Breeze from the River Manjeera tells the story of the engaging Neela who arrives in England from a small village in India as a bride for the brutal Ajay. The life that awaits Neela is a far cry from her hopes and expectations. Treated worse than a servant by her in-laws, and unwanted by her husband, she finally escapes in search of independence and freedom. The novel explores in a personal, moving way the issues around the deep-rooted traditions of arranged marriages and the struggle for young women like Neela to find love and happiness.  A born story-teller, Hema Macherla was short-listed for Richard & Judy with this novel, and has since written the epic Blue Eyes.

Breeze From The River Manjeera

Literature & Fiction

Macherla, Hema

Women's Fiction

Linen Press

Nothing Is Heavy

Jarrett, Vicki

Humor & Satire

Set in a river boat community in Arkansas in the 1930s, this poignant story chronicles Aiyana Weir's spirited determination to break away from a life, like that of the women around her, defined and dominated by brutal patriarchy. Aiyana's voice, unique, hesitant and uneducated, expresses the turmoil of her inner world through the details and rhythms of her beloved river and charts her secret pursuit of literacy - her only means of escape from the abuse of her father and the indifference of the man to whom she is casually given. Her grandmother, a mythical figure steeped in wisdom and folklore, and her brother, Lyle, are Aiyana's only allies in her struggle for survival and as shameless plans to leave the river.

Sometimes A River Song

Joy, Avril

Genre Fiction

Sailing Through Byzantium

Freely, Maureen

Literary

“You’d think she was an angel if she wasn’t always flying so close to hell.” Released from prison on probation, 19-year-old Harper Haley returns to the brutal, sweaty, dogwood scented landscape of her youth. Chronicling her homecoming and struggle for rehabilitation, this is the story of one girl’s sin, guilt and resurrection. At the heart of the novel is the dangerous, obsessive sisterhood between Harper and her childhood friends Collier, a seductively destructive debutante, and Caro, a jaded dreamer yearning for escape. As Harper backslides into a violent cycle of sex, drugs and abuse, the sisterhood at the core of her identity, and of the story, begins to unravel. Climaxing in the confession of the act that irreversibly altered her life and those closest to her, Dogwood is Harper’s story, the one she can’t forget and the one she cannot speak.

Dogwood

Parnell, Lindsay

United States

Catch The Moon, Mary

Waters, Wendy

A rape. A war. A society where women are bought and sold but no one can speak of shame. Shanghai 1937. Violence throbs at the heart of The Dancing Girl and the Turtle. Song Anyi is on the road to Shanghai and freedom when she is raped and left for dead. The silence and shame that mark her courageous survival drive her to escalating self-harm and prostitution. From opium dens to high- class brothels, Anyi dances on the edge of destruction while China prepares for war with Japan. Hers is the voice of every woman who fights for independence against overwhelming odds. The Dancing Girl and the Turtle is one of four interlocking novels set in Shanghai from 1929 to 1954. Through the eyes of the dancer, Song Anyi, and her brother Kang, the Shanghai Quartet spans a tumultuous time in Chinese history: war with the Japanese, the influx of stateless Jews into Shanghai, civil war and revolution. How does the love of a sister destroy her brother and all those around him?

The Dancing Girl and the Turtle

Kao, Karen

In1843, Edinburgh artist, David Octavius Hill, is commissioned to paint the portraits of 400 ministers who have broken away from the Church of Scotland. Only when he meets Robert Adamson, an early master of the new and fickle art of photography, does this daunting task begin to look feasible. Hill is soon bewitched by the art of light and shade. He and Adamson become the darlings of Edinburgh society, immortalising people and places with their subtle and artistic images. In the Blink of an Eye is a re-imagining of Hill's life in the words of those who were beguiled by his artistry and charismatic charm. Tender, tragic and sometimes humorous, these voices come together in a story of art and science, love and loss, friendship and photography.

In the Blink of an Eye

Bacon, Ali

Biographies & Memoirs

A faded seaside town in autumn is the backdrop for this elegiac story of a vulnerable boy and the adult who befriends him. Eight year old Neville, who counts stars and steps and grains of sand, is the first to notice that the red beach hut is occupied again. Abbott is on the run after a disturbing cyber attack. Their fleeting friendship, played out on the margins of sea and shore, brings the honesty and compassion both seek. But others watch, judge and misinterpret what they see while Abbot’s past runs at their heels. 
An evocative portrayal of two outsiders who find companionship and solace on a lonely beach. This novel is about the labels we give people who are different and the harm that ensues.

The Red Beach Hut

Michell, Lynn

Contemporary

My Blue Peninsula is a confession that fills seven notebooks, with a final notebook left mostly empty. In them, Dora Giraud tries to explain to her adult daughters why she remains in Istanbul after escaping death at the hands of extremists, and why she risks her life to campaign for the truth about the Greek, Armenian, and Assyrian genocides, ferociously denied for a century by the Turkish state. Dora's desperate need to understand her family history is the thread that binds this story's conflicting fragments. As the direct descendant of the genocides' victims and perpetrators, she carries a tangled legacy of loss and betrayal, lies and ill-gotten gains. With this confession, she hopes to set her daughters free. But can she? My Blue Peninsula is Maureen Freely's fourth novel set in Istanbul, the city of her childhood. In each, a character from the sidelines of the preceding novel takes centre stage to probe a mystery left pending. We first met Dora Giraud in Sailing Through Byzantium as the observant daughter of a famously bohemian household who could not, then, speak the truth.

My Blue Peninsula

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