The Optician of Lampedusa by Emma Jane Kirby – Published by Allen Lane, 2016 The haunting true story of Carmine Menna, a quiet, honest and hard working optician, who, with his wife and six...

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Montalbano’s First Case and Other Stories (a personal anthology) By Andrea Camilleri (translated by Stephen Sartarelli) – Published by Picador, November 2016 At this time of year, many of us are in need...

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Jax’ House by John Kitchen – Published by Union Bridge Books. May 2016 First, a confession: although this isn’t really my sort of book, I was inclined to like it simply because of...

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Burying the Typewriter: Childhood Under the Eye of the Secret Police by Carmen Bugan – Published by Picador, 2012 Carmen Bugan’s memoir of her childhood in 1980s Rumania shares some of the elements of...

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The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend by Katarina Bivald – Published by Vintage, 2016. First published in Sweden in 2013 If you liked ‘A Man Called Ove’ you’re pretty certain to like...

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A Door Marked Hawker by Nigel Milliner – Published by The Book Guild, 2016 Written by a local author and set on the Roseland (the photo on the cover gives it away), this...

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Whispering Hope: The True Story of the Magdalene Women – Nancy Costello, Kathleen Legg, Diane Croghan, Marie Slattery and Marina Gambold with Steven O’Riordan – Published by Orion books, 2015 The terrible, true story...

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Mr Mac and Me by Esther Freud – Published by Bloomsbury, 2014 This book was recommended by a friend whose taste in books frequently matches mine; I started reading it some time ago...

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Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (Special Rehearsal Edition Script) Parts One and Two – Based on an original new story by J K Rowling, John Tiffany and Jack Thorne – Published by Little,...

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The Shepherd’s Life: A Tale of the Lake District by James Rebanks – Published by Penguin, 2016 Exactly as it ‘says on the tin’, the story of a shepherd working the family farm in...

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