A book brings up strong emotions and gives you a break from dumb scrolling and screen times. Here are some enriching reads for the weeks ahead.
Only Love Can Hurt Like This
Neither of them expected to fall in love. But sometimes life has other plans.When Wren realises her fiancé is in love with someone else, she thinks her heart will never recover. On the other side of the world, Anders lost his wife four years ago and is still struggling to move on. Wren hopes that spending the summer with her dad and step-family on their farm in Indiana will help her to heal. There, amid the cornfields and fireflies, she and Anders cross paths and their worlds are turned upside-down again. But Wren does not know that Anders is harbouring a secret, and if he acts on any feelings, he has for Wren it will have serious fall-out for everyone. Walking away would hurt Wren more than she can imagine. But, knowing the truth, how can she possibly stay?
The Devil’s Flute Murders
An ingenious and highly atmospheric classic whodunit from Japan’s master of crime. Amid the rubble of post-war Tokyo, inside the grand Tsubaki house, a once-noble family is in mourning. The old viscount Tsubaki, a brooding, troubled composer, has been found dead. When the family gather for a divination to conjure the spirit of their departed patriarch, death visits the house once more, and the brilliant Kosuke Kindaichi is called in to investigate. But before he can get to the truth Kindaichi must uncover the Tsubakis’ most disturbing secrets, while the gruesome murders continue…
Other Peoples Husbands
Sometimes friendship crosses a line . . . A group of close friends, their bonds forged at the nursery gates two decades ago, have celebrated, commiserated and grown together: they thought they all knew each other so well.Until the affair. Now a crack appears in everything.
Could one betrayal really destroy it all?
Much Ado About Nada
Once they were sweethearts, now they’re strangers. Worse than strangers – practically enemies.
But will a chance encounter offer Nada and Baz a second chance at love? Nada Syed is stuck. At twenty-eight, she’s living with her parents and mourning the failure of her start-up baby, which failed because of a double-crossing business partner.
Nada’s best friend Haleema is determined to pry her from her shell – and what better place than at the giant annual Muslim conference? And did Haleema mention that Baz will be there? What Haleema doesn’t know is that Nada and Baz have a secret history. And in their chance encounter at the conference, that history comes hurtling at Nada, bringing a moment of reckoning. Will Nada find a way to let go of the past but hold onto her dreams?
The House of Doors
It is 1921 and at Cassowary House in the Straits Settlements of Penang, Robert Hamlyn is a well-to-do lawyer and his steely wife Lesley a society hostess. Their lives are invigorated when Willie, an old friend of Robert’s, comes to stay.
Willie Somerset Maugham is one of the greatest writers of his day. But he is beleaguered by an unhappy marriage, ill-health and business interests that have gone badly awry. He is also struggling to write. The more Lesley’s friendship with Willie grows, the more clearly she see him as he is – a man who has no choice but to mask his true self.
As Willie prepares to leave and face his demons, Lesley confides secrets of her own, including how she came to know the charismatic Dr Sun Yat Sen, a revolutionary fighting to overthrow the imperial dynasty of China. And more scandalous still, she reveals her connection to the case of an Englishwoman charged with murder in the Kuala Lumpur courts – a tragedy drawn from fact, and worthy of fiction.
From Man Booker Prize-shortlisted Tan Twan Eng, The House of Doors is a masterful novel of public morality and private truth a century ago. Based on real events it is a drama of love and betrayal under the shadow of Empire.
Hello Beautiful
From the New York Times bestselling author of Dear Edward comes a beautifully tender, heartbreaking, and moving story of four sisters over three decades.
Meet the Padvano girls. Best friends and sisters, they are thought of as inseparable by everyone in their close-knit Chicago neighbourhood. Julia, the eldest, is the “rocket” of the family – she always has a destination in mind and clear plans for how to get there. Sylvie, the dreamer, is happiest with her nose in a book and imagines a life for herself other than the expected path of wife and mother.
Cecelia and Emmeline, the twins, are the artist and the caregiver. From childhood, the four sisters complete each other, expecting that their family will always be intact.
When Julia falls in love with William Walters, a history student and college sports star, she’s delighted by the way her plans for adulthood are coming together. A husband, a house, a family. But when darkness from William’s past begins to block the light of his future, it is Sylvie, not Julia, who steps in to help. Suddenly, things shift. Dynamics and relationships, priorities and secrets – everything that was once a given no longer is.
Rich and vivid, heartbreaking and heart-mending, Hello Beautiful captures the joy, tragedy, trust, and betrayal to ask: what does it mean to be a family? And once shattered, can it be pieced back together?
The Missus
The follow-up to the No. 1 Sunday Times bestseller The Mister, a passionate and thrilling love story from E L James, author of the phenomenal bestselling Fifty Shades Trilogies.
Alessia regards her husband through heavy-lidded eyes.
You’ll have to fight for him. Her mother’s words from their call this morning ring through her head. And fight, she will. Using every available weapon she has. She loves him. She knows this. She wants him.
And she wants him to want her.
What happens once the glass slipper fits…?
Maxim Trevelyan, reluctant Earl of Trevethick, has pursued the woman he loves to the wilds of Albania. Having fought for and won her, he now has to wed her, at the sharp end of a shotgun.
But can a reformed rake like Maxim ever make a good husband – or will his own notorious reputation and the scandalous secrets of his aristocratic family destroy his new-found happiness?
Alessia Demachi has defied and outwitted kidnappers and traffickers, and won the heart of the man she loves, but can she make this marriage work? Confronted by Maxim’s lurid past, his forbidding family, and the looks and whispers of London’s elite, will she ever be seen as Maxim’s countess – or will she always be his former cleaner?
From the majestic mountains of Albania, through the rural idyll of the English countryside, to the shady glamour of contemporary London, The Missus is a spellbinding journey of love, longing, acceptance and redemption.
Summer Reading
Sam set out to spend the summer resurrecting her career as a chef but instead, has to chaperone her half-brother to a robotics competition at the local library.
And naturally, because the universe hates her, the library’s interim director, Ben, turns out to be the Hot Reader Guy whose book she accidentally destroyed on the ferry to the island. Sam doesn’t do reading. Ben doesn’t do romantic relationships. But when Ben inspires Sam to create the cookbook she’s always dreamed about, they discover there might be more than just a creative spark between them.
Will this summer be a recipe for disaster… Or love?
Beach Rivals
One bookshop in paradise. Two bitter rivals. A whole summer to get through…
Clare thought that by now she would have her life figured out. Instead, she’s living with her parents, working a job she hates and has absolutely no idea what she wants to do with the rest of her life.
When she sees a viral job advert for a three-month bookseller position on a Bali beach, she jumps at the chance. But it’s not until she arrives in Bali that Clare realises she won’t be working in the bookshop alone.
Instead she’s sharing the bookshop – and a flat – with a handsome but infuriating American man. Jack is Clare’s opposite in almost every way, and it’s not long before they’re driving each other crazy. But fighting with Jack is also the most fun Clare’s had in years, and it’s only a matter of time before their relationship turns less than professional…Beach Rivals is an escapist, slow-burn enemies-to-lovers rom com – the ideal summer read!
Office Secrets by Harish Bhatt
The corporate masks we wear hide many a secret. The most potent are not the secret financial numbers or confidential strategy documents hidden away in locked drawers or in safes but the simple ones-good filter coffee, generosity and thirty minutes of me-time.
This book offers a selection of fascinating and useful secrets that can help you be far more successful at your workplace. As a bonus, they can make you happier as well. You will find within a range of subjects-whether the best methods of fighting exhaustion, organizing your work desk, the power of listening, why kindness is so important, workplace lessons from Hercule Poirot and what you can learn from the cookies that your colleagues eat.
Harish Bhat wields his pen with his signature insight to delight, inspire, provoke and change the way you see offices forever. (IANSlife)