The Doll Factory - Elizabeth Macneal
Fiction Emma House Fiction Emma House

The Doll Factory - Elizabeth Macneal

About the Book

Elizabeth Macneal’s first novel The Doll Factory, has been translated into 29 languages. It is a Sunday Times bestseller, a Radio 2 Book Club pick, a Radio 4 Book at Bedtime and a Waterstones Book of the Month.

In 1850s London, The Great Exhibition is being erected in Hyde Park and among the crowd watching the spectacle two people meet. For Iris, an aspiring artist, it is the encounter of a moment – forgotten seconds later, but for Silas, a collector entranced by the strange and beautiful, that meeting marks a new beginning.

When Iris is asked to model for pre-Raphaelite artist Louis Frost, she agrees on the condition that he will also teach her to paint. Suddenly her world begins to expand, to become a place of art and love.

But Silas has only thought of one thing since their meeting, and his obsession is darkening . . .

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The Pact - Amy Heydenrych
Fiction Emma House Fiction Emma House

The Pact - Amy Heydenrych

About the Book

What if a prank leads to murder?

Published in 2019, The Pact is Amy Heydenrych’s second book. It is a gripping and chilling suspense novel about the deadly intentions of office life.

When Freya arrives at her dream job with the city's hottest start-up, she can't wait to begin a new and exciting life, including dating her new colleague Jay. However, Nicole, Jay's ex and fellow employee, seems intent on making her life a misery. After a big deadline, where Nicole continually picks on her, Freya snaps and tells Jay about the bullying and together they concoct a revenge prank.

The next morning, Nicole is found dead in her apartment . . .

Is this just a prank gone wrong? Or does Freya know someone who is capable of murder - and could she be next?

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Carnival Caper - Alex Milway
Fiction Emma House Fiction Emma House

Carnival Caper - Alex Milway

About the Book

Written by Alex Milway in 2019, Carnival Caper is the third of the fabulous four book Hotel Flamingo series.

It's the last of the autumn days before winter sets in, which means it's time for CARNIVAL! And Hotel Flamingo, the sunniest hotel in town, is all set to join the party. Animal Boulevard is a riot of colour, and every establishment is preparing a float for the annual procession. Anna is determined to win the prize for Hotel Flamingo for the best display, despite rival hotel the Glitz having won it every year since the Carnival began.

Meanwhile Hotel Flamingo is welcoming its usual array of eclectic guests. Wilbur the sheepdog, who has no home, and needs a place to stay and someone to give him a chance at a new start. Mr and Mrs Kunkworth, a pair of skunks, who are rather anxious, and Mac Macaw the parrot, who is quite the opposite ... Things start to get complicated, though, when Anna gets some very unexpected guests - the mega-famous band The Nocturnal Animals! How will she keep their stay a secret while also making sure her guests don't get kept awake by the band's night-time practising and antics?

Then on top of this, disaster strikes! The rainy season comes early, and high winds and torrential rain lash down across the Boulevard. Can Anna save the Carnival, the band and the day?

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The Dead Fathers Club - Matt Haig
Fiction Emma House Fiction Emma House

The Dead Fathers Club - Matt Haig

About the Book

Dead Fathers Club was written by bestselling author Matt Haig in 2006. The plot may strike one as oddly familiar as it embodies a modern retelling of the infamous Shakespeare play; Hamlet.

Philip Noble is an eleven-year-old in crisis. His pub landlord father has died in a road accident, and his mother is succumbing to the greasy charms of her dead husband's brother, Uncle Alan. The remaining certainties of Philip's life crumble away when his father's ghost appears in the pub and declares Uncle Alan murdered him. Arming himself with weapons from the school chemistry cupboard, Philip vows to carry out the ghost's relentless demands for revenge.

Although he yearns to bring peace to his father’s soul, he hesitates, wondering what kind of peace can truly be won by giving the wheel of violence another turn. Can the words of a ghost be trusted any more than the lies of the living?

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Stories of Hope - Heather Morris
Fiction Emma House Fiction Emma House

Stories of Hope - Heather Morris

About the Book

In Stories of Hope, Heather will explore her extraordinary talents as a listener - a skill she employed when she first met Lale Sokolov, the tattooist at Auschwitz-Birkenau and the inspiration for her bestselling novel. It was this ability that led Lale to entrust Heather with his story, which she told in her novel The Tattooist of Auschwitz and the bestselling follow up, Cilka's Journey.

Now Heather shares the story behind her inspirational writing journey and the defining experiences of her life, including her profound friendship with Lale, and explores how she learned to really listen to the stories people told her - skills she believes we can all learn.

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Hitler’s Secret - Rory Clements
Fiction Emma House Fiction Emma House

Hitler’s Secret - Rory Clements

About the Book

Autumn 1941. The war is going badly for Britain and its allies. If Hitler is to be stopped, a new weapon is desperately needed.

In Cambridge, professor Tom Wilde is approached by an American intelligence officer who claims to know of such a weapon - one so secret even Hitler himself isn't aware of its existence. If Wilde can smuggle the package out of Germany, the Third Reich will surely fall.

But it is only when he is deep behind enemy lines that Wilde discovers why the Nazis are so desperate to prevent the 'package' falling into Allied hands. And as ruthless killers hunt him through Europe, a treacherous question hangs over the mission: if Hitler's secret will win them the war, why is Wilde convinced it must remain hidden?

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This Green and Pleasant Land - Ayisha Malik
Fiction Emma House Fiction Emma House

This Green and Pleasant Land - Ayisha Malik

About the Book

In the sleepy village of Babel's End, trouble is brewing.

Bilal Hasham is having a mid-life crisis. His mother has just died, and he finds peace lying in a grave he's dug in the garden. His elderly Auntie Rukhsana has come to live with him, and forged an unlikely friendship with village busybody, Shelley Hawking. His wife Mariam is distant and distracted, and his stepson Haaris is spending more time with his real father.

Bilal's mother's dying wish was to build a mosque in Babel's End, but when Shelley

gets wind of this scheme, she unleashes the forces of hell. Will Bilal's mosque project bring his family and his beloved village together again, or drive them apart?

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Below the Big Blue Sky - Anna McPartlin
Fiction Emma House Fiction Emma House

Below the Big Blue Sky - Anna McPartlin

About the Book

How does a family pick up the pieces, when the one person who held them all together has gone?

When forty-year-old Rabbit Hayes dies, she leaves behind a family broken by grief. Her mother Molly is distraught and in danger of losing her faith. Her father Jack spends hour upon hour in the family attic, poring over his old diaries, losing himself in the past.

Rabbit's brother Davey finds himself suddenly guardian to her twelve-year-old daughter Juliet. Juliet might be able to fill a hole in Davey's heart - but how can he help Juliet through her grief when he can barely cope with his own?

Meanwhile, Rabbit's sister Grace is struggling with the knowledge that she carries the same gene that made her sister ill, and Rabbit's best friend Marjorie is lost, struggling to remain a part of a family she has always wished was her own now that her link to them is gone.

But even though the Hayes family are all fighting their own battles, they are drawn together by their love for Rabbit, and their love for each other. In the years that follow her death they find new ways to celebrate and remember her, to find humour and hope in the face of tragedy, and to live life to its fullest, as Rabbit would have wanted.

Below the Big Blue Sky will make you laugh, cry and shout with joy for the colourful, unruly Hayes family as they battle with the loss of their beloved Rabbit, the daughter, mother, sister and friend, who in her own crazy way taught each of them how to live, and goes on showing them how to love from beyond the grave.

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The Wreck - Meg Keneally
Fiction Emma House Fiction Emma House

The Wreck - Meg Keneally

About the Book

1820, London.

Sarah McCaffrey, fleeing arrest for her part in a failed rebellion, finds herself alone and on the run. She boards the Serpent, bound from London to the colony of New South Wales - and when the captain's reckless actions lead the ship to be dashed onto Sydney's notorious rocks, Sarah is the only survivor.

Adopting a false identity, Sarah determines to make a new life for herself. She takes the first work she can find, under the formidable Molly Thistle, who runs a sprawling trade empire. Sarah begins to see that there is more than one way of changing the world, but her new life is thrown into chaos when her past follows her across the seas.

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Gone Fishing - Mortimer & Whitehouse
Fiction Emma House Fiction Emma House

Gone Fishing - Mortimer & Whitehouse

About the Book

Bob Mortimer and Paul Whitehouse have been friends for 30 years, but when life intervened, what was once a joyous and spontaneous friendship dwindled to the odd phone call or occasional catch-up. Then, Glory Be! They were both diagnosed with heart disease and realised that time is short. They'd better spend it fishing...

So they dusted off their kits, chucked on their waders and ventured into the achingly beautiful British countryside to fish, rediscover the joys of their friendship and ruminate on some of life's most profound questions, such as: How did we get so old? Where are all the fish? What are your favourite pocket meats? What should we do if we find a corpse?

Following the success of the BBC's Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing series, this wonderful book by two lifelong friends is a love letter to the joys of angling, the thrill of the catch and the virtue of having a right daft laff with your mates. On the fish, the equipment, the food, and the locations, Gone Fishing is the perfect book for fans of Bob Mortimer, Paul Whitehouse and for anyone who wants to read a brilliantly written and endlessly funny joint memoir on life, friendship and joys of fishing.

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The Unexpected Return of Josephine Fox - Claire Gradidge
Fiction Emma House Fiction Emma House

The Unexpected Return of Josephine Fox - Claire Gradidge

About the Book

April 1941, Romsey, England.

Josephine 'Jo' Fox hasn't set foot in Romsey in over twenty years. As an illegitimate child, her family - headed by her controlling grandfather - found her an embarrassment. Now, she wants to return to what was once her home and uncover the secret of her parentage. Who was her father and why would her mother never talk about him?

Jo arrives the day after the Luftwaffe have bombed the town. The local pub has been completely destroyed and rescue teams are searching for the remains of the seven people known to have been in the pub at the time the bomb hit. They are shocked, however, to uncover eight bodies instead. The eighth, unidentified, body is that of a teenage girl, who no one in the town claims to know. Who is she, how did she get there, but most importantly - who killed her?

Teaming up with local coroner and old friend, Bram Nash, Jo sets out to establish the identity of the girl and solve the riddle of her death. In doing so, she also uncovers her own personal mystery.

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The Dover Café at War - Ginny Bell
Fiction Emma House Fiction Emma House

The Dover Café at War - Ginny Bell

About the Book

Dover, 1939

At the heart of Market Square lies Castle's Café, run by the formidable Nellie Castle and her six children.

Since the scandalous birth of her son ten years before, Marianne, Nellie's eldest daughter, has preferred to stay in the kitchen, hidden away from the scrutiny of the town gossips. Overcome with shame, she has never revealed the identity of Donny's father - not even to her own mother.

But with World War II just around the corner, soon Marianne's past catches up with her. And suddenly the lives of the Castle family become a lot more complicated.

Will the secrets from her past destroy their future?

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The Secret Midwife
Fiction Emma House Fiction Emma House

The Secret Midwife

About the book

The Secret Midwife is a heart-breaking, engrossing and important read. At once joyful and profoundly shocking, this is the story of birth, straight from the delivery room.

Strongest supporter, best friend, expert, cheerleader and chief photographer . . . Before, during and after labour the role of a midwife is second to none. The Secret Midwife reveals the highs and lows on the frontline of the maternity unit, from the mother who tries to give herself a DIY caesarean to the baby born into witness protection, and from surprise infants that arrive down toilets to ones that turn up in the lift.

But there is a problem; the system which is supposed to support the midwives and the women they care for is starting to crumble. Short-staffed, over worked and underappreciated - these crippling conditions are taking their toll on the dedicated staff doing their utmost to uphold our National Health Service, and the consequences are very serious indeed.

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Blunt Force - Lynda La Plante
Fiction Emma House Fiction Emma House

Blunt Force - Lynda La Plante

About the Book

Things can't get much worse for detective Jane Tennison. Unceremoniously kicked off the adrenaline-fuelled Flying Squad, she now plies her trade in Gerald Road, a small and sleepy police station in the heart of London's affluent Knightsbridge.

With only petty crime to sink her teeth into, Tennison can feel her career slowly flatlining. That is until the discovery of the most brutal murder Jane has ever seen: Charlie Foxley has been found viciously beaten to death with a cricket bat - his body dismembered and disembowelled.

As a big-time theatrical agent, Foxley had a lot of powerful friends - but just as many enemies. And alongside her old friend DS Spencer Gibbs, Tennison must journey into the salacious world of show business to find out which one is the killer, before they strike again.

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Greek Island Escape - Patricia Wilson
Fiction Emma House Fiction Emma House

Greek Island Escape - Patricia Wilson

About the Book

'I am Sofia. I am searching for my daughter, born 1st November 1972. Can you help me?'

On the beautiful beaches of Crete, an old woman is handing out scraps of paper. Sofia, eighty-five years old, unable to speak, is desperate to find a daughter she has never known. After a tragic childhood in Athens and a soaring career as a singer, the brutal treatment of the man she loved by a tyrannical regime forced her to give up her daughter mere days after her birth. Now she longs to be reunited with her child before it's too late.

Meanwhile in London, Zoe is searching too. In the months since the disappearance of her teenage daughter, Zoe's life has crumbled apart. Her husband has left her, her son feels forgotten, and every day is a struggle. But Zoe is desperate to track her daughter down, even if she doesn't want to be found . . .

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Traces - Professor Patricia Wiltshire
Fiction Emma House Fiction Emma House

Traces - Professor Patricia Wiltshire

About the book

EVERY BODY LEAVES A MARK

In Traces, Professor Patricia Wiltshire will take you on a journey through the fascinating edgeland where nature and crime are intertwined. She'll take you searching for bodies of loved ones - through woodlands and plantations, along hedgerows and field-edges, from ditches to living rooms - solving time since death and how remains were disposed of. She will show you how pollen from a jacket led to a confession and how two pairs of trainers, a car and a garden fork led to the location of a murdered girl. She will give you glimpses of her own history: her loves, her losses, and the narrow little valley in Wales where she first woke up to the wonders of the natural world.

From flowers, fungi, tree trunks to walking boots, carpets and corpses' hair, Traces is a fascinating and unique book on life, death, and one's indelible link with nature.

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The Shelf - Helly Acton
Fiction Emma House Fiction Emma House

The Shelf - Helly Acton

About the Book

This Radio 2 Book Club pick is a funny, feminist and all-too-relatable novel about our obsession with coupling up, settling down and the battle we all have with accepting ourselves, The Shelf introduces the freshest new voice in women's fiction.

Ever feel like you're losing a race you never signed up for?

Everyone in Amy's life seems to be getting married, having children and settling down (or so Instagram tells her), and she feels like she's falling behind.

So, when her long-term boyfriend surprises her with a dream holiday, she thinks he's going to finally pop the Big Question. But the dream turns into a nightmare when, instead, she finds herself on the set of a Big Brother-style reality television show, The Shelf.

Along with five other women, Amy is brutally dumped live on TV and must compete in a series of humiliating and obnoxious tasks in the hope of being crowned 'The Keeper'.

While inside the house, will Amy learn that there are worse things than being 'left on the shelf'?

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We Begin at the End - Chris Whitaker
Fiction Emma House Fiction Emma House

We Begin at the End - Chris Whitaker

About the Book

Thirty years ago, a teenage Vincent King became a killer.

Now he's been released from prison and is back in his hometown of Cape Haven, California, where not everyone is pleased to see him. Like Star Radley, his ex-girlfriend and sister of the girl he killed.

Duchess Radley, Star's thirteen-year-old daughter, is part-carer, part-protector to her younger brother, Robin - and to her deeply troubled mother. But in trying to protect Star, Duchess inadvertently sets off a chain of events that will have tragic consequences not only for her family, but for the whole town.

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Peaky Blinders: The Real Story - Carl Chinn
Fiction Emma House Fiction Emma House

Peaky Blinders: The Real Story - Carl Chinn

About the book

Who were the real Peaky Blinders?

In this gripping social history, Chinn shines a light on the rarely reported struggles of the working class in one of the great cities of the British Empire before the First World War. The story continues after 1918 as some Peaky Blinders transformed into the infamous Birmingham Gang. Led by the real Billy Kimber, they fought a bloody war with the London gangsters Darby Sabini and Alfie Solomon over valuable protection rackets extorting money from bookmakers across the booming postwar racecourses of Britain.

Drawing together a remarkably wide-range of original sources, including rarely seen images of real Peaky Blinders and interviews with relatives of the 1920s gangsters, Peaky Blinders: The Real Story adds a new dimension to the true history of Birmingham's underworld and fact behind its fiction.

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Charlotte - Helen Moffett</a>
Fiction Kate Hodkinson Fiction Kate Hodkinson

Charlotte - Helen Moffett

About the book

Everybody believes that Charlotte Lucas has no prospects. She is unmarried, plain, poor and reaching a dangerous age. When she stuns the neighbourhood by accepting the proposal of buffoonish clergyman Mr Collins, her best friend Lizzy Bennet is appalled by her decision. Yet this is the only way Charlotte knows how to provide for her future. Her married life will propel her into a new world: not only of duty and longed-for children, but secrets, grief, unexpected love and friendship, and a kind of freedom.Jane Austen cared deeply about the constraints on women in Regency England. This powerful reimagining takes up where Austen left off in Pride and Prejudice, showing us a woman determined to carve a place for herself in the world. Charlotte offers a fresh, feminist addition to the post-Austen canon, beautifully imagined, and brimming with passion and intelligence.

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