by Megan Miranda

REESE’S BOOK CLUB x HELLO SUNSHINE AUGUST 2019 PICK!

THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

Littleport, Maine, has always felt like two separate towns: an ideal vacation enclave for the wealthy, whose summer homes line the coastline; and a simple harbor community for the year-round residents whose livelihoods rely on service to the visitors.

Typically, fierce friendships never develop between a local and a summer girl—but that’s just what happens with visitor Sadie Loman and Littleport resident Avery Greer. Each summer for almost a decade, the girls are inseparable—until Sadie is found dead. While the police rule the death a suicide, Avery can’t help but feel there are those in the community, including a local detective and Sadie’s brother, Parker, who blame her. Someone knows more than they’re saying, and Avery is intent on clearing her name, before the facts get twisted against her.

Another thrilling novel from the bestselling author of All the Missing Girls and The Perfect Stranger, Megan Miranda’s The Last House Guest is a smart, twisty read with a strong female protagonist determined to make her own way in the world.

Amazon: Paperback $17.44, Kindle $3.79

Booktopia: Paperback $22.75, eBook $8.99

Sutherland Library: 4 copies, eBook, eAudiobook

Kmart: Doesn’t stock

Big W: Doesn’t stock

by J. Courtney Sullivan

REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK – A novel of family, secrets, ghosts, and homecoming set on the seaside cliffs of Maine, by the New York Times best-selling author of Friends and Strangers

On a secluded bluff overlooking the ocean sits a Victorian house, lavender with gingerbread trim, a home that contains a century’s worth of secrets. By the time Jane Flanagan discovers the house as a teenager, it has long been abandoned. The place is an irresistible mystery to Jane. There are still clothes in the closets, marbles rolling across the floors, and dishes in the cupboards, even though no one has set foot there in decades. The house becomes a hideaway for Jane, a place to escape her volatile mother.

Twenty years later, now a Harvard archivist, she returns home to Maine following a terrible mistake that threatens both her career and her marriage. Jane is horrified to find the Victorian is now barely recognizable. The new owner, Genevieve, a summer person from Beacon Hill, has gutted it, transforming the house into a glossy white monstrosity straight out of a shelter magazine. Strangely, Genevieve is convinced that the house is haunted–perhaps the product of something troubling Genevieve herself has done. She hires Jane to research the history of the place and the women who lived there. The story Jane uncovers–of lovers lost at sea, romantic longing, shattering loss, artistic awakening, historical artifacts stolen and sold, and the long shadow of colonialism–is even older than Maine itself.

Enthralling, richly imagined, filled with psychic mediums and charlatans, spirits and past lives, mothers, marriage, and the legacy of alcoholism, this is a deeply moving novel about the land we inhabit, the women who came before us, and the ways in which none of us will ever truly leave this earth.

Amazon: Hardcover $55.77, Paperback $40.79, Kindle $12.99

Booktopia: Paperback $56.75

Sutherland Library: 9 copies (no holds at time of writing)

Kmart: Doesn’t stock

Big W: Doesn’t stock

by Laura Dave

A gripping mystery about a woman who thinks she’s found the love of her life–until he disappears.

Before Owen Michaels disappears, he smuggles a note to his beloved wife of one year: Protect her. Despite her confusion and fear, Hannah Hall knows exactly to whom the note refers–Owen’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Bailey. Bailey, who lost her mother tragically as a child. Bailey, who wants absolutely nothing to do with her new stepmother.

As Hannah’s increasingly desperate calls to Owen go unanswered, as the FBI arrests Owen’s boss, as a US marshal and federal agents arrive at her Sausalito home unannounced, Hannah quickly realizes her husband isn’t who he said he was. And that Bailey just may hold the key to figuring out Owen’s true identity–and why he really disappeared. Hannah and Bailey set out to discover the truth. But as they start putting together the pieces of Owen’s past, they soon realize they’re also building a new future–one neither of them could have anticipated. With its breakneck pacing, dizzying plot twists, and evocative family drama, The Last Thing He Told Me is a riveting mystery, certain to shock you with its final, heartbreaking turn.

Amazon: Paperback $23.80, Kindle $7.99

Booktopia: Paperback $19.99

Sutherland Library: 5 copies

Kmart: Doesn’t stock 

Big W: Doesn’t stock

by Kiran Desai

A spellbinding story of two young people whose fates intersect and diverge across continents and years-an epic of love and family, India and America, tradition and modernity, by the Booker Prize-winning author of The Inheritance of Loss.

When Sonia and Sunny first glimpse each other on an overnight train, they are immediately captivated, yet also embarrassed by the fact that their grandparents had once tried to matchmake them, a clumsy meddling that only served to drive Sonia and Sunny apart.

Sonia, an aspiring novelist who recently completed her studies in the snowy mountains of Vermont, has returned to her family in India, fearing she is haunted by a dark spell cast by an artist to whom she had once turned for intimacy and inspiration. Sunny, a struggling journalist resettled in New York City, is attempting to flee his imperious mother and the violence of his warring clan. Uncertain of their future, Sonia and Sunny embark on a search for happiness together as they confront the many alienations of our modern world.

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny is the sweeping tale of two young people navigating the many forces that shape their lives- country, class, race, history, and the complicated bonds that link one generation to the next. A love story, a family saga, and a rich novel of ideas, it is the most ambitious and accomplished work yet by one of our greatest novelists.

Amazon: Paperback $26.25, Kindle $17.99

Booktopia: Paperback $29.95

Sutherland Library: 2 copies

Can borrow Jen’s copy 🙂

Kmart: Doesn’t stock

Big W: Doesn’t stock

by Karl Kruszelnicki

How did a shy Polish immigrant kid – Karl Sven Woytek Sas Konkovitch Matthew Kruszelnicki – evolve into the fabulously eccentric Dr Karl?

Shortlist ABIA Biography of the Year 2025

The only child of Holocaust survivors who fled to Australia in 1950, Karl has always forged his own destiny in an idiosyncratic way. Before he became one of the world’s favourite scientific storytellers, he ambled through a convoluted cacophony of a career.

In the 1960s, he got his start as a physicist at the Port Kembla Steelworks and promptly joined the Steel Industries Auto Club, racing modified rally cars on Wollongong’s deserted back roads. In the 1970s, he entered his self-described ‘drug-crazed hippie years’, making a living as a long-haired, dope-smoking taxi driver. After he applied to be a NASA astronaut in the 1980s and ‘failed’, he ended up live broadcasting the first space shuttle launch on Triple J instead. Unexpectedly, that blasted off his media career, and from there it was a stratospheric rise from radio to TV, books, newspapers, speaking, podcasts and the internet.

Karl’s story teaches us that you don’t have to know all the answers, as long as you ask the right questions. He has wandered down more than a dozen career paths, from being a TV weatherman (really) to a professional four-wheel drive tester in the outback (really) to being a roadie for Bo Diddley (really). All of these seemingly random experiences have helped create the Karl we know today.

In this long-awaited memoir, you will learn that it’s okay to not take a linear path through life, and that by following our curiosities and our passions, we can bend the universe to our liking.

Amazon: Hardcover $16.99, Paperback $24.00, Kindle $16.99

Booktopia: Paperback $29.95

Sutherland Library: Paperback – many copies, eBook (BorrowBox & Hoopla)

Kmart: Doesn’t stock

Big W: $24

by Eric Puchner

AN OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK AND AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

‘[A] brilliantly panoramic tale of family ties’ Guardian

‘A sprawling page-turner’ Grazia, Summer Reads

‘Moving, funny and utterly engrossing’ The Times

‘A totally involving and moving literary page-turner’ Clare Chambers

Cece is in love. She has arrived early at her in-laws’ beautiful lake house in Salish, Montana, to finish planning her wedding to Charlie, a cardiac anaesthesiologist with a brilliant future.

When Charlie asks Garrett, his best friend from college, to officiate the ceremony, Cece can’t imagine anyone less appropriate for the task. After all, Garrett, a depressed baggage handler at the local airport, doesn’t believe in marriage.

But as she spends time with him and his gruff mask slips, she grows increasingly uncertain about her future, leading to an impulsive decision that will alter the three friends’ lives forever – the events of that summer reverberating across fifty years and spanning generations.

Amazon: Paperback $19.87, Kindle $16.99

Booktopia: Paperback $27.75

Sutherland Library: 3 copies

Kmart: Doesn’t stock 

Big W: Doesn’t stock

by Matthew Reilly

A SECRETARY LIKE NO OTHER IN AN EPIC SPANNING 40 YEARS

All Hanna Fischer ever wanted to do was to study physics under the great Albert Einstein.

But when, as a teenager in 1919, her life is suddenly turned upside-down, she is catapulted into a new and extraordinary life – as a student, a secretary, a sister and a spy.

From racist gangs in Berlin to gangsters in New York City, Nazis in the 1930s and Hitler’s inner circle during the Second World War, Hanna will encounter some of history’s greatest minds and most terrible moments, all while desperately trying to stay alive.

She is a most unique secretary and she will work for many bosses – from shrewd businessmen to vile Nazis, to the greatest boss of them all, Mr Albert Einstein…

Spanning forty years, this is the thrilling tale of a young woman propelled through history’s most dangerous times. But read it carefully, because all may not be as it seems…

Amazon: Paperback $14.00, Kindle $12.99

Sutherland Library: Multiple copies

Kmart: Doesn’t stock

Big W: Paperback $14

by Anthony Doerr

When everything is lost, it’s our stories that survive.

How do we weather the end of things? Cloud Cuckoo Land brings together an unforgettable cast of dreamers and outsiders from past, present and future to offer a vision of survival against all odds.

Constantinople, 1453:

An orphaned seamstress and a cursed boy with a love for animals risk everything on opposite sides of a city wall to protect the people they love.

Idaho, 2020:

An impoverished, idealistic kid seeks revenge on a world that’s crumbling around him. Can he go through with it when a gentle old man stands between him and his plans?

Unknown, Sometime in the Future:

With her tiny community in peril, Konstance is the last hope for the human race. To find a way forward, she must look to the oldest stories of all for guidance.

Bound together by a single ancient text, these tales interweave to form a tapestry of solace and resilience and a celebration of storytelling itself. Like its predecessor All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr’s new novel is a tale of hope and of profound human connection.

Amazon: Paperback $17.24, Kindle $14.99

Sutherland Library: Multiple copies

Kmart: Doesn’t stock

Big W: Doesn’t stock

by Percival Everett

A brilliant reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—both harrowing and satirical—told from the enslaved Jim’s point of view.

When Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he runs away until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck has faked his own death to escape his violent father. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.

Brimming with nuanced humor and lacerating observations that have made Everett a literary icon, this brilliant and tender novel radically illuminates Jim’s agency, intelligence, and compassion as never before. James is destined to be a major publishing event and a cornerstone of twenty-first-century American literature.

Amazon: Paperback $14.00, Kindle $4.99

Sutherland Library: eBook (Hoopla) & eAudiobook 

Kmart: Doesn’t stock 

Big W: Doesn’t stock

by Hannah Kent

A brilliant literary debut, inspired by a true story: the final days of a young woman accused of murder in Iceland in 1829.

Set against Iceland’s stark landscape, Hannah Kent brings to vivid life the story of Agnes, who, charged with the brutal murder of her former master, is sent to an isolated farm to await execution.

Horrified at the prospect of housing a convicted murderer, the family at first avoids Agnes. Only Tóti, a priest Agnes has mysteriously chosen to be her spiritual guardian, seeks to understand her. But as Agnes’s death looms, the farmer’s wife and their daughters learn there is another side to the sensational story they’ve heard.

Riveting and rich with lyricism, Burial Rites evokes a dramatic existence in a distant time and place, and asks the question, how can one woman hope to endure when her life depends upon the stories told by others?

Amazon: Paperback $17.70, Kindle $12.99

Sutherland Library: 2 copies, also eBook, Audiobook, and Hoopla

Kmart: Doesn’t stock

Big W: Doesn’t stock

by Joanna Glen

From the author of the Costa shortlisted debut, The Other Half of Augusta Hope, comes the story of one girl’s journey to find her birth mother, and her realisation that mothers – and family – can be discovered in the most unexpected of places…

London, 1980s. Though she has a comfortable, privileged life, Eva Martínez-Green is deeply unhappy. The only child of an emotionally absent mother and a physically absent father, Eva has grown up in a cold, unloving house. But Eva is convinced that all is not as it seems. Why are there no baby pictures of her? Why do her parents avoid all questions about her early years?

When her parents’ relationship crumbles, Eva begins looking for a different, better life: a proper family, a perfect mother, and, importantly, real love. Her desire to find where she belongs leads Eva on a journey spanning years and continents – and, along the way, she meets women who challenge her idea of what a mother should be, and who will change her life forever…

Amazon: Paperback $17.70, Kindle $8.99

Booktopia: Paperback $20.35

Sutherland Library: Paperback – 3 copies, eBook (on Hoopla), eAudiobook 

Kmart: Doesn’t stock

Big W: Doesn’t stock

by Kristin Harper

Ruby rocks in her favourite chair and tries not to think about the past. This family inn, with views across the grassy dunes to the lighthouse standing against bright blue sky, is all she’s ever known. But Ruby has been keeping a secret all these years… this summer, has the time finally come to share it?

Meg Carter can’t wait to spend the summer with her great-aunt Ruby, helping renovate her charming—if a little old-fashioned—inn by the ocean. But a surprise arrival changes their plans. Simon, grandson of the former owners, is selling his land next door to a luxury resort developer. The plans are certain to ruin the beautiful view of the lighthouse, which has guided lost seafarers home for generations… and put Ruby’s inn out of business for good.

Forget sorting through Ruby’s classic book collection and spring cleaning the bedrooms: there might not ever be any new guests if the plans go ahead. Simon may be tall and handsome, with eyes like green sea glass, but he’s stubborn to boot… and Meg’s discussions with him always end in fireworks.
Then Ruby says she has a secret about Simon to share. But the elderly lady only has time to say “the lighthouse holds the key” before becoming desperately ill.
Distraught, all Meg cares about is her beloved aunt’s health. Ruby is in no state to share her secret now: but what if it could save the inn for good? A tour of the lighthouse, with its glittering glass lamp and red-and-white stripes, brings Meg no closer to the truth… and it’s against her better judgment that she takes long walks on the beach with Simon, and even grows close to his sweet children.
But is she wrong to open her heart to the one person who could hold the answers? And will Meg ever solve the secret of the lighthouse—before it’s too late for the inn, and for Ruby?

Amazon: Paperback $21.99, Kindle $4.99

Booktopia: Paperback $21.99

Sutherland Library: Doesn’t stock 

Kmart: Doesn’t stock 

Big W: Doesn’t stock

by Mitch Albom

A moving new novel from the beloved author of Tuesdays with Morrie and The Five People You Meet in Heaven

When the Nazis invade his home in Salonika, Greece, a German officer offers eleven-year-old Nico Krispis a chance to save his family. Nico must convince his fellow Jewish residents to board trains heading ‘north’, where safety and protection awaits.

But when the final train is loaded, Nico sees his family being herded into a boxcar. Only then does he realise that he has helped send them, and everyone he knew, to their doom at Auschwitz. Nico escapes but he never tells the truth again.

In The Little Liar, Nico’s story is interweaved with those of his family, friends and even the Nazi officer who changed their lives. Through the war years and the decades that follow, Albom reveals the consequences of their decisions, eventually bringing them back to where it all started.

The Little Liar is a timeless tale of the harm we inflict with our deceits, and the power of love to redeem us.

Amazon: Paperback $24.99, Kindle $16.99

Sutherland Library: 4 copies (current availability), also 3 large print copies (current availability)

Kmart: Doesn’t stock this title

Big W: Doesn’t stock this title

by Kate Quinn

The New York Times bestselling author of The Diamond Eye and The Rose Code returns with a haunting and powerful story of female friendships and secrets in a Washington, DC, boardinghouse during the McCarthy era.

Washington, DC, 1950. Everyone keeps to themselves at Briarwood House, a down-at-the-heels all-female boardinghouse in the heart of the nation’s capital where secrets hide behind white picket fences. But when the lovely, mysterious widow Grace March moves into the attic room, she draws her oddball collection of neighbors into unlikely friendship: poised English beauty Fliss, whose facade of perfect wife and mother covers gaping inner wounds; policeman’s daughter Nora, who finds herself entangled with a shadowy gangster; frustrated baseball star Beatrice, whose career has come to an end along with the women’s baseball league of WWII; and poisonous, gung-ho Arlene, who has thrown herself into McCarthy’s Red Scare.

Grace’s weekly attic-room dinner parties and window-brewed sun tea become a healing balm on all their lives, but she hides a terrible secret of her own. When a shocking act of violence tears the house apart, the Briar Club women must decide once and for all: who is the true enemy in their midst?

Capturing the paranoia of the McCarthy era and evoking the changing roles for women in postwar America, The Briar Club is an intimate and thrilling novel of secrets and loyalty put to the test.

Amazon: Paperback $17.24, Kindle $11.99

Booktopia: Paperback $20.40

Sutherland Library: Paperback (8 copies, not many holds), eBook (on Hoopla), Large print (2 copies) 

Kmart: Doesn’t stock

Big W: Doesn’t stock

by Patti Callahan Henry

Can a fairytale solve the mystery of her lost sister?

1939: Fourteen-year-old Hazel and five-year-old Flora are evacuated from London to a rural village to escape the horrors of the Second World War. Living with the Aberdeen family in a charming stone cottage, Hazel distracts her young sister with a fairy tale about a magical land, a secret place they can escape to that is all their own: Whisperwood.

But the unthinkable happens when Flora vanishes near the banks of the River Thames. Shattered, Hazel blames herself for her sister’s disappearance, carrying the guilt into adulthood.

Twenty years later, Hazel is back in London, ready to move on from her job at a cosy rare-book shop for a career at Sotheby’s. With a cherished boyfriend and an upcoming Paris getaway, Hazel’s future seems set. But her tidy life is turned upside down when she unwraps a package containing a picture book called Whisperwood and the River of Stars. Hazel never told a soul about the storybook world she created just for Flora. Could this book hold the secrets to Flora’s disappearance? Could it be a sign that her beloved sister is still alive after all these years? Or is something sinister at play?

For fans of Kate Morton and Kristin Hannah, this is a captivating, poignant celebration of sisterhood and the magic of storytelling.

‘A beautiful blend of love and mystery, The Secret Book of Flora Lea is captivating from the first page. Intriguing, atmospheric, rich in detail, it will break your heart and warm it at the same time. Definitely a book for booklovers; you’ll want to race through the pages but linger over the beautiful descriptions and superbly rendered characters. I loved it.’ Belinda Alexandra, author of The French Agent

‘A heartrending, captivating tale of family, first love, and fate’ Kristin Harmel, New York Times bestselling author

‘Two sisters, dual time periods, a magical secret place, an abiding mystery — The Secret Book of Flora Lea is an enchanting story of survival against all odds. Transporting, heartfelt, and atmospheric.’ Christina Baker Kline, New York Times bestselling author of Orphan Train

Amazon: Paperback $25.40, Kindle $11.99

Sutherland Library: Paperback (4 copies, out but no holds), eBook (Hoopla – currently available), eAudiobook (currently available)

Booktopia: Paperback $26.95

Kmart: Doesn’t stock 

Big W: Doesn’t stock