The New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Huntress and The Alice Network returns with another heart stopping World War II story of three female code breakers at Bletchley Park and the spy they must root out after the war is over.
1940. As England prepares to fight the Nazis, three very different women answer the call to mysterious country estate Bletchley Park, where the best minds in Britain train to break German military codes. Vivacious debutante Osla is the girl who has everything beauty, wealth, and the dashing Prince Philip of Greece sending her roses but she burns to prove herself as more than a society girl, and puts her fluent German to use as a translator of decoded enemy secrets. Imperious self made Mab, product of east end London poverty, works the legendary codebreaking machines as she conceals old wounds and looks for a socially advantageous husband. Both Osla and Mab are quick to see the potential in local village spinster Beth, whose shyness conceals a brilliant facility with puzzles, and soon Beth spreads her wings as one of the Park’s few female cryptanalysts. But war, loss, and the impossible pressure of secrecy will tear the three apart.
1947. As the royal wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip whips post war Britain into a fever, three friends turned enemies are reunited by a mysterious encrypted letter the key to which lies buried in the long ago betrayal that destroyed their friendship and left one of them confined to an asylum. A mysterious traitor has emerged from the shadows of their Bletchley Park past, and now Osla, Mab, and Beth must resurrect their old alliance and crack one last code together. But each petal they remove from the rose code brings danger and their true enemy closer…
Category: Book
The Cry – Helen Fitzgerald
He’s gone. And telling the truth won’t bring him back…
When a baby goes missing on a lonely roadside in Australia, it sets off a police investigation that will become a media sensation and dinner-table talk across the world.
Lies, rumours and guilt snowball, causing the parents, Joanna and Alistair, to slowly turn against each other.
Finally Joanna starts thinking the unthinkable: could the truth be even more terrible than she suspected? And what will it take to make things right?
The Cry is a dark psychological thriller with a gripping moral dilemma at its heart and characters who will keep you guessing on every page.
Counterfeit – Kirstin Chen
Money can’t buy happiness… but it can buy a decent fake.
Ava Wong has always played it safe. As a strait-laced, rule-abiding Chinese American lawyer with a successful surgeon as a husband, a young son, and a beautiful home–she’s built the perfect life. But beneath this façade, Ava’s world is crumbling: her marriage is falling apart, her expensive law degree hasn’t been used in years, and her toddler’s tantrums are pushing her to the breaking point.
Enter Winnie Fang, Ava’s enigmatic college roommate from Mainland China, who abruptly dropped out under mysterious circumstances. Now, twenty years later, Winnie is looking to reconnect with her old friend. But the shy, awkward girl Ava once knew has been replaced with a confident woman of the world, dripping in luxury goods, including a coveted Birkin in classic orange. The secret to her success? Winnie has developed an ingenious counterfeit scheme that involves importing near-exact replicas of luxury handbags and now she needs someone with a U.S. passport to help manage her business–someone who’d never be suspected of wrongdoing, someone like Ava. But when their spectacular success is threatened and Winnie vanishes once again, Ava is left to face the consequences.
Swift, surprising, and sharply comic, Counterfeit is a stylish and feminist caper with a strong point of view and an axe to grind. Peering behind the curtain of the upscale designer storefronts and the Chinese factories where luxury goods are produced, Kirstin Chen interrogates the myth of the model minority through two unforgettable women determined to demand more from life.
Breathless – Amy McCulloch
A young woman’s once-in-lifetime adventure in the world of extreme-altitude mountaineering takes a chilling turn when a series of deaths can no longer be written off as accidents.
When journalist and novice climber Cecily Wong is asked to summit Mount Manaslu, the eighth-highest peak in the world, it’s a career-making opportunity. She’s been personally invited by Charles McVeigh, one of the most acclaimed mountaineers in the world, who wants her to report on the final leg of his record-breaking series of summits. But there’s one caveat: he won’t give her the interview until she’s scaled the mountain as part of his climbing party.
Cecily is by far the least experienced of the group, but she is intent on proving herself and will stop at nothing to reach the summit. But when strange things start to happen around her, she becomes concerned. And then people start to die.
Stranded on the mountain with a team she barely knows, she must battle more than the elements in an epic fight for survival—against one of the world’s most dangerous mountains and against an unknown assailant who is picking climbers off one by one.
La certitude des pierres – Jérôme BONNETTO
Ségurian, un village de montagne, quatre cents âmes, des chasseurs, des traditions. Guillaume Levasseur, un jeune homme idéaliste et déterminé, a décidé d’installer une bergerie dans ce coin reculé et paradisiaque. Un lieu où la nature domine et fait la loi. Accueilli comme une bête curieuse par les habitants du village, Guillaume travaille avec acharnement ; sa bergerie prend forme, une vie s’amorce.
Mais son troupeau pâture sur le territoire qui depuis toujours est dévolu à la chasse aux sangliers. Très vite, les désaccords vont devenir des tensions, les tensions des vexations, les vexations vont se transformer en violence.
La certitude des pierres est un texte tendu, minéral, qui sonde les âmes recroquevillées dans l’isolement, la monotonie des jours, l’hostilité de la montagne et de l’existence qu’elle engendre, la mesquinerie ordinaire et la peur de l’inconnu, de l’étranger.
D’une écriture puissante, ample, poétique, Jérôme Bonnetto nous donne à voir l’étroitesse d’esprit des hommes, l’énigme insondable de leurs rêves, et l’immensité de leur folie.
Just finished reading now, heart heavy and no rest of mind. Is this based on some real event? What’s a village law? Few kilometers from the town is another world?
Just yesterday in the news 03/12/2022 à 18h03 Homme roué de coups à l’Escarène en octobre : D’après Nice-Matin, la victime aurait été prise à partie et frappée par plusieurs habitants, voire lynchée. Certains aurait même lâché un chien contre lui, après le vol du sac d’une femme.
I must talk with the writers’ sister for some insight…
The Mercies – Kiran Millwood HARGRAVE
Inspired by the Vardø storm of 1617, the story of how widows became the victims of a witch-hunt on a Norwegian island.
The Mercies, Kiran Millwood Hargrave’s first novel for adults, is set on the Norwegian island of Vardø, where in 1617 a Christmas Eve storm blew up while all the men were out fishing. None survived, and so for months the island’s women managed the fishing, building, reindeer herding and butchery as well as their usual domestic work. In 1618, King Christian IV introduced laws against witchcraft modelled on those of James VI in Scotland. His primary target was the Sámi people of the far north, but hundreds of other Norwegian women were also executed. John Cunningham, brought from Scotland to subdue the Finnmark region, oversaw 52 trials, and was particularly excited to find some of the Vardø women in the wake of their strange storm wearing men’s clothes to do men’s work and integrating local Sámi funerary traditions into their grieving. Some of the widows were tried and burned at the stake. A memorial by Louise Bourgeois and Peter Zumthor now stands on the site and was the touchpaper for this novel.
Vardø: very interesting place. I just finished the reading of Nicolas Beuglet’s thriller COMPLOT which starts the story also in Vardø! Even the theme is similar: male vs female; Masculinism vs Feminism!
Lessons in Chemistry – Bonnie GARMUS
Never imagined chemistry could be funny, it was my least loved subject in high school. If it’s not for the book club, I would not read it. Listened a couple of minutes of audio extract about her daughter’s lunch, started to laugh and decided to buy Kindle version with 9.95€ on November 17 😀
Lessons in Chemistry tells the story of Elizabeth Zott, a reluctant cooking show star whose unconventional methods inspire women to change the status quo. While fun and funny, this fast-paced read also touches on the complex subjects of gender and society.
The Scream – Nicolas BEUGLET
A fascinating thriller of rare complexity, inspired by real discoveries and events, that addresses the folly of man and the danger of misguided science transformed into a lethal weapon.
A colleague recommended and lend me this book. It’s quite interesting from a human angle, can you trust your own family and your loved ones? Do we have collective memories? What’s the ultimate fear?
Azur Polyglot 