Romance fiction set on an ARCTIC Christmas cruise
New books that are strong on location – January 2024
23rd December 2023
Here are our top three location-based new books for January 2024:
The House on Rye Lane by Susan Allott – PECKHAM, LONDON
They thought they’d found their dream home. They were wrong.
2008. The house Maxine and Seb have just bought was a bargain – a huge Georgian townhouse on the edge of Peckham Rye, it needs a lot of work but Max couldn’t resist it. Now they are in, though, nothing seems to be going right – and as the problems mount up, Max starts to doubt her relationship as well as her decision. Is Seb all he seems to be? And why are the neighbours so evasive about the house’s previous owner?
1994. Cookie and his parents have been forced by his dad’s gambling debts to move into the attic room of a big old house, as lodgers. Tensions run high between them and their elderly landlady, and there’s something odd about the place that Cookie can’t quite put his finger on…
1843. Horatio built this house for his beloved wife, who then died in mysterious circumstances. After a second death on the premises, both his servants and the locals are starting to talk. Horatio’s grief is tinged with shame and guilt. What is he hiding? And will the house ever be free of his legacy?
THE HOUSE ON RYE LANE is a tense, taut, beautifully crafted novel about the treachery of secrets and the many ways the past can echo into the present, from the acclaimed author of THE SILENCE.
Come and Get It by Kiley Reid – ARKANSAS
‘I couldn’t put it down, and I didn’t want to either’ EMILY HENRY
‘A page-turning pleasure – stylish, sharp and breathtakingly smart‘ DAISY BUCHANAN
Everything comes at a price. But not everything can be paid for.
Millie wants to graduate, get a job and buy a house. She’s slowly saving up from her job on campus, but when a visiting professor offers her an unusual opportunity to make some extra money, she jumps at the chance.
Agatha is a writer, recovering from a break-up while researching attitudes towards weddings and money for her new book. She strikes gold when interviewing the girls in Millie’s dorm, but her plans take a turn when she realises that the best material is unfolding behind closed doors.
As the two women form an unlikely relationship, they soon become embroiled in a world of roommate theatrics, vengeful pranks and illicit intrigue – and are forced to question just how much of themselves they are willing to trade to get what they want.
Sharp, intimate and provocative, Come and Get It takes a lens to our money-obsessed society in a tension-filled story about desire, consumption and bad behaviour.
The Fury by Alex Michaelides – Cyclades
There were seven of us in all, trapped on the island.One of us was a murderer . . .’
On a small private Greek island, former movie star Lana Farrar – an old friend – invites a select group of us to stay.
It’ll be hot, sunny, perfect. A chance to relax and reconnect – and maybe for a few hidden truths to come out.
Because nothing on this island is quite what it seems.
Not Lana. Not her guests.
Certainly not the murderer – furiously plotting their crime . . .
But who am I?
My name is Elliot Chase, and I’m going to tell you a story unlike any you’ve ever heard.
The fictional island of Aura is in the Cyclades, just a few miles from Santorini.
And here’s a few more you may enjoy…
The Heiress by Rachel Hawkins – NORTH CAROLINA
‘THERE’S NOTHING AS GOOD AS THE RICH GONE BAD‘
One of the most deliciously twisted families ever put to page’ Riley Sager
When Ruby McTavish Callahan Woodward Miller Kenmore dies, she’s not only North Carolina’s richest woman, she’s also its most notorious. The victim of a famous kidnapping as a child and a widow four times over, Ruby ruled the tiny town of Tavistock from Ashby House, her family’s estate high in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
But in the aftermath of her death, her adopted son, Camden, wants little to do with the house or the money – and even less to do with the surviving McTavishes. Instead, he rejects his inheritance, settling into a normal life as an English teacher in Colorado and marrying Jules, a woman just as eager to escape her own messy past.
Ten years later, his uncle’s death pulls Cam and Jules back into the family fold at Ashby House. Its views are just as stunning as ever, its rooms just as elegant, but the legacy of Ruby is inescapable.
And as Ashby House tightens its grip on Jules and Camden, questions about the infamous heiress come to light. Was there any truth to the persistent rumours following her disappearance as a girl? What really happened to those four husbands, who all died under mysterious circumstances? And why did she adopt Cam in the first place? Soon, Jules and Cam realise that an inheritance can entail far more than what’s written in a will – and that the bonds of family stretch far beyond the grave.
Wild and Distant Seas by Tara Karr Roberts – NANTUCKET
A gorgeous debut, laced through with magic, following four generations of women as they seek to chart their own futures.
Evangeline Hussey has made a home for herself on Nantucket, though she knows she is still an outsider to the island’s small, close-knit community, one that by 1849 has started to feel the decline of a once-thriving whaling industry. Her husband, Hosea, and the life they built together, was once all she needed—but now Hosea is gone, lost at sea. Evangeline is only able to hold on to his inn, and her place on the island, by employing a curious gift to glimpse and re-form the recent memories of those who would cast her out.
One night, an idealistic sailor appears on her doorstep asking her to call him Ishmael. He seeks only a warm bed and a bowl of chowder, and yet suddenly, unsettlingly, her careful illusion begins to fracture. He soon sails away with Ahab to hunt an infamous white whale, and Evangeline is left to forge a new life from the pieces that remain.
Her choices ripple through generations, across continents, and into the depths of the sea, in a narrative that follows Evangeline and her descendants from mid-nineteenth century Nantucket to Boston, Brazil, Florence, and Idaho. Moving, beautifully written, and elegantly conceived, Wild and Distant Seas takes Moby-Dickas its starting point, but Tara Karr Roberts brings four remarkable women to life in a spellbinding epic all her own.
Picasso’s Lovers by Jeanne Mackin – Paris, New York
‘A bold, sumptuous portrait of a great artist and the women who inspired, frustrated, loved, and loathed him… Picasso’s Lovers is an epic, sensuous delight’ Kate Quinn, New York Times bestselling author
A vivid reimagination of the women drawn into Pablo Picasso’s charismatic orbit, for readers of The Paris Wife and Mrs Hemingway.
Paris, 1923. The city is a Bohemian paradise for beautiful and wealthy foreigners seduced by the promise of a different life. Pablo Picasso is already famous, and anything seems possible in the name of art.
New York, 1953. For aspiring journalist Alana Olson, there’s always been something about Picasso. Her fascination leads to a series of intimate interviews with Sara Murphy and Irene Legut – two women from Picasso’s once-vibrant French social circle.
But as Alana is pulled deeper into the glamorous and tragic stories of the past, she begins to uncover what really lies beneath the canvas – and a disturbing convergence with her own life that bring her closer to Picasso, and those who loved and loathed him, than she ever could have imagined.
Mercury by Amy Jo Burns – PENNSYLVANIA
A roofing family’s bonds of loyalty are tested when they uncover a long-hidden secret at the heart of their blue-collar town–from Amy Jo Burns, author of the critically acclaimed novel Shiner
It’s 1990 and seventeen-year-old Marley West is blazing into the river valley town of Mercury, Pennsylvania. A perpetual loner, she seeks a place at someone’s table and a family of her own. The first thing she sees when she arrives in town is three men standing on a rooftop. Their silhouettes blot out the sun.
The Joseph brothers become Marley’s whole world before she can blink. Soon, she is young wife to one, The One Who Got Away to another, and adopted mother to them all. As their own mother fades away and their roofing business crumbles under the weight of their unwieldy father’s inflated ego, Marley steps in to shepherd these unruly men. Years later, an eerie discovery in the church attic causes old wounds to resurface and suddenly the family’s survival hangs in the balance. With Marley as their light, the Joseph brothers must decide whether they can save the family they’ve always known–or whether together they can build something stronger in its place.
Daughters of Warsaw by Maria Frances – WARSAW, SEATTLE
In a world torn apart by war, she’ll risk her life to save them.
1942, Warsaw
Young Zofia finds herself leading a double life when she is enlisted to help the fearless Irena Sendler save hundreds of Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto.
Every night, Zofia risks her life to shepherd the children to safety. But when the worst happens, she is forced to make her riskiest journey yet to keep Irena’s mission alive.
Now, Seattle
After yet another miscarriage, heartbroken Lizzie returns to the comfort of her childhood home, where she stumbles upon a hidden photograph of her great-grandmother among a mysterious group of people.
On a quest to discover more, Lizzie uncovers a buried past darker and more dangerous than she could ever have imagined…
A sweeping and heartbreaking story of two remarkable women, generations apart, each finding courage when all hope is gone. Perfect for fans of The Midwife of Auschwitz, The Woman Outside the Walls and The Paris Agent.
Enjoy your January location-based new books!
Tony for the TripFiction team
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