value of vengeance the nightwoods by charles frazier the main lesson luce had learned was that you couldn t count on anybody in the lonesome beauty of the forest across the far shore of the mountain lake from town luce acts as caretaker to an empty decaying lodge a relic of holidaymakers a century before her days are long and peaceful her nights filled with nashville radio and yellow lights shimmering on the black water the cat s table by michael ondaayje in the early 1950s an eleven-year-old boy boards a huge liner bound for england a castle that was to cross the sea at mealtimes he is placed at the lowly cat s table with an eccentric group of grown-ups and two other boys cassius and ramadhin as the ship makes its way across the indian ocean through the suez canal into the mediterranean the boys become involved in the worlds and stories of the adults around them tumbling from one adventure and delicious discovery to another marrying willy seemed a natural thing to to be sung underwater by tom mcneal 11 townyard lane malahide 8455073 www.villagebooks.ie info@villagebooks.ie

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promise but a violent episode followed by acceptance to a prestigious university carried judith away twenty years later judith s sturdy-seeming marriage is suddenly hazy with secrets and her thoughts drift back to the time when she and willy had escaped to a small world where sunlight seemed always to fall from a softer angle freedom by jonathan franzen she was an enviably perfect mother and the wife of walter s dreams together with walter environmental lawyer commuter cyclist family man she was doing her small part to build a better world.but now in the new millennium the berglunds have become a mystery why has their teenage son moved in with the aggressively republican family next door why has walter taken a job working with big coal the paris wife by paula mclain chicago 1920 hadley richardson is a quiet twenty-eight-year-old who has all but given up on love and happiness until she meets ernest hemingway after a whirlwind courtship and wedding the pair set sail for paris where they soon fall in with a circle of lively and volatile expatriates including f scott and zelda fitzgerald and ezra pound the strangers child in the late summer of 1913 the aristocratic 11 townyard lane malahide 8455073 www.villagebooks.ie info@villagebooks.ie

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by alan hollinghurst young poet cecil valance comes to stay at two acres the home of his close cambridge friend george sawle the weekend will be one of excitements and confusions for all the sawles but it is on george s sixteen-yearold sister daphne that it will have the most lasting impact when cecil writes her a poem which will become a touchstone for a generation an evocation of an england about to change for ever linking the sawle and valance families irrevocably the shared intimacies of this weekend become legendary events in a larger story told and interpreted in different ways over the coming century and subjected to the scrutiny of critics and biographers with their own agendas and anxieties if you like our recommendations and want to order a book please call us on 01 8455073 or email us at info@villagebooks.ie keep up to date with the village books news on our blog and website www.villagebooks.ie if you would like to order books for your book group we will give you a 10 discount on orders of 6 or more books 11 townyard lane malahide 8455073 www.villagebooks.ie info@villagebooks.ie

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