Author: Joanna Briscoe

Cecilia and her family moved to the moors as a child. Her life wasn’t dysfunctional but it was a bit unconventional with hippies renting the out-buildings, people drifting in and out and an artistic father who never really brought in any money. Her mother taught at a progressive school where she started a relationship with the wife of one of the teachers, James. Cecilia, although only eighteen, fell in love with James and they had a brief relationship that results in a child. Cecilia’s mother arranged a private adoption and James never knew of the child.

Twenty years later Cecilia, her husband and three children have moved back to her childhood home to take care of her mother. Cecelia has never given up hope of finding her child but her mother refuses to tell her anything. Cecilia is worried when she learns that James is still teaching in the area and his wife is her daughter’s favourite teacher.

How will it end? Up to the last fifty pages I had no clue, but all is sorted out in the end.

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Author: Lisa Wingate

Tandi is a single mother running from a dysfunctional family and an abusive relationship. When she comes to rest on Hatteras Island she is able to rent a small cottage from an elderly woman, Iola Anne Poole. When Tandi finds the woman dead she is tasked with cleaning out the kitchen. But Tandi can’t resist the urge to investigate the rest of the house and when she finds a cupboard full of prayer boxes she can’t resist reading all the notes inside. What she learns about Iola and herself will change her life.

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Author: Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney

The four siblings in the Plumb family are anxiously awaiting the 40th birthday of the youngest. That date triggers the release of their trust fund (their nest egg, lovingly called The Nest). But when the eldest is involved in a scandal the nest egg is almost emptied to keep the involved parties quiet. As the other siblings realize they will be in reduced financial circumstances they scramble to either recuperate their loss or work out their financial difficulties in another way.

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Author: Sebastian Faulks

This seemed an appropriate story for my Remembrance Day weekend on Texada.

The story takes place just before and during the First World War, with some gaps filled in during the late 70’s by the main character’s granddaughter. The main character, Stephen, had a bleak upbringing in an English orphanage. Prior to the start of the war he was sent to France to learn about the cloth manufacturing business. While there he falls in love and has an affair with the wife of his host. The two run off together but when his lover realizes she is pregnant, she leaves the relationship without saying anything to Stephen.

Although I have read about trench warfare in the past, the descriptions in this book took my admiration for those soldiers to a higher level.

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