Annotation:After a tsunami rages through their town in India, Ahalya and Sita are left orphans and homeless. Knowing no one else to turn to, they set out to find the convent in another town where they attend school. Along the way they are abducted and sold to the owner of a brothel in Mumbai. This is the start of their hellish descent into the horrors of human trafficking. While this is a dark topic, the author does a great job of keeping hope alive. A well written book, that's catalogued as a thriller but reads like fiction.

Annotation:Vacationers have been coming to Badenheim in Austria every year for its pleasant air, charming atmosphere, and convivial social scene. In the summer of 1939 the city has taken on a darker mood. The “Sanitation Department” has been measuring rooms, promoting resettlement in Poland, and registering Jews. Increasingly cut off from the outside world, the visitors can do nothing but wait. If you are a fan of Katherine Anne Porter’s “Ship of Fools” or Ann Patchett’s “Bel Canto” you will enjoy this book.

Annotation:When reading becomes the Queen’s life's focus and she gradually loses interest in her endless official duties, her court and government are sent reeling by this new royal practice. With this mistaken for the onset of senility,” plots are hatched by the prime minister and the queen’s staff to discourage the queen’s preoccupation with books. Lots of fun in the palace with the proper behavior and royal protocol. This satire will make you smile.

Annotation:Chloe, a 39-year-old divorced mother and a lifelong member of the Jane Austen Society applies for what she thinks is a documentary set in Regency England only to learn once she is selected that it is in fact a reality TV dating show. A very funny look at all things Regency with a 21st century twist.

Annotation:The caller is a cold book, there’s not much hope in it. The author Karen Fossum takes us into the world of both victims and perpetrators which is unusual in crime fiction because the victims are generally silent for good reason. It is Fossum's way of examining the dark recesses of human behaviour that stand out in this book. Although there's nothing judgemental about the way that she does this, it's a matter of her drawing the picture, explaining the acts and describing the consequences, leaving the question of guilt or innocence, inexcusable acts and mitigating circumstances open to the reader to consider. This story is very much about consequences. The acts of one irresponsible, foolish young man who causes havoc with practical jokes that annoy, frighten and discomfort. As the level of concern grows, Inspector Sejer (say ear) does his best to find the perpetrator, even though the nature of the crime being committed as part of these jokes is sometimes obvious, sometimes a little obscure, The problem is that the perpetrator is clever, and very cool and collected, and you just know the outcomes are going to get worse

Annotation:When a neighbour's dog is mysteriously killed, Christopher Boone, a 15-year-old autistic savant decides to solve the crime in the spirit of his hero, Sherlock Holmes. Christopher's voice is clear and logical, his descriptions spare and to the point. What emerges is not only the solution to the mystery, but also insight into his world.

Annotation:When literary critic Charles Sainte-Beuve begins an affair with Adele, the wife of his friend Victor Hugo, the scandal remains officially unacknowledged. The “unspoken” scandal complicates the lives of Charles and Adele over the course of several decades. An engaging novel of heightened sensibility for fans of literary historical fiction.

Annotation:Sophie, resigned to a boring life making hats, meets Howl, a young but powerful wizard with a terrible reputation for breaking hearts and ignoring his responsibilities. Diana Wynne Jones writes with humour and understanding as she creates appealing characters and unusual situations. She is my favourite writer.

Annotation:In until thy wrath be past, it is a dead person who observes events until she can finally rest. Because a dead person is speaking to the reader, we know more than the police about what really happened, or at least some of the story. For the police a cold case of 2 missing teens is revived when the body of a young woman in a diving suit surfaces in the River Thorne in the far north of Sweden.at the first thaw of spring. The same night Prosecutor and main character Rebecka Martinsson has her sleep disturbed by haunting visions of a shadowy, accusing figure. Could the body belong to the ghost in her dreams? And where is the dead girl's boyfriend, also reported as missing the previous winter?, Rebecka is drawn into the investigation that centres on old rumours about a plane carrying supplies for German troops in 1943 that never arrived. Sweden’s early collaboration with the Nazis is still a raw wound, so shame and secrecy shroud the locals' memories of the war. On the desolate shore of a frozen lake lurks a killer who will kill again to keep the past buried for ever beneath half a century's silent ice and snow. The author weaves together witness accounts and secrets from the past in juxtaposition with the present, in particular depicting a pair of DERANGED brothers with deceptive cleverness and this is where the quotation used in the title comes into play.

Annotation:The setting of this book is beyond the Arctic Circle to Inuit (in yoo eet) territory. McGrath makes the most of every sensory extreme. The cold seems to leak from the page, leaving you chilled, both by its suspenseful plot and by the epic descriptions of this vast white landscape. Then there are the people, the main character Edie, an experienced tracker and guide struggles with alcoholism, has a difficult relationship with her ex and is determined to show the domineering men of the community that she can guide and track as well as any man. All these issues make Edie a deeply empathetic personality. She's a tough cookie: she fights her way through the ice-fields with a tenacity that southern readers everywhere will relish. Her ingenious and original character is backed up by a cast of crazy scientists, corrupt officials, placid policemen, Russian oil men and locals lost in “a fog of drink, boredom, unwanted pregnancies, low expectations and educational underachievement”. But the most addictive character – both hero and villain of the piece – is the Arctic itself. The DESOLATE Landscape makes a seductive location for a thriller, a land of wonder and terror shut in darkness for months of the year, a place in which temperatures rarely rise above freezing and, in winter, regularly fall below -40ºC.

Annotation:Jean-Baptiste Baratte, a young engineer from Normandy, is charged by Louis XVI’s minister with the exhumation of the overflowing cemetery of Les Innocents, or Cimetière des Innocents. Les Innocents was the oldest and largest cemetery in the Paris located at its very heart. The cemetery, first established in the Middle Ages, was often used for mass graves. By the 1780’s, the cemetery was contaminating the surrounding air and water because of overuse and climatic conditions. Baratte, who sees himself as an educated man of reason, perceives the work as a chance to release the encumbrances of the past and make way for a new France. Little does he know the impact the work of removing bodies from the cemetery will have on his own life, the neighbouring inhabitants, the men charged with removing the bodies, and ultimately France itself. The book pulls the reader in with fully-drawn characters, vivid imagery, and a richly imagined pre-revolutionary Paris. Pure was the recipient of the 2011 Costa Book of the Year Award.

Annotation:The Buddha in the Attic tells the story of a group of young women brought over from Japan to San Francisco as ‘picture brides’ in the early part of the 20th century. During this period, Japanese immigrant workers along the West Coast would hire a matchmaker to find them a bride from their home country using photographs, and recommendations from family members. The Buddha in the Attic follows the remarkable lives of these young women, from the difficult journey over the Pacific exchanging photographs of their yet unknown husbands and imagining a future in a mysterious new land. Told in the collective “we”, the women arrive in San Francisco and experience their first nights as new wives. They struggle to adapt to a new language and alien culture while engaged in the arduous labour of fruit-picking and working as domestics. As their families and community grows, they find themselves raising children who fully embrace the American ideal rejecting any notion of their Japanese heritage. A lyrical work of fiction, that pays tribute in the most beautiful way. “Otsuka combines the tragic power of a Greek chorus with the intimacy of a confession…An understated masterpiece…[that] seems destined to endure.”– San Francisco Chronicle The Buddha in the Attic was the recipient of the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.

Annotation:It’s New Year’s Eve and Micayla is alone house–sitting an empty mansion for her Uncle Nicco when she hears clinking on the first floor. Her cop instincts kick in and with nothing but her PJ’s and gun she heads downstairs to investigate. She soon finds herself stumbling into a heist, and things quickly go from bad to worse when she accidently sees some incriminating photos of her uncle which implicate him in a murder…torn between her duty as a cop and her knowledge of the consequences to having seen the pictures she finds herself fleeing with the intruder. Soon passions ignite but can these two unlikely partners in crime ever find love?

Annotation:Althought Vargas, a French female anthropologist is known primarily for her Detective Adamsberg mysteries, this book is a part of a trilogy of three unemployed history graduate students who end up sharing a derelict home in Paris. Marc, Luc and Mathias become named the three evangelists by Marc’s uncle Vandoosler, a retired detective. When a tree suddenly appears in a neighbours back yard, and then the neighbour disappears, this strange band of men must search for the killer. Vargas has quirky characters, great sense of location and a suspenseful plot.