In her sweeping debut novel, Elizabeth J. Church takes us from the World War II years in Chicago to the vast sun-parched canyons of New Mexico in the 1970s as we follow the journey of a driven, spirited young woman, Meridian Wallace, whose scientific ambitions are subverted by the expectations of her era. In 1941, at seventeen years old, Meridian begins her ornithology studies at the University of Chicago. She is soon drawn to Alden Whetstone, a brilliant,...

Kate Battista feels stuck. How did she end up running house and home for her eccentric scientist father and uppity, pretty younger sister Bunny? Plus, she s always in trouble at work her pre-school charges adore her, but their parents don t always appreciate her unusual opinions and forthright manner. Dr. Battista has other problems. After years out in the academic wilderness, he is on the verge of a breakthrough. His research could help millions....

Desmond and Deirdre Doyle will have been married for 25 years in October. It falls to the Doyles' eldest daughter, Anna, to decide how best to commemorate her parents' Silver Wedding. No use asking her sister Helen, living in her London convent, or her brother Brendan, who has chosen another form of exile on a bleak farm in the West of Ireland. But it is unthinkable not to have a party, even though for the Doyles, family occasions are more difficult...

Wendy?s life can be neatly divided into two: before and after. Before her husband?s car accident, it was just the two of them. They never took the train at rush hour, and they avoided their noisy neighbour upstairs. Naveem devoted his spare time to vintage train models, and Wendy to re-reading the well-thumbed pages of her favourite books. It didn?t matter what others thought about their small, quiet life together - they were happy. After the coma,...

Land of the Afternoon Sun follows a disinherited English baron and a young New York heiress who marry and move west to build an agricultural empire in Palm Springs in the 1920s, when it was just a budding town on the edge of the Mojave Desert. It's a saga about ambition on both large and small scales and the rapidly modernising world as the harsh, sun-drenched landscape transforms from a Native American haven to the playground of Hollywood's rich...

1611. Celia Lamprey looks out across the rooftops of Aleppo for the last time. After ten years living in the Orient, she and her husband, Paul Pindar, are setting sail for England �? taking with them the legendary diamond, the Sultan's Blue, despite the curse that surrounds it. They arrive to find a country much changed; Bishopsgate, once surrounded by fields, is now a muddy thoroughfare choked with carriages �? from which carpenters, gardeners...

?There was no denying it, being cheerful was a challenge. You just had to be grateful for small mercies: a sunny day, a night without an air raid, an extra rasher of bacon from the butcher.? England, 1942: 23-year-old Betty runs away from Bristol to make a new life for herself. Betrayed by her husband, Betty flees to the seaside town of Bournemouth, where she has fond memories of childhood holidays. There, she finds a small family bakery, in desperate...

Richard and Judy summer bookclub read 2013, Goodreads category winner, and longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2013, stunning story of a lighthouse keeper and his wife who face a life-changing moral dilemma. A boat washes up on the shore of a remote lighthouse keeper's island. It holds a dead man - and a crying baby. The only two islanders, Tom and his wife Izzy, are about to make a devastating decision. They break the rules and follow their...