Summer Reading 2022: Europe

Rebecca

Du Maurier, Daphne

Murder In The Marais

Black, Cara

The Blood Doctor

Vine, Barbara

The Shadow Of The Wind

Ruiz Zafon, Carlos

Barcelona, 1945: A city slowly heals in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, and Daniel, an antiquarian book dealer’s son who mourns the loss of his mother, finds solace in a mysterious book entitled The Shadow of the Wind, by one Julián Carax. But when he sets out to find the author’s other works, he makes a shocking discovery: someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book Carax has written. In fact, Daniel may have the last of Carax’s books in existence. Soon Daniel’s seemingly innocent quest opens a door into one of Barcelona’s darkest secrets--an epic story of murder, madness, and doomed love.

The Blood-dimmed Tide

Airth, Rennie

Barcelona, 1945: A city slowly heals in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, and Daniel, an antiquarian book dealer’s son who mourns the loss of his mother, finds solace in a mysterious book entitled The Shadow of the Wind, by one Julián Carax. But when he sets out to find the author’s other works, he makes a shocking discovery: someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book Carax has written. In fact, Daniel may have the last of Carax’s books in existence. Soon Daniel’s seemingly innocent quest opens a door into one of Barcelona’s darkest secrets--an epic story of murder, madness, and doomed love.

River Of Darkness

Airth, Rennie

Inspector John Madden of Scotland Yard investigates the murder of a family in the post-World War I British countryside. A veteran of the war, Madden immediately recognizes the work of a soldier, but discovering the motive will take longer

The Days Of Abandonment

Ferrante, Elena.

Once an aspiring writer, Olga traded literary ambition for marriage and motherhood; when Mario dumps her after 15 years, she is utterly unprepared. Though she tells herself that she is a competent woman, nothing like the poverella (poor abandoned wife) that mothers whispered about in her childhood, Olga falls completely apart. Routine chores overwhelm her; she neglects her appearance and forgets her manners; she throws herself at the older musician downstairs; she sees the poverella's ghost. After months of self-pity, anger, doubt, fury, desperation and near madness, her acknowledgments of weaknesses in the marriage feel as earned as they are unsurprising.

Ghosts Of Spain

Tremlett, Giles.

The edge of a barber's razor -- Secretos a voces -- Looking for the Generalísimo -- Amnistía and amnesia : the pact of forgetting -- How the bikini saved Spain -- Anarchy, order and a real pair of balls -- The mean streets of flamenco -- Clubs and curas -- Men and children first -- II-M: Moros y Cristianos -- In the shadow of the serpent and the axe -- The madness of Verdaguer -- Coffins, Celts and clothes -- Moderns and ruins.

Beautiful Ruins

Walter, Jess

A novel that spans fifty years. The Italian housekeeper and his long-lost American starlet; the producer who once brought them together, and his assistant. A glittering world filled with unforgettable characters.

1494

Bown, Stephen R.

Documents how Columbus's New World discoveries inflamed a conflict between the leaders of Portugal and Spain that was resolved by Pope Alexander VI, who proclaimed territory divisions in the Atlantic that had a profound influence on centuries of history.

Saving Italy

Edsel, Robert M.

When Hitler's armies occupied Italy in 1943, they also seized control of mankind's greatest cultural treasures. As they had done throughout Europe, the Nazis could now plunder the masterpieces of the Renaissance, the treasures of the Vatican, and the antiquities of the Roman Empire. In May 1944 two unlikely American heroes--artist Deane Keller and scholar Fred Hartt--embarked from Naples on the tresure hunt of a lifetime, tracking billions of dollars of missing art, including works by Michelangelo, Donatello, Titian, Caravaggio, and Botticelli.

In A Dark, Dark Wood

Ware, Ruth.

What should be a cozy and fun-filled weekend deep in the English countryside takes a sinister turn in Ruth Ware's suspenseful, compulsive, and darkly twisted psychological thriller. Leonora, known to some as Lee and others as Nora, is a reclusive crimewriter, unwilling to leave her "nest" of an apartment unless it is absolutely necessary. When a friend she hasn't seen or spoken to in years unexpectedly invites Nora (Lee?) to a weekend away in an eerie glass house deep in the English countryside, she reluctantly agrees to make the trip. Forty-eight hours later, she wakes up in a hospital bed injured but alive, with the knowledge that someone is dead. Wondering not "what happened?" but "what have I done?", Nora (Lee?) tries to piece together the events of the past weekend. Working to uncover secrets, reveal motives, and find answers, Nora (Lee?) must revisit parts of herself that she would much rather leave buried where they belong: in the past. In the tradition of Paula Hawkins's instant New York Times bestseller The Girl On the Train and S. J. Watson's riveting national sensation Before I Go To Sleep, this gripping literary debut from UK novelist Ruth Ware will leave you on the edge of your seat through the very last page"--

Chase Your Shadow

Carlin, John

Oscar Pistorius was eleven months old when he had both legs amputated below the knee, due to congenital fibular disease. Despite this severe disability, Pistorious grew up to be an extraordinary athlete, inspirational role model, and global symbol of resilience. In 2012 he became the first amputee runner in history to compete in the Olympics and was hailed as a hero not only in his native South Africa but around the world. Everything changed for Pistorius in the early morning hours of February 14, 2013-Valentine's Day-when he shot and killed his girlfriend, model Reeva Steenkamp, through a closed bathroom door, allegedly because he mistook her for an intruder intent on doing him harm. He was arrested and charged with premeditated murder, and overnight, the public's view of Pistorius turned on its head. Not since the O. J. Simpson case has a courtroom drama riveted global attention on one man's fate. Acclaimed journalist John Carlin's vivid firsthand account of Pistorius's seven-month murder trial, broadcast worldwide from Johannesburg, details the wrenching emotional breakdowns and merciless interrogation of the accused on and off the stand, the fraught relationship between the Pistorius and Steenkamp families, and the highly controversial verdict of culpable homicide, for which Pistorius received a five-year sentence. But Chase Your Shadow is far more than just a sensational crime story, as Carlin shows through meticulous reporting and extensive access to Pistorius and his family and friends. This courtroom confrontation between a white, privileged, twenty-seven-year-old male athlete on trial for murder and the black female judge who alone would decide his fate-held in a democratic country trying to exorcise its history of racial hatred and endemic violence against women-exposes the complex social and political realities of post-Apartheid South Africa.

The Perfect Horse

Letts, Elizabeth

In the chaotic last days of the war a small troop of battle-weary American soldiers captures a German spy and makes an astonishing findhis briefcase is empty but for photos of beautiful white horses that have been stolen and kept on a secret farm behind enemy lines. Hitler has stockpiled the worlds finest purebreds in order to breed the perfect military machinean equine master race. But with the starving Russian army closing in, the animals are in imminent danger of being slaughtered for food.

The Girl From The Metropol Hotel

Petrushevskai︠a︡, Li︠u︡dmila

The prizewinning memoir of one of the world's great writers, about coming of age and finding her voice amid the hardships of Stalinist Russia. Like a young Edith Piaf, wandering the streets singing for alms, and like Oliver Twist, living by his wits, Ludmilla Petrushevskaya grew up watchful and hungry, a diminutive figure far removed from the heights she would attain as an internationally celebrated writer. In The Girl from the Metropol Hotel, her prizewinning memoir, she recounts her childhood of extreme deprivation, made more acute by the awareness that her family of Bolshevik intellectuals, now reduced to waiting in bread lines, once lived large across the street from the Kremlin in the opulent Metropol Hotel. As she unravels the threads of her itinerant upbringing--of feigned orphandom, of sleeping in freight cars and beneath the kitchen tables of communal apartments, of the fugitive pleasures of scraps of food--we see, both in her remarkable lack of self-pity and in the more than two dozen photographs throughout the text, her feral instinct and the crucible in which her gift for giving voice to a nation of survivors was forged"--

Mythos : A Retelling Of The Myths Of Ancient Greece

Fry, Stephen

The Greek myths are the greatest stories ever told, passed down through millennia and inspiring writers and artists as varied as Shakespeare, Michelangelo, James Joyce and Walt Disney. They are embedded deeply in the traditions, tales and cultural DNA of the West. In Stephen Fry's hands the stories of the titans and gods become a brilliantly entertaining account of ribaldry and revelry, warfare and worship, debauchery, love affairs and life lessons, slayings and suicides, triumphs and tragedies. You'll fall in love with Zeus, marvel at the birth of Athena, wince at Cronus and Gaia's revenge on Ouranos, weep with King Midas and hunt with the beautiful and ferocious Artemis. Thoroughly spellbinding, informative and moving, Stephen Fry's Mythos perfectly captures these stories for the modern age - in all their rich and deeply human relevance.

Celtic Empire

Cussler, Clive

Clive Cussler, "The Grand Master of Adventure," sends his intrepid heroes Dirk Pitt and Al Giordino on their wildest, boldest mission into the ancient world, unlocking extraordinary secrets and solving hideous crimes. Another fabulous read from the most beloved series from the #1 New York Times-bestselling author. The murders of a team of United Nations scientists in El Salvador. A deadly collision in the waterways off the city of Detroit. An attack by tomb raiders on an archaeological site along the banks of the Nile. Is there a link between these violent events? The answer may lie in the tale of an Egyptian princess forced to flee the armies of her father three thousand years ago. During what was supposed to be a routine investigation in South America, NUMA Director Dirk Pitt finds himself embroiled in an international mystery, one that will lead him across the world and which will threaten everyone and everything he knows--most importantly, his own family. Pitt travels to Scotland in search of answers about the spread of an unknown disease and the shadowy bioremediation company that may be behind it. Meanwhile, his son and daughter face a threat of their own when the discoveries they have made in an Egyptian tomb put killers on their trail. These seemingly unrelated riddles come together in a stunning showdown on the rocky isles of Ireland, where only the Pitts can unravel the secrets of an ancient enigma that could change the very future of mankind"--

The Stranger Diaries

Griffiths, Elly

From the author of the beloved Ruth Galloway series, a modern gothic mystery for fans of Magpie Murders and The Lake House"--

The Haunting Of Alma Fielding

Summerscale, Kate

London, 1938. In the suburbs of the city, a young housewife has become the eye in a storm of chaos. In Alma Fielding's modest home, china flies off the shelves and eggs fly through the air; stolen jewellery appears on her fingers, white mice crawl out of her handbag, beetles appear from under her gloves; in the middle of a car journey, a turtle materializes on her lap. The culprit is incorporeal. As Alma cannot call the police, she calls the papers instead. After the sensational story headlines the news, Nandor Fodor, a Hungarian ghost hunter for the International Institute for Psychical Research, arrives to investigate the poltergeist. But when he embarks on his scrupulous investigation, he discovers that the case is even stranger than it seems. By unravelling Alma's peculiar history, Fodor finds a different and darker type of haunting, a tale of trauma, alienation, loss and revenge. He comes to believe that Alma's past has bled into her present, her mind into her body. There are no words for processing her experience, so it comes to possess her. As the threat of a world war looms, and as Fodor's obsession with the case deepens, Alma becomes ever more disturbed. With characteristic rigor and insight, Kate Summerscale brilliantly captures the rich atmosphere of a haunting that transforms into a very modern battle between the supernatural and the subconscious"--

Unsettled Ground

Fuller, Claire

At fifty-one years old, twins Jeanie and Julius still live with their mother, Dot, in rural isolation in the English countryside. The cottage they have shared their entire lives is their only protection against the modernizing world around them. Inside its walls, they make music, and in its garden, they grow everything they need to survive. To an outsider, it looks like poverty; to them, it is home. But when Dot dies unexpectedly, the world they've so carefully created begins to fall apart. The cottage they love, and the security it offered, is taken back by their landlord, exposing the twins to harsh truths and even harsher realities. Seeing a new future, Julius becomes torn between the loyalty he feels towards his sister and his desire for independence, while Jeanie struggles to find work and a home for them both. And just when it seems there might be a way forward, a series of startling secrets from their mother's past come to the surface, forcing the twins to question who they are, and everything they know of their family's history. In this stunning novel, award-winning author Claire Fuller masterfully builds a tale of sacrifice and hope, of homelessness and hardship, of love and survival, in which two marginalized and remarkable people uncover long-held family secrets and, in their own way, repair, recover, and begin again"--

The Wisteria Society Of Lady Scoundrels

Holton, India

A prim and proper lady thief must save her aunt from a crazed pirate and his dangerously charming henchman in this fantastical historical romance. Cecilia Bassingwaite is the ideal Victorian lady. She's also a thief. Like the other members of the Wisteria Society crime sorority, she flies around England drinking tea, blackmailing friends, and acquiring treasure by interesting means. Sure, she has a dark and traumatic past and an overbearing aunt, but all things considered, it's a pleasant existence. Until the men show up. Ned Lightbourne is a sometimes assassin who is smitten with Cecilia from the moment they meet. Unfortunately, that happens to be while he's under direct orders to kill her. His employer, Captain Morvath, who possesses a gothic abbey bristling with cannons and an unbridled hate for the world, intends to rid England of all its presumptuous women, starting with the Wisteria Society. Ned has plans of his own. But both men have made one grave mistake: Never underestimate a woman. When Morvath imperils the Wisteria Society, Cecilia is forced to team up with her handsome would-be assassin to save the women who raised her-hopefully proving, once and for all, that she's as much of a scoundrel as the rest of them"--

April In Spain

Banville, John

When Quirke travels to the coast of San Sebastian, Spain for some relaxation, he sees a woman who he believes had been murdered by her brother several years prior.

The Paris Apartment

Foley, Lucy

Jess needs a fresh start. She's broke and alone, and she's just left her job under less than ideal circumstances. Her half-brother Ben didn't sound thrilled when she asked if she could crash with him for a bit, but he didn't say no, and surely everything will look better from Paris. Only when she shows up – to find a very nice apartment, could Ben really have afforded this? – he's not there. The longer Ben stays missing, the more Jess starts to dig into her brother's situation, and the more questions she has. Ben's neighbors are an eclectic bunch, and not particularly friendly. Jess may have come to Paris to escape her past, but it's starting to look like it's Ben's future that's in question. The socialite – The nice guy – The alcoholic – The girl on the verge – The concierge. Everyone's a neighbor. Everyone's a suspect. And everyone knows something they're not telling."--publisher's website.