Books I anticipate reading…

The Dinner List by Rebecca Serle    (publication date – August 28, 2018)

If you could invite any five people—dead or alive—to dinner, who would you choose?

Preview:

“We’ve been waiting for an hour.” That’s what Audrey says. She states it with a little bit of an edge, her words just bordering on cursive. That’s the thing I think first. Not Audrey Hepburn is at my birthday dinnerbut Audrey Hepburn is annoyed.”

Goodbye, Paris by Anstey Harris  (just published)

Preview:

“We were staying at David’s apartment in Paris the night the woman fell onto the Metro tracks.”

Transcription by Kate Atkinson  (publication date – September 8, 2018)

Preview:

‘Miss Armstrong?  Miss Armstrong, can you hear me?’

She could although she didn’t seem able to respond.  She was badly damaged.  Broken.  She had been hit by a car.   It might have been her own fault, she had been distracted – she had lived for so long abroad that she had probably looked the wrong way when she was crossing Wigmore Street in the midsummer twilight.  Between the darkness and the daylight.

  The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock by Imogen Gower  (publication in USA – September 11, 2018)

One September evening in 1785, the merchant Jonah Hancock hears urgent knocking on his front door. One of his captains is waiting eagerly on the step. He has sold Jonah’s ship for what appears to be a mermaid.

Preview:

for in this world there is no achieving anything all alone. Cast in thy lot and share the purse. And this is why a prudent man does no business with drunks, with rakes, with gamblers, with thieves, or anybody with whom God might have cause to deal severely. You cast in your lot and you share his sin. And it is so easy for a little craft to be dashed against the rocks. So easy for cargo to settle five fathoms deep in the dark. Sailors’ lungs may brine and their fingers may pickle; all that protects them is God’s cupped hand.

What does God say to Mr Hancock? Where is the Calliope, whose captain has sent no word in eighteen months? The summer trails away. Every day the mercury drops. If she does not return soon she will not return, and the blame may well lie with him. What has he done, that might demand such punishment? Who will throw in their lot with his if they suspect him ill-favoured?

Somewhere a tide is turning. In that place where no land can be seen, where horizon to horizon is spanned by shifting twinkling faithless water, a wave humps its back and turns over with a sigh, and sends its salted whispering to Mr Hancock’s ear.

This voyage is special, the whisper says, a strange fluttering in his heart.