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December 2019 | REDONLINE.CO.UKreads
FEARLESS WOMEN ARE RULING THE SHELVES AND OUR HEARTS
IN SARRA MANNING’S READS OF THE MONTHOur Christmas
book wish list
The
Vanished
Bride by
Bella Ellis
(Hodder &
Stoughton, £14.99,
out 7th November)
The first of The
Brontë Mysteries,
The Vanished Bride
is set on the sisters’
beloved Yorkshire
Moors, where a
young woman has
been snatched from
her blood-soaked
bedchamber. The
signs point to murder and Charlotte Brontë is
determined to find the culprit. Great, gothic fun
and the Brontës are so skilfully depicted that it’s
no stretch at all to imagine the sisters, and their
wastrel brother, Branwell, as amateur sleuths.
So Lucky by Dawn O’Porter
(HarperCollins, £14.99, out 31st October)
So Lucky is the story of three women who are
living the dream. There’s Lauren, Instagram
influencer, about to be married to the
perfect man. Wedding planner Beth, who
everyone thinks has got career and family
nailed. And Ruby- enigmatic,
eccentric and
living by her own
rules. But scratch
the surface and
all three are
falling apart in
this painfully
honest novel that
captures what it
means to (try to)
be a modern
woman. Funny,
thought-provoking
and filthy!
Olive, Again by
Elizabeth Strout
(Viking, £14.99, out
31st October)
What a special, precious
book this is. A sequel to
Elizabeth Strout’s peerless
Olive Kitteridge (but easily
read as a standalone) in
Olive, Again we once again
meet Strout’s eponymous
heroine, who is older, but not
necessarily wiser. In a series
of vignettes, or loosely linked
short stories, we follow the
messy, complicated, often
tragic lives of Olive and her
fellow inhabitants of the
small coastal town of Crosby,
Maine. But Olive, Again is
also a book full of hope and humanity and the difficult,
irascible Olive will worm her way right into your heart.On The Up by Alice O’Keeffe
(Coronet, £16.99, out 14th November)
Sylvia’s just given birth to her second child. She, her
children and her poetry-loving, minimum wage-earning
boyfriend, Obe, are
crammed into a council
flat next door to the
neighbour from hell. No
wonder sleep-deprived
Sylvia dreams of
another life in a house
with a garden and
room to breathe. But
when their council
estate is earmarked for
development, Sylvia
finds her groove, a
community and a sense
of purpose. On The Up
is a gem of a novel that
holds up a mirror to the
way we live now.