When Amy consults her doctor about her increasing mood swings, she is advised to keep a diary as an outlet for her bursts of irritation. And her life obligingly becomes eventful enough to provide interesting reading. But it is the tantalizing allusions to Amy's past—so at odds with her appearance as the stereotypical retired schoolmistress—that intrigues, delights, and eventually reveals a woman of surprising qualities. Marcia Willett writing as Willa Marsh

Amy Wingate's Journal

Literature & Fiction

Marsh, Willa

Contemporary

Sceptre/Hodder & Stoughton

What I Loved

A powerful and heartbreaking novel that chronicles the epic story of two families, two sons, and two marriages What I Loved begins in New York in 1975, when art historian Leo Hertzberg discovers an extraordinary painting by an unknown artist in a SoHo gallery. He buys the work; tracks down the artist, Bill Wechsler; and the two men embark on a life-long friendship.Leo's story, which spans twenty-five years, follows the evolution of the growing involvement between his family and Bill's-an intricate constellation of attachments that includes the two men; their wives, Erica and Violet; and their children, Matthew and Mark. The families live in the same building in New York, share a house in Vermont during the summer, keep up a lively exchange of thoughts and ideas, and find themselves permanently altered by one another. Over the years, they not only enjoy love but endure loss-in one case sudden, incapacitating loss; in another, a different kind, one that is hidden and slow-growing, and which insidiously erodes the fabric of their lives.Intimate in tone and seductive in its complexity, the novel moves seamlessly from inner worlds to outer worlds, from the deeply private to the public, from physical infirmity to cultural illness. Part family novel, part psychological thriller, What I Loved is a beautifully written exploration of love, loss, and betrayal-and of a man's attempt to make sense of the world and go on living.

Hustvedt, Siri

Immediately after his father's funeral, Marcus is approached by two senators who want him to dig up some dirt on Sejanus, emperor Tiberius' deputy and likely successor. Despite the dangers, Marcus cannot resist the thrill of more detective work, and his investigations uncover a trail of treason, betrayal, and murder.

Sejanus

DAVID WISHART

Genre Fiction

Carter Beats the Devil

Gold, Glen David

The characters on Norminton's purgatorial 'Ship of Fools' - a ship that's going nowhere fast - bicker and struggle for attention; telling tales that bounce off one another to form a compendium of interralated stories, running from lyrical romance to scabrous satire, by way of fairy-tale and black comedy. Often wickedly funny, always stunningly written and displaying an astonishing range of voices (the prudish nun, the bawdy old woman, the penitent drunkard, and the glutton whose stomach does all the talking - to name a few) 'The Ship of Fools' is truly a treasure chest of a novel, and an example of story-telling at its very best.

The Ship of Fools

Norminton, Gregory

"Arts and Wonders" spans a glorious canvas, peopled by werewolves, thieves, emperors, travelling players and a forger dwarf who takes a lifetime to learn the danger of illusions. Tomasso Grilli, a dwarf gifted with an extraordinary capacity for artistic forgery (and flexible morals) recounts the story of his life, from his base beginnings in Florence, through his apprenticeship to the painter Arcimboldo, to his life of crime in Prague and subsequent banishment, to the gilded fame he finds as 'librarian' and collector to the court of an impoverished, ignorant ruler in the German Dukedom of Felsungrunde. Grilli's ambition and dubious skills take him to the pinnacle of success only for it to collapse beneath him like the illusion it always was. Betrayed and reviled he leaves Felsungrunde, is forced to join a group of travelling players, and finally learns the value of friendship. loyalty and honesty. The extraordinary cast of characters (some based on real historical figures) includes werewolves, an occult alchemist, a bear, a dodo, a lion and a maker of mechanical dolls.

Arts and Wonders

Literary

The Night Guest

McFarlane, Fiona

Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think

HANS ROSLING

Ola Rosling

Anna Rosling Rönnlund

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