What a great year! I have read so many great books I thought it would be a good idea to share the books that really stood out for me this year. I am the type of reader that reads from all reading genres, I thought it would be good to split this into two posts; one concentrating on my favourite adult fiction books and one concentrating on my favourite young adult fiction. With this post, I am concentrating on the adult fiction books that I have thoroughly enjoyed in 2014 (the young adult post will follow soon). So here we go.....
Love hurts. There is nothing as painful as heartbreak. But in order to learn to love again, you must learn to trust again.
When
a mysterious young woman named Katie appears in the small North
Carolina town of Southport, her sudden arrival raises questions about
her past. Beautiful yet self-effacing, Katie seems determined to avoid
forming personal ties until a series of events draws her into two
reluctant relationships: one with Alex, a widowed store owner with a
kind heart and two young children; and another with her plainspoken
single neighbor, Jo. Despite her reservations, Katie slowly begins to
let down her guard, putting down roots in the close-knit community and
becoming increasingly attached to Alex and his family.
But even
as Katie begins to fall in love, she struggles with the dark secret that
still haunts and terrifies her . . . a past that set her on a fearful,
shattering journey across the country, to the sheltered oasis of
Southport. With Jo’s empathic and stubborn support, Katie eventually
realizes that she must choose between a life of transient safety and one
of riskier rewards . . . and that in the darkest hour, love is the only
true safe haven.
She has just two weeks. Two weeks to teach him how to fall in love – with his own life.
Adam
Basil and Christine Rose are thrown together late one night, when
Christine is crossing the Halfpenny Bridge in Dublin. Adam is there,
poised, threatening to jump. Adam is desperate – but Christine makes a
crazy deal with him. His 35th birthday is looming and she bets him she
can show him that life is worth living before then.
Despite her
determination, Christine knows what a dangerous promise she’s made.
Against the ticking of the clock, the two of them embark on wild
escapades, grand romantic gestures and some unlikely late-night outings.
Slowly, Christine thinks Adam is starting to fall back in love with his
life.
But has she done enough to change his mind for good? And is that all that’s starting to happen?
It is 1910 and Maria, a
talented young girl from the East end of London, is employed to work as
a seamstress for the royal family.
As an attractive girl, she soon
catches the eye of the Prince of Wales and she in turn is captivated by
his glamour and intensity.
But careless talk causes trouble and
soon Maria’s life takes a far darker turn.
Disbelieved and dismissed she
is thrown into a mental asylum, shut away from the real world with only
her needlework for company.
Can a beautiful quilt, discovered many years later, reveal the truth behind what happened to Maria?
Edward Warren,
twenty-four, has been living in Thailand for five years, a prodigal son
who left his family after an irreparable fight with his father, Luke.
But he gets a frantic phone call: His dad lies comatose, gravely injured
in the same accident that has also injured his younger sister Cara.
With
her father’s chances for recovery dwindling, Cara wants to wait for a
miracle. But Edward wants to terminate life support and donate his
father’s organs. Is he motivated by altruism, or revenge? And to what
lengths will his sister go to stop him from making an irrevocable
decision?
Lone Wolf explores the notion of family, and
the love, protection and strength it’s meant to offer. But what if the
hope that should sustain it, is the very thing that pulls it apart?
Another tour de force from Jodi Picoult, Lone Wolf examines the wild and lonely terrain upon which love battles reason.
Opening on the eve of
the First World War, this is a dramatic novel set around the stately
home of Cavendon Hall, its owners the aristocratic Ingham family and the
Swann family who serves them.
Two entwined families: the
aristocratic Inghams and the Swanns who serve them. The Earl and
Countess have relied on their faithful retainers Alice and Walter Swann
as their young family grows up.
One stately home: Cavendon Hall, a grand imposing house nestled in the beautiful Yorkshire Dales
A
society beauty: Lady Daphne Ingham is the most beautiful of the Earl’s
four daughters. Being presented at Court and making a glittering
marriage is her destiny.
But in the summer of 1913, a devastating
event changes her future forever, and threatens the Ingham name. Yet
life as the families of Cavendon Hall know it – Royal Ascot, supper
dances, grouse season feasts and a full servants’ hall – is about to
alter beyond recognition as the storm clouds of war gather.
The deeper the water, the darker the secrets
There were so many times I thought about telling you the truth, Eva. What stopped me was always the same thing…
When
Eva’s husband Jackson tragically drowns, she longs to meet his
estranged family. The journey takes her to Jackson’s brother’s doorstep
on a remote Tasmanian island. As strange details about her husband’s
past begin to emerge, memories of the man she married start slipping
through her fingers like sand, as everything she ever knew and loved
about him is thrown into question. Now she’s no longer sure whether it
was Jackson she fell in love with – or someone else entirely…
The truth is, it was all a lie . . .
Disfigured by the blow
of an abusive husband, and suffering her entire life with severe social
anxiety disorder, the widow Mary McAllister spends almost sixty years
secluded in a white marble mansion overlooking the town of Mill River,
Vermont.
Her links to the outside world are few: the mail, the
media, an elderly priest with a guilty habit of pilfering spoons, and a
bedroom window with a view of the town below.
Most longtime
residents of Mill River consider the marble house and its occupant
peculiar, though insignificant, fixtures. An arsonist, a covetous nurse,
and the endearing village idiot are among the few who have ever seen
Mary.
Newcomers to Mill River -- a police officer and his
daughter and a new fourth grade teacher -- are also curious about the
reclusive old woman. But only Father Michael O’Brien knows Mary and the
secret she keeps -- one that, once revealed, will change all of their
lives forever.
There is no story of me without the story of you
I want to explain it all to you. How this happened. How that summer – the summer I was 16 – made me the person I am today.
I
want to share my memories with you: the happy memories are like
sunbursts, sparkling on the sea.
But then, like a current dragging me
under, there's that summer of 1997.
The summer my life exploded.
The summer I had to grow up.
The summer you came into my life.
And so this is the story of you.
Every bookshop has a story.
We’re
not talking about rooms that are just full of books. We’re talking
about bookshops in barns, disused factories, converted churches and
underground car parks. Bookshops on boats, on buses, and in old run-down
train stations. Fold-out bookshops, undercover bookshops,
this-is-the-best-place-I’ve-ever-been-to-bookshops.
Meet Sarah
and her Book Barge sailing across the sea to France; meet Sebastien, in
Mongolia, who sells books to herders of the Altai mountains; meet the
bookshop in Canada that’s invented the world’s first antiquarian book
vending machine.
And that’s just the beginning.
From the
oldest bookshop in the world, to the smallest you could imagine, The
Bookshop Book examines the history of books, talks to authors about
their favourite places, and looks at over three hundred weirdly
wonderful bookshops across six continents (sadly, we’ve yet to build a
bookshop down in the South Pole).
The Bookshop Book is a love letter to bookshops all around the world.
A hooker. A mistress. A murder. This town was built on sin.
The
town of Trinidad, Colorado was a tough place to be a woman in 1913. But
it was the best place in the West to find one, if you had the cash.
Honeyville, they used to call it.
A
murder throws Inez and Dora together – two women from opposite sides of
town, in a town built for men. Against all odds, the well born girl and
the high class hooker are drawn together in friendship…
But this
is a town that is rotten to the core, and beyond the rustling of silk
skirts, the dancing and laughter, deadly unrest is building…
Welcome to Honeyville – a town living by its own rules, where nothing is quite as it seems
A STORY INSPIRED BY A LOST CHAPTER IN AMERICAN HISTORY
The author of the
Sunday Times bestselling Take a Look at Me Now, returns to New York with
her most heart-warming, romantic story yet.
Have you ever given up on love?
When
her boyfriend lets her down for the last time, Brooklyn bookshop owner
Bea James makes a decision – no more. No more men, no more heartbreak,
and no more pain.
Psychiatrist Jake Steinmann is making a new
start too, leaving his broken marriage behind in San Francisco. From
now on there'll just be one love in his life: New York.
At a
party where they seem to be the only two singletons, Bea and Jake meet,
and decide there’s just one thing for it. They will make a pact: no more
relationships.
But the city has other plans . . .
