| Sandman | | Ian Kingsley | A gripping psychological thriller with characters that reach out and grab you. Sandman touches our primary emotions: jealousy, love, fear, hatred, and grief. The dialogue is authentic, and, along with the scene-painting narrative, you’ll feel like you’re on the beach witnessing the unfolding action.
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| On Beauty | | Zadie Smith | | "On Beauty" concerns a pair of feuding families - the Belseys and the Kipps - and a clutch of doomed affairs. It puts low morals among high ideals and asks some searching questions about what life does to love. For the Belseys and the Kipps, the confusions - both personal and political - of our uncertain age are about to be brought close to home: right to the heart of family. |  | |
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| The Playgroup | | Janey Fraser | | With an opportunity to prove herself, Gemma can't wait to take over Puddleducks Playgroup. But the new head of the infant school, Joe Balls, soon tempers her enjoyment. Meanwhile, Nancy is in turmoil. Her only son has just started at the playgroup and her husband has taken a temporary posting to Vietnam. There never was much hope of conceiving her much-wanted second child so what is she to do now? A tumultuous term lies ahead for all. |  | |
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| Dead Men | | Richard Pierce | Birdie Bowers, an infamously secretive painter, is a woman given a dead man’s name by her obsessed parents. Her namesake was one of Scott’s companions on his fated expedition to the Antarctic. Almost a hundred years after his death, she is determined to discover what really happened to him accompanied by Adam, a bored computer geek, who falls in love with her. But Scott’s tent is now under 30 metres of ice.
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