Book Club Reads for October 2018

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Spring has sprung and it’s a gorgeous day outside of my window. I would love to be curled out in that sunshine with a book but I thought we best get going on the October reads. The weeks are just flying by and just a couple more sleeps and school holidays are upon us again. I wonder how much reading I will get done these holidays, around the Harry Potter marathon I’m sharing with my Master 10.

There are still a few outstanding books snailing their way through the post system, I hope they arrive soon. Readers of The Right Place… your book is still in the wrong place and I hope to get it shifted sometime soon.

September had some fantastic reads, and I didn’t get anywhere near enough reading done but I do hope to get a little better in coming months.

With my towering TBR and ever growing to-do list I’m going to get straight into sharing what we have coming up in October.

How To Be Perfect – Holly Wainwright
Allen & Unwin – Contemporary

In the rolling green hills of Australia’s hippest hinterland, a new guru is blogging about her breakfast.

ELLE CAMPBELL is back, holed up in an exclusive retreat where women pay thousands to mimic her extreme lifestyle, or die trying. But who’s bankrolling Elle’s new empire? And why are her two tiny sons suddenly absent from her glossy public image?

ABI BLACK just wants to marry her true love under a tree in the garden on New Year’s Eve. But her ex-husband is building a financial cult in the shed, Elle is looming and her teenage daughter’s YouTube channel is gaining followers for all the wrong reasons. The wedding might have to wait.

FRANCES GRAHAM has a colicky newborn, an absent husband and a WhatsApp mothers’ group that’s giving her anxiety. But she’s certain that if she can just be more like those fitmums on Instagram, things can only get better. And surely, if she can scrape enough money together to make it to Elle’s retreat, everything in her life will be just . . . perfect.

Through a world of fake gurus, green smoothies and bad influencers, How to Be Perfect follows Elle, Abi and Frankie into the cult of self-improvement that’s taking over your phone . . . and your breakfast.

I Invited Her In – Adele Parks
HQ Fiction – Contemporary

When Mel hears from a long-lost friend in need of help, she doesn’t hesitate to invite her to stay. Mel and Abi were best friends back in the day, sharing the highs and lows of student life, until Mel’s unplanned pregnancy made her drop out of her studies.

Now, seventeen years later, Mel and Abi’s lives couldn’t be more different. Mel is happily married, having raised her son on her own before meeting her husband, Ben. Now they share gorgeous girls and have a chaotic but happy family home, with three children.

Abi, meanwhile, followed her lover to LA for a glamorous life of parties, celebrity and indulgence. Everything was perfect, until she discovered her partner had been cheating on her. Seventeen years wasted, and nothing to show for it. So what Abi needs now is a true friend to lean on, to share her grief over a glass of wine, and to have some time to heal. And what better place than Mel’s house, with her lovely kids, and supportive husband…

This dark, unsettling tale of the reunion of long-lost friends is thoroughly gripping exploration of wanting what you can’t have, jealousy and revenge from Sunday Times bestseller Adele Parks.

Nine Perfect Strangers – Liane Moriarty
Pan Macmillan – Contemporary

The retreat at health and wellness resort Tranquillum House promises total transformation. Nine stressed city dwellers are keen to drop their literal and mental baggage, and absorb the meditative ambience while enjoying their hot stone massages.

Watching over them is the resort’s director, a woman on a mission to reinvigorate their tired minds and bodies.

These nine perfect strangers have no idea what is about to hit them.

With her wit, compassion and uncanny understanding of human behaviour, Liane Moriarty explores the depth of connection that can be formed when people are thrown together in… unconventional circumstances.

Table For Eight – Tricia Stringer
HQ Fiction – Contemporary

Clever, charming dressmaker Ketty Clift is embarking on her final cruise from Sydney before she must make serious changes in her life. Supported by the ship’s all-powerful maître d’ Carlos, she has a mission: transform the lives of those who join her at her dining table every evening. Not only can Ketty turn Cinderellas into princesses with her legendary style-eye, but she has a gift for bringing people together.

But this trip is different. As the glamour and indulgence of the cruise takes hold, and the ship sails further away from Sydney towards the Pacific Islands, it becomes clear that her fellow travellers – a troubled family, a grieving widower and an angry divorcee determined to wreak revenge on her ex – are going to be harder work than usual.

As Ketty tries to deal with her own problems, including the unexpected arrival on board of her long-lost love, Leo – the man who broke her heart – as well as troubling news from home, she begins to realise this might be the one cruise that will defeat her.

The Dream Daughter – Diane Chamberlain
Pan Macmillan – Contemporary Romance

When Caroline Sears receives the news that her unborn baby girl has a heart defect, she is devastated. It is 1970 and there seems to be little that can be done. But her brother-in-law, a physicist, tells her that perhaps there is. Hunter appeared in their lives just a few years before—and his appearance was as mysterious as his past. With no family, no friends, and a background shrouded in secrets, Hunter embraced the Sears family and never looked back.

Now, Hunter is telling her that something can be done about her baby’s heart. Something that will shatter every preconceived notion that Caroline has. Something that will require a kind of strength and courage that Caroline never new existed. Something that will mean a mind-bending leap of faith on Caroline’s part.

And all for the love of her unborn child.

The Girl on the Page – John Purcell
Harper Collins – 4th Estate – Fiction

Two women, two great betrayals, one path to redemption. A punchy, powerful and page-turning novel about the redemptive power of great literature, from industry insider, John Purcell.

Amy Winston is a hard-drinking, bed-hopping, hot-shot young book editor on a downward spiral. Having made her name and fortune by turning an average thriller writer into a Lee Child, Amy is given the unenviable task of steering literary great Helen Owen back to publication.

When Amy knocks on the door of their beautiful townhouse in north west London, Helen and her husband, the novelist Malcolm Taylor, are conducting a silent war of attrition. The townhouse was paid for with the enormous seven figure advance Helen was given for the novel she wrote to end fifty years of making ends meets on critical acclaim alone. The novel Malcolm thinks unworthy of her. The novel Helen has yet to deliver. The novel Amy has come to collect.

Amy has never faced a challenge like this one. Helen and Malcolm are brilliant, complicated writers who unsettle Amy into asking questions of herself – questions about what she values, her principles, whether she has integrity, whether she is authentic. Before she knows it, answering these questions becomes a matter of life or death.

From ultimate book industry insider, John Purcell, comes a literary page-turner, a ferocious and fast-paced novel that cuts to the core of what it means to balance ambition and integrity, and the redemptive power of great literature.

The Survivors – Kate Furnivall
Simon & Schuster – Historical Fiction

‘Directly I saw him, I knew he had to die.’

Germany, 1945. Klara Janowska and her daughter Alicja have walked for weeks to get to Graufeld Displaced Persons camp. In the cramped, dirty, dangerous conditions they, along with 3,200 others, are the lucky ones. They have survived and will do anything to find a way back home.

But when Klara recognises a man in the camp from her past, a deadly game of cat and mouse begins.

He knows exactly what she did during the war to save her daughter.

She knows his real identity.

What will be the price of silence? And will either make it out of the camp alive?

The Wolf Hour – Sarah Myles
Allen & Unwin – Adventure

A searing contemporary thriller about an Australian family in crisis against the backdrop of war-torn Africa.

Thirty-year-old Tessa Lowell has a PhD in psychology and is working in Uganda to research the effects of PTSD and war on child soldiers. She joins a delegation travelling across the Congolese border, deep into the African bush, for peace talks with Joseph Kony, notorious leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army.?

At the camp Tessa meets thirteen-year-old Francis, already an experienced soldier and survivor of shocking violence. The talks stall, and the camp is attacked by other rebels who take Tessa. Isolated in an increasingly volatile situation, she tries to form a bond with Francis.

In Melbourne, Tessa’s parents are notified of the kidnapping, but learn there is little that government agencies can do. Desperate, they contact their son Stephen, an astute if manipulative businessman based in Cape Town. He agrees to search for his sister but has other reasons to contact the rebel forces.

As Tessa’s time runs out, her family begins to fracture. Her parents arrive in Uganda to hear awful news about what she has endured. They also learn the devastating truth about the kind of man their son has become. Only they have the power to stop a terrible injustice. But at what cost to their family?

Twinkle Twinkle Little Bat – Various
Pan Macmillan – Children’s Anthology

An anthology of beastly bedtime stories for all kinds of kids from some of Australia’s most loved children’s authors.

Filled with terrific twists on the traditional – from sleepovers of doom to pirate dance parties – these stories are sure to have kids shaking in their bed… with laughter.

Bursting with humour and full of spooky illustrations from Anne Yi, illustrator of the best-selling Alice Miranda and Clementine Rose series, Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Bat is the perfect antidote for bedtime blues.

Authors: Andy Griffiths, Katrina Nannestad, Morris Gleitzman, Judith Rossell, Tim Harris, R. A. Spratt, Frances Watts, Tony Wilson, Jaclyn Moriarty

A huge thanks goes out to the publishers without whom we could not offer such great reads. Allen & Unwin, Harlequin, Harper Collins, Pan Macmillan and Simon & Schuster. We are so grateful for the support you show us, we couldn’t do it without you.

If you aren’t yet a member of the Beauty and Lace Club there is still time to join, head over to the signup page and take a look: yoursay.beautyandlace.net.

Happy Reading, have fun selecting preferences and we look forward to hearing what you think.

If you like the look of these books and want to purchase your own copies they are available at Angus & Robertson, Booktopia and where all good books are sold.

99 thoughts on “Book Club Reads for October 2018

  1. Preferences sent. Sorry for the delay. Not more than one book would be best for me at the moment. Many Thanks,

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