Books of the month for July

General Fiction: Kate Clanchy – Meeting the English

A bright debut novel about dark subjects, by an acclaimed poet and non-fiction and short story writer. 17yr old Struan goes south for the first time, leaving his Scottish town to spend a life-changing summer in London caring for a paralysed literary giant, in response to an advert.

British Crime: William Sutton – Lawless and the Devil of Euston Square

It is 1859, and novice detective Campbell Lawless has just arrived in London. Woken in the middle of the night, he is summoned to the scene of a deadly act of sabotage at Euston Station by the illustrious Inspector Wardle. Wardle believes that the man found dead amidst his handiwork is the culprit, but Lawless is not so sure. So begins his hunt for elusive revolutionary Berwick Skelton, one that will thrust him into a lethal and intoxicating world of royal scandal and intrigue. Aided by a gang of street urchins and a vivacious librarian, Lawless must capture his underworld nemesis before Skelton unleashes his final vengeance.

Tough Crime: David Black – Fast Shuffle

An old-school PI living in Springdale, Massachusetts is plunged into modern danger and conspiracy Fast Shuffle, a gripping mystery from TV screenwriter and producer David Black.

Fantasy: Jon Skovron – Hope & Red

A nameless girl is the lone survivor when her village is massacred by biomancers, mystical servants of the emperor. Named after her lost village, Bleak Hope is secretly trained by a master Vinchen warrior as an instrument of vengeance. A boy becomes an orphan on the squalid streets of New Laven and is adopted by one of the most notorious women of the criminal underworld, given the name Red, and trained as a thief and con artist.When a ganglord named Deadface Drem strikes a bargain with the biomancers to consolidate and rule all the slums of New Laven, the worlds of Hope and Red come crashing together, and their unlikely alliance takes them further than either could have dreamed possible.

Science Fiction:  Weston Ochse – Ninefox Gambit

To win an impossible war Captain Kel Cheris must awaken an ancient weapon and a despised traitor general. Hard SF.

Paranormal/Urban Fantasy: Cathy Clamp – Forbidden (Sazi)

Ten years have passed since the war that destroyed the Sazi Council and inflicted a horrible "cure" on thousands of Sazi, robbing them of their ability to shapeshift.

Luna Lake, isolated in Washington State, started as a refugee camp for Sazi orphans. Now it's a small town and those refugees are young adults, chafing at the limits set by their still-fearful guardians.

There's reason to fear: Sazi children are being kidnapped. Claire, a red wolf shifter, is sent to investigate. Held prisoner by the Snakes during childhood, Claire is distrusted by those who call Luna Lake home.

Before the war, Alek was part of a wolf pack in Chicago. In Luna Lake he was adopted by a parliament of Owls, defying Sazi tradition. The kidnappings are a painful reminder that his little sister disappeared a decade ago.

When Claire and Alek meet, sparks fly—but the desperate race to find the missing children forces them to set aside their mutual attraction and focus on the future of their people.

Teen reading: Clare Furniss – The Year of the Rat

The world can tip at any moment…a fact that fifteen-year-old Pearl is all too aware of when her mom dies after giving birth to her baby sister, Rose.

Rose, who looks exactly like a baby rat, all pink, wrinkled, and writhing. This little Rat has destroyed everything, even ruined the wonderful relationship that Pearl had with her stepfather, the Rat’s biological father.

Mom, though…Mom’s dead but she can’t seem to leave. She keeps visiting Pearl. Smoking, cursing, guiding.

Classic of the Month: Wilkie Collins – Dream Woman

When Francis Raven is roused from his sleep on the eve of his birthday and confronted by the sight of a woman trying to stab him, he is unsure whether she is real or an apparition. Years later, against the wishes of his mother, he marries Alicia, a woman with a strange resemblance to the mysterious visitor, who ends up attacking him on his birthday, before vanishing from his life. Is Francis's wife a ghost, a demon or a living human being? And will the prophecy of the night-time visitation be fulfilled one day?

Non-Fiction: Thomas Harding – The House by the Lake

In 2013, Thomas Harding returned to his grandmother's house on the outskirts of Berlin which she had been forced to leave when the Nazis swept to power. What was once her ‘soul place' now stood empty and derelict. A concrete footpath cut through the garden, marking where the Berlin Wall had stood for nearly three decades.

In a bid to save the house from demolition, Thomas began to unearth the history of the five families who had lived there: a nobleman farmer, a prosperous Jewish family, a renowned Nazi composer, a widow and her children and a Stasi informant. Discovering stories of domestic joy and contentment, of terrible grief and tragedy, and of a hatred handed down through the generations, a history of twentieth century Germany and the story of a nation emerged.