NetGalley November – my challenge! #NetGalleyNovember hosted by: @emandherbooks @tot_and_tales @NetGalleyNov

NetGalley November

November brings #NetGalleyNovember! Thanks to our wonderful hosts @emandherbooks @tot_and_tales @NetGalleyNov

My NetGalley List

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The Challenge

My challenge is to read some of the six NetGalley books which have been on my list for a while now. I don’t expect to read them all but hope to manage at least two of them.

If I read one of these books that are in translation I will acknowledge the translator and give their biography in any reviews.

I have purchased several of these books something I often do even though I have received an eARC from the publishers via NetGalley and, no doubt, will in due course buy the rest especially given that I have taken longer than usual to read and review.

Whilst I don’t expect to take part in the NetGalley November sprints etc I will include the hashtag in my posts. Nevertheless, they are there to help if needed for everyone taking part this month just follow #NetGalleyNovember on Twitter.

These six books have received great reviews and sound wonderful so I’m not sure how I’ve passed them by! I really hope that I get a good reading spurt on in this challenge.

The Books

Jack by Marilynne Robinson

Marilynne Robinson, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the American National Humanities Medal, returns to the world of Gilead with Jack, the final in one of the great works of contemporary American fiction.

Jack tells the story of John Ames Boughton, the loved and grieved-over prodigal son of a Presbyterian minister in Gilead, Iowa, a drunkard and a ne’er-do-well. In segregated St. Louis sometime after World War II, Jack falls in love with Della Miles, an African-American high school teacher, also a preacher’s child, with a discriminating mind, a generous spirit and an independent will. Their fraught, beautiful story is one of Robinson’s greatest achievements.

Little, Brown Book Group UK, Virago | Pub.: 29 Sep 2020 | General Fiction | Literary Fiction

Buy: Your local bookshop | AmazonSmileUK | Hive | Bookshop.org

The Quaker by Liam McIlvanney

Winner of the 2018 McIlvanney Prize for Scottish Crime Book of the Year

A city torn apart.
It is 1969 and Glasgow has been brought to its knees by a serial killer spreading fear throughout the city. The Quaker has taken three women from the same nightclub and brutally murdered them in the backstreets.

A detective with everything to prove.
Now, six months later, the police are left chasing a ghost, with no new leads and no hope of catching their prey. They call in DI McCormack, a talented young detective from the Highlands. But his arrival is met with anger from a group of officers on the brink of despair.

A killer who hunts in the shadows.
Soon another woman is found murdered in a run-down tenement flat. And McCormack follows a trail of secrets that will change the city – and his life – forever…

HarperCollins UK, HarperFiction, HarperCollins | Pub.: 28 Jan 2018 | General Fiction (Adult) | Mystery & Thrillers

Buy: Your local bookshop | AmazonSmileUK | Hive | Bookshop.org

The Women at Hitler’s Table by Rosella Postorino

The International Bestseller

East Prussia, 1943. Hitler hides away in the Wolfsshanze – his hidden headquarters. The tide is turning in the war and his enemies circle ever closer.
Ten women are chosen.
Ten women to taste his food and protect him from poison.

Twenty-six-year-old Rosa has lost everything to this war. Her parents are dead. Her husband is fighting on the front line. Alone and scared, she faces the SS with nothing but the knowledge every bite might be her last.

Caught on the wrong side of history, how far is Rosa willing to go to survive?

HarperCollins UK, HarperFiction, HarperCollins | Pub.: 1 Aug 2019 | Historical Fiction

Buy: Your local bookshop | AmazonSmileUK | Hive | Bookshop.org

A Single Thread by Tracy Chevalier

FROM THE GLOBALLY BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING

Violet is 38.

The First World War took everything from her. Her brother, her fiancé – and her future. She is now considered a ‘surplus woman’.

But Violet is also fiercely independent and determined. Escaping her suffocating mother, she moves to Winchester to start a new life –a change that will require courage, resilience and acts of quiet rebellion. And when whispers of another world war surface, she must live with a secret that could change everything…

HarperCollins UK, HarperFiction, The Borough Press | Pub.: 5 Sep 2019 | General Fiction (Adult)

Buy: Your local bookshop | AmazonSmileUK | Hive | Bookshop.org

The Animals at Lockwood Manor by Jane Healy

Part love story, part mystery, The Animals at Lockwood Manor by Jane Healey is a gripping and atmospheric tale of family madness, long-buried secrets and hidden desires. 

A terrible secret lies buried at the heart of this house.

August 1939. 

As the world goes to war, Hetty Cartwright arrives at Lockwood Manor, to take up her new post for the duration of the war, as safekeeper of the natural history museum’s most treasured taxidermy animal collection, recently evacuated from London. 

Yet life at the manor proves challenging for Hetty, who faces the near constant task of protecting her charges from the irascible Lord Lockwood and resentful servants, and it seems that every inhabitant has something to hide, not least Lucy, Lord Lockwood’s beautiful yet haunted daughter.

But when some of the animals start to go missing, Hetty begins to suspect that someone, or something, is stalking her through the darkened corridors of the house . . . 

Amongst the rumours of ghosts and curses, what else is Lockwood Manor hiding?

Pan Macmillan, Mantle | Pub., 5 Mar 2020 | General Fiction (Adult) | Literary Fiction

Buy: Your local bookshop | AmazonSmileUK | Hive | Bookshop.org

The Phonebox at the Edge of the World by Laura Imai Messina

We all have something to tell those we have lost . . .

When Yui loses her mother and daughter in the tsunami, she wonders how she will ever carry on. Yet, in the face of this unthinkable loss, life must somehow continue. Then one day she hears about a man who has an old disused telephone box in his garden. There, those who have lost loved ones find the strength to speak to them and begin to come to terms with their grief. As news of the phone box spreads, people will travel there from miles around.

Soon Yui will make her own pilgrimage to the phone box, too. But once there she cannot bring herself to speak into the receiver. Then she finds Takeshi, a bereaved husband whose own daughter has stopped talking in the wake of their loss.

What happens next will warm your heart, even when it feels as though it is breaking.

Bonier Books UK, Manilla Press | Pub.: 25 Jun 2020 |General Fiction (Adult) | Literary Fiction

Buy: Your local bookshop | AmazonSmileUK | Hive | Bookshop.org

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