Book Club: New books to read this month
A trio of delightful reads to see you through the month.
There’s nothing like a Karen Swan novel to make you feel good. Known for their evocative locations and complicated love stories, they’re hedonistic, light, massively enjoyable reads.
In The Secret Path, twenty-years-old trainee doctor Tara Tremain is engaged to the man of her dreams – a passionate American biology student.
Life’s perfect, until he betrays her and breaks her heart. Move along a decade and she’s moved on – with a successful career, good friends and a man who loves her. But when she attends a family party in the heart of Costa Rica, she finds herself flung into crisis: a child is desperately ill and the only remedy is several days’ trek into the heart of the jungle.
And there’s only one person who can help – but it’s the man who shattered her heart a decade before. Pan Macmillan.
Finding love, hope and joy in even the darkest moments. In Lucy Diamond’s The Promise, a young man whose brother has just died is on a mission … a project to help pick up the pieces and support his grieving sister-in-law Zoe, plus her young children.
This is his promise – to ensure his family’s happiness, and to try and live up to the man his brother was. But tying up loose ends brings a shocking secret to light, and calls into question everything he knew about his older brother, and he’s faced with an ultimatum – should he tell the truth and risk his family’s fragile happiness, or will his brother’s secrets end up becoming his own? Pan Macmillan.
Oh dear. Get the tissue out. Pippo and Clara by Diana Rosie is set in Italy in 1938. Mussolini is in power, and war isn’t far off.
Clara and Pippo are children, their family new to the city. One morning, their mamma goes missing, and ten-year-old Clara needs to find her. She doesn’t know which way to turn. A little later, her younger brother goes out, looking for his mum and sister.
Clara’s turned one way, he turns the other. And so their lives are changed forever. In a country torn apart by war, siblings are divided by fate. But there’s an invisible bond that connects us to those we love, no matter which way we turn. A chilly weekend, a fireplace and soft sofa and a copy of this heartwarming novel … heaven. Mantle
