Collection: Literature

It’s 23 December 1971, and the Hildebrandts are at a crossroads. Fifteen-year-old Perry has resolved to be a better person and quit dealing drugs to seventh graders. His sister Becky, the once straight-laced high school social queen, has veered into counterculture, while at college, Clem is wrestling with a decision that might tear his family apart. As their parents – Russ, a suburban pastor, and Marion, his restless wife – tug against the bonds of a joyless marriage, Crossroads finds a family, and a nation, struggling to do the right thing.

Series: A Key to all Mythologies, #1

Format: B, 592 pages, Paperback
Published: October 4, 2022 by 4th Estate
ISBN: 9780008308933 (ISBN10: 0008308934)
Language: English

Price reduced due to light damage on front cover.

There are three sides to every story -- your side, their side and the truth.

Focused and hardworking, literary agent Jojo Harvey combines the body of Jessica Rabbit with the mind of a steel trap. While watching her back on the corporate ladder and keeping an eye out for the low-flying ceilings, she falls for her boss. Her married boss.

Lily Wright, one of Jojo's clients, is enjoying overnight success of her debut novel. But nagging doubts are surfacing and she's all too aware of the fragile nature of her happiness. Her second novel doesn't want to be written -- but she must deliver it. She's already spent the advance -- Anton, the 'Love of her Life' persuaded her to buy their dream home. And then there's the guilt about Gemma.

Events Organizer extraordinaire Gemma Hogan was Lily's best friend -- until Lily stole Anton -- also the 'Love of her Life'. Coping with the demands of her recently deserted mother, Gemma's social life is flat-lining -- a mortifying situation which makes for hilarious emails to a friend. Tales so funny, they come to the attention of literary agent Jojho Harvey who takes Gemma on as a client.

All learning the hard way that the nature of real love can come in many forms...

Condition: Pre-loved, Fair

Format: B, 648 pages, Paperback
Published: January 1, 2005 by Penguin
ISBN: 9780140295993 (ISBN10: 0140295992)
Language: English

John Laroche is a sharply handsome guy, in spite of the fact that he has the posture of al dente spaghetti. He is also an orchid thief, arrested for stealing rare orchids from a wild swamp and nature reserve in southern Florida. Intrigued and fascinated by Laroche, Susan Orlean followed him through the swamps and into the eccentric world of the obsessive orchid collectors of Florida, a subculture of aristocrats, enthusiasts, and smugglers whose passion for plants is all-consuming. Along the way, Orlean explores the history of orchid-collecting, discovers the extent of plant crime in Florida, and spends time with Laroche's employers and partners in crime, a tribe of Seminole Indians who are still at war with the United States.

Condition: Pre-loved, Good

Format: B, 348 pages, Hardcover
Published: January 1, 1998 by William Heinemann: London
ISBN: 9780434007837 (ISBN10: 0434007838)
Language: English

John Laroche is a sharply handsome guy, in spite of the fact that he has the posture of al dente spaghetti. He is also an orchid thief, arrested for stealing rare orchids from a wild swamp and nature reserve in southern Florida. Intrigued and fascinated by Laroche, Susan Orlean followed him through the swamps and into the eccentric world of the obsessive orchid collectors of Florida, a subculture of aristocrats, enthusiasts, and smugglers whose passion for plants is all-consuming. Along the way, Orlean explores the history of orchid-collecting, discovers the extent of plant crime in Florida, and spends time with Laroche's employers and partners in crime, a tribe of Seminole Indians who are still at war with the United States.

Condition: Pre-loved, Good

Format: B, 405 pages, Paperback
Published: January 1, 2016 by Pan
ISBN: 9781509806812 (ISBN10: 1509806814)
Language: English

Athletic, outdoor type, good cook, good with people, wanted for work on the canals....

Newly not engaged and suddenly out of work, Julia Fairfax needs a new direction. The classified ad that catches her eye sends her on a delightful, hilarious adventure along the English canals on a rickety old hotel boat. Among the twists and turns, Julia encounters
a passel of persnickety guests, an irritating ex-boyfriend, the challenges of cooking in a galley kitchen the size of a closet, and a whole lot of rattling tea cups. Add some frighteningly narrow bridges to steer through, and you've got the makings of an unforgettable journey.

Part romp, part romance, part step-by-step guide to how not to see England's scenic canals, Life Skills will delight fans of intelligent romantic comedy, as well as anyone looking for a few tips on staying afloat.

Condition: Pre-loved, Good

Format: C, 352 pages, Paperback
Published: July 1, 2004 by St. Martin's Griffin
ISBN: 9780312263539 (ISBN10: 0312263538)
Language: English

'I don't want that nurse touching my baby.' Those are the instructions from the newborn child's parents. However, when the baby goes into cardiac arrest, Ruth, a nurse of twenty years' experience, sees no option but to assist. But the baby dies. And Ruth is charged with negligent homicide.

Ruth is shattered and bewildered as she tries to come to terms with her situation. She finds different kinds of support from her sister, a fiery radical, and her teenage son, but it is to Kennedy McQuarrie, a white middle-class lawyer, to whom she entrusts her case, and her future.

As the two come to develop a truer understanding of each other's lives, they begin to doubt the beliefs they each hold most dear. In order for the privileged to prosper, they come to realise, others have to suffer. Racism takes many forms, and is reinforced and underpinned by the structures of our society.

In gripping dramas like Nineteen Minutes, My Sister's Keeper and The Pact, Jodi Picoult has explored the big issues of our time through characters whose lives resonate with us. Here we see once again her unrivalled ability to immerse us in a story whose issues will linger with us long after the final page has been finished.

Series: Ruth Jefferson, #1
Condition: Pre-loved, Good

Format: C, 470 pages, Paperback
Published: October 12, 2016 by Allen & Unwin
ISBN: 9781760110499 (ISBN10: 1760110493)
Language: English

Dawn Edelstein knows everything there is to know about dying. She specialises in helping her clients make peace with the end of their lives. But as she's flying home from her latest case, she is forced to confront her own mortality for the first time.

Instead of seeing her brilliant quantum physicist husband and their beloved daughter flash before her eyes in what she assumes are her last moments, only one face is shockingly clear: Wyatt Armstrong.

Safely on the ground, Dawn now faces a desperate decision. Should she return to Boston, her family and the life she knows, or journey back to an Egyptian archaeological site she left over a decade earlier, reconnect with Wyatt, and finally finish her abandoned magnum opus, The Book of Two Ways?

As the story unfolds, Dawn must confront the questions she's never truly answered: What does a life well-lived look like? When we depart this earth, what do we leave behind of ourselves? And who would you be if you hadn't turned out to be the person you are right now?

Condition: Pre-loved, Good

Format: C, 421 pages, Paperback
Published: September 23, 2020 by Allen & Unwin
ISBN: 9781760528768 (ISBN10: 1760528765)
Language: English

From the bestselling author of The Woman in the Fifth and The Pursuit of Happiness comes a devastating new novel.Years after vowing to herself and her parents to never marry, have children and lead the resentful life they chose, Jane, now a Harvard professor, falls unexpectedly pregnant. Resolved as she’s been to childlessness, she begins to warm to the idea of motherhood, even with a partner who is increasingly absent. But a devastating turn of events takes the decision out of her hands in a way she could never have predicted.Her familiar world torn apart, Jane feels forced to leave her old life behind. She resigns from her job, cuts all ties with friends and family and moves to a place where no one will find her. Isolated, she feels she has finally succeeded in leaving her world.Yet when a young girl disappears, prompting a high-profile police investigation, Jane is drawn in. Convinced that the person at the heart of the case is much closer to her new community than anyone realises, she has to make a decision to either stay hidden or bring to light a shocking truth.

Condition: Pre-loved, Good

Format: C, 451 pages, Hardcover
Published: January 1, 2009 by Hutchinson
ISBN: 9780091795788 (ISBN10: 0091795788)
Language: English

Connie Goodwin is an expert on America’s fractured past with witchcraft. A young, tenure-track professor in Boston, she’s earned career success by studying the history of magic in colonial America—especially women’s home recipes and medicines—and by exposing society's threats against women fluent in those skills. But beyond her studies, Connie harbors a secret: She is the direct descendant of a woman tried as a witch in Salem, an ancestor whose abilities were far more magical than the historical record shows.

Flashing back through American history to the lives of certain supernaturally gifted women, The Daughters of Temperance Hobbs affectingly reveals not only the special bond that unites one particular matriarchal line, but also explores the many challenges to women’s survival across the decades—and the risks some women are forced to take to protect what they love most.

Series: The Physick Book, #2
Condition: Pre-loved, Excellent

Format: C,338 pages, Hardcover
Published: June 25, 2019 by Henry Holt and Co.
ISBN: 9781250304865 (ISBN10: 1250304865)
Language: English

The Collected Poems and Stories of Eleanor (Nell) Jean Norton née Milson 

 Born Tauranga, New Zealand May 3rd, 1927

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Eleanor (Nell) Jean Norton née Milson was born on 3rd of May 1927 in Tauranga, New Zealand. She showed early promise as a writer of both poetry and prose and won many competitions. Many of her poems and stories were published in local and national newspapers during the 1930s and 1940s.