If you liked... April suggestions

If you liked....
Girl at war/ Sarah Novic

Zagreb, 1991. Ana Jurić is a carefree ten-year-old, living with her family in a small apartment in Croatia’s capital. But that year, civil war breaks out across Yugoslavia, splintering Ana’s idyllic childhood. Daily life is altered by food rations and air raid drills, and soccer matches are replaced by sniper fire. Neighbors grow suspicious of one another, and Ana’s sense of safety starts to fray. When the war arrives at her doorstep, Ana must find her way in a dangerous world.

New York, 2001. Ana is now a college student in Manhattan. Though she’s tried to move on from her past, she can’t escape her memories of war—secrets she keeps even from those closest to her. Haunted by the events that forever changed her family, Ana returns to Croatia after a decade away, hoping to make peace with the place she once called home. As she faces her ghosts, she must come to terms with her country’s difficult history and the events that interrupted her childhood years before.
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The unquiet dead/ Ausma Zehanat Khan 

Despite their many differences, Detective Rachel Getty trusts her boss, Esa Khattak, implicitly. But she's still uneasy at Khattak's tight-lipped secrecy when he asks her to look into Christopher Drayton's death. Drayton's apparently accidental fall from a cliff doesn't seem to warrant a police investigation, particularly not from Rachel and Khattak's team, which handles minority-sensitive cases. But when she learns that Drayton may have been living under an assumed name, Rachel begins to understand why Khattak is tip-toeing around this case. It soon comes to light that Drayton may have been a war criminal with ties to the Srebrenica massacre of 1995.

If that's true, any number of people might have had reason to help Drayton to his death, and a murder investigation could have far-reaching ripples throughout the community. But as Rachel and Khattak dig deeper into the life and death of Christopher Drayton, every question seems to lead only to more questions, with no easy answers. Had the specters of Srebrenica returned to haunt Drayton at the end, or had he been keeping secrets of an entirely different nature? Or, after all, did a man just fall to his death from the Bluffs?

If you liked....
Nora Webster/ Colm Toibin
Set in Wexford, Ireland, Colm Tóibín’s magnificent seventh novel introduces the formidable, memorable, and deeply moving Nora Webster. Widowed at forty, with four children and not enough money, Nora has lost the love of her life, Maurice, the man who rescued her from the stifling world to which she was born. And now she fears she may be sucked back into it. Wounded, selfish, strong-willed, clinging to secrecy in a tiny community where everyone knows your business, Nora is drowning in her own sorrow and blind to the suffering of her young sons, who have lost their father. Yet she has moments of stunning insight and empathy, and when she begins to sing again, after decades, she finds solace, engagement, a haven—herself.
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The green road/ Anne Enright

The children of Rosaleen Madigan leave the west of Ireland for lives they never could have imagined, In Dublin, New York and various third-world towns. In her early old age their difficult, wonderful mother announces that she's decided to sell the house and divide the proceeds. Her adult children come back for a last Christmas, with the feeling that their childhoods are being erased, their personal history bought and sold.

If you liked....
A god in ruins/ Kate Atkinson
A God in Ruins relates the life of Teddy Todd – would-be poet, heroic World War II bomber pilot, husband, father, and grandfather – as he navigates the perils and progress of the 20th century. For all Teddy endures in battle, his greatest challenge will be to face living in a future he never expected to have.

This gripping, often deliriously funny yet emotionally devastating book looks at war – that great fall of Man from grace – and the effect it has, not only on those who live through it, but on the lives of the subsequent generations. It is also about the infinite magic of fiction.Those who loved the bestselling Life After Life will recognise Teddy as Ursula Todd's adored younger brother – but for those who have not read it, A God in Ruins stands fully on its own.

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The night stages/ Jane Urquhart
After a tragic accident leaves Tamara alone on the most westerly tip of Ireland, she begins an affair with a charismatic meteorologist named Niall. It's the 1950s, and Tamara has settled into civilian life after working as an auxiliary pilot in World War II. At first her romance is filled with passionate secrecy, but when Niall's younger brother, Kieran, disappears after a bicycle race, Niall, unable to shake the idea that he may be to blame, slowly falls into despondency. Distraught and abandoned after their decade-long relationship, Tamara decides she has no option but to leave. Jane Urquhart's mesmerizing novel opens as Tamara makes her way from Ireland to New York. During a layover in Gander, Newfoundland, a fog moves in, grounding her plane and stranding her in front of the airport's mural. As she gazes at the nutcracker-like children, missile-shaped birds, and fruit blossoms, she revisits the circumstances that brought her to Ireland and the family entanglement that has forced her into exile. Slowly she interweaves her life story with Kieran's as she searches for the truth about Niall. With The Night Stages, this celebrated bestselling author has written a magnificent, elegiac novel of intersecting memories that explores the meaning of separation and reunion, the sorrows of fractured families, and the profound effect of Ireland's harshly beautiful landscape on lives lived in solitude.

If you liked....
The shining girls/ Lauren Beukes
Stephen King's pick for Best Summer Read 2013 (The Times): 'Clever story, smart prose'
The girl who wouldn't die ... hunting a killer who shouldn't exist. He's the perfect killer. Unstoppable. Untraceable. He thinks.
CHICAGO, 1931. Harper Curtis, a violent drifter, stumbles on a house with a secret as shocking as his own twisted nature - it opens onto other times. He uses it to stalk his carefully chosen 'shining girls' through the decades - and cut the spark out of them. 'It's not my fault. It's yours. You shouldn't shine. You shouldn't make me do this.' CHICAGO, 1992. they say what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. tell that to Kirby Mazrachi, whose life was shattered after a brutal attempt to murder her. Still struggling to find the attacker, Kirby's only ally is Dan, an ex-homicide reporter who covered the case and now might be falling in love with her. As Kirby investigates, she finds the other girls - the ones who didn't make it. the evidence is ... impossible. But for a girl who should be dead, impossible doesn't mean it didn't happen ...
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Day four/ Sarah Lotz

The trip of their dreams becomes the holiday of their nightmares: Day Four is Sarah Lotz's extraordinary, unmissable follow-up to the book that made headlines around the world, The Three - perfect for fans of The Shining Girls, The Passage and Lost.

Four days into a five day singles cruise on the Gulf of Mexico, the ageing ship Beautiful Dreamer stops dead in the water. With no electricity and no cellular signals, the passengers and crew have no way to call for help. But everyone is certain that rescue teams will come looking for them soon. All they have to do is wait.

That is, until the toilets stop working and the food begins to run out. When the body of a woman is discovered in her cabin the passengers start to panic. There's a murderer on board the Beautiful Dreamer... and maybe something worse.

Pink Sari Project



Portraits in Pink
17 April - 1 May 2016
Sutherland Library

Women from Indian and Sri Lankan background have one of the lowest breast screening rates in New South Wales.
 The Pink Sari Project aims to raise awareness and dispel myths about mammograms in these communities.

Come along to view Portraits in Pink, a photographic exhibition to celebrate the stories of 14 breast cancer survivors from the Indian and Sri Lankan community in New South Wales. 

Last minute assignment due? DON'T PANIC

Research Databases and Encyclopedias and Reference books online can save the day.
A broad range of topics are covered, in a range of levels.
For a quick start, just enter your search terms in the search box, top right, of the library home page.

Looking down the results page, you will find 3 articles listed from Research Databases.
To read, click on the article title or the PDF icon.
Be prepared to enter your library membership card and your pin number to get access.


Or use the Online facet on the left to narrow all results to those which can be used at home.
Click on the view book link to read the book from where you are (remember you will need your membership number and pin).
Use the tips above to help with a wide variety of topics like these.......

Find information about veterinary practise

Who is involved in exploring Antarctica?

How are school boards managed?
What Government forms are there?
Business ethics should you use them

Photos courtesy of Britannica Image Quest - find millions of rights cleared images in one trusted source..

The Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction Shortlist 2016




                   The Bailey Women's Prize shortlist, 2016 has been revealed!
Who do you think will win? 
                                     
The Glorious Heresies
 by Lisa McInerney

The Portable Veblen
by Elizabeth McKenzie


A little Life
 by Hanya Yanagihara
Ruby: A novel
by Cynthia Bond
The improbability of love
 by Hannah Rothschild

                 
The Green Road
by Anne Enright

April Reads

The little red chairs/ Edna O'Brien
When a wanted war criminal, masquerading as a healer, settles in a small west coast Irish village, the community are in thrall. One woman, Fidelma McBride, falls under his spell and in this searing novel, Edna O'Brien charts the consequence of that fatal attraction. This is a story about love, the artifice of evil and the terrible necessity of accountability in our shattered, damaged world.



The nest/ Cynthia D'aprix Sweeney
Every family has its problems. But even among the most troubled, the Plumb family stands out as spectacularly dysfunctional. Years of simmering tensions finally reach a breaking point on an unseasonably cold afternoon in New York City as Melody, Beatrice, and Jack Plumb gather to confront their charismatic and reckless older brother, Leo, freshly released from rehab. Months earlier, an inebriated Leo got behind the wheel of a car with a nineteen-year-old waitress as his passenger. The ensuing accident has endangered the Plumbs' joint trust fund, “The Nest,” which they are months away from finally receiving. Meant by their deceased father to be a modest mid-life supplement, the Plumb siblings have watched The Nest’s value soar along with the stock market and have been counting on the money to solve a number of self-inflicted problems.
Melody, a wife and mother in an upscale suburb, has an unwieldy mortgage and looming college tuition for her twin teenage daughters. Jack, an antiques dealer, has secretly borrowed against the beach cottage he shares with his husband, Walker, to keep his store open. And Bea, a once-promising short-story writer, just can’t seem to finish her overdue novel. Can Leo rescue his siblings and, by extension, the people they love? Or will everyone need to reimagine the futures they’ve envisioned? Brought together as never before, Leo, Melody, Jack, and Beatrice must grapple with old resentments, present-day truths, and the significant emotional and financial toll of the accident, as well as finally acknowledge the choices they have made in their own lives.

The girl in the ice/Lotte and Søren Hammer ; translated from the Danish by Paul Norlen
Under the heartless vault of the Greenland's artic sky the body of a girl is discovered. Half-naked and tied up, buried hundreds of miles from any signs of life, she has lain alone, hidden in the ice cap, for twenty-five years. Now an ice melt has revealed her. When Detective Chief Superintendent Konrad Simonsen is flown in to investigate this horrific murder and he sees how she was attacked, it triggers a dark memory and he realises this was not the killer's only victim. As Simonsen's team work to discover evidence that has long since been buried, they unearth truths that certain people would rather stayed forgotten, disturbing details about the moral standing of some of Denmark's political figures are revealed and powerful individuals are suddenly working against them. But the pressure is on as it becomes clear that the killer chooses victims who all look unsettlingly similar, a similarity that may be used to the investigators' advantage, just so long as they can keep the suspect in their sights...

At the edge of the orchard/Tracy Chevalier
1838: James and Sadie Goodenough have settled where their wagon got stuck - in the muddy, stagnant swamps of northwest Ohio. They and their five children work relentlessly to tame their patch of land, buying saplings from a local tree man known as John Appleseed so they can cultivate the fifty apple trees required to stake their claim on the property. But the orchard they plant sows the seeds of a long battle. James loves the apples, reminders of an easier life back in Connecticut; while Sadie prefers the applejack they make, an alcoholic refuge from brutal frontier life. 1853: Their youngest child Robert is wandering through Gold Rush California. Restless and haunted by the broken family he left behind, he has made his way alone across the country. In the redwood and giant sequoia groves he finds some solace, collecting seeds for a naturalist who sells plants from the new world to the gardeners of England. But you can run only so far, even in America, and when Robert's past makes an unexpected appearance he must decide whether to strike out again or stake his own claim to a home at last.

Lust & wonder: a memoir / Augusten Burroughs
In chronicling the development and demise of the different relationships he's had while living in New York, Augusten Burroughs examines what it means to be in love, what it means to be in lust, and what it means to be figuring it all out. With Augusten's unique and singular observations and his own unabashed way of detailing both the horrific and the humorous, Lust & Wonder is an intimate and honest memoir that his legions of fans have been waiting for.

The secret recipe for second chances/ J.D Barrett
Lucy Muir is leaving her husband. It's complicated. They're joint owners and chefs at one of the best restaurants in town, so making a clean break is tough. But, let's face it, a woman can only take so much cheating, recipe stealing and lack of good grace.
Despondently driving around the back streets of Woolloomooloo one night, Lucy happens upon an old, empty terrace that was once the city's hottest restaurant: Fortune. One minute she's peering through grimy windows into an abandoned space, the next she's planning a pop-up bistro.
When Lucy fires up Fortune's old kitchen she discovers a little red recipe book that belonged to the former chef, the infamous Frankie Summers. As she cries over the ingredients for Frankie's French Onion Soup, she imagines what Fortune was like in its heyday. It's strange, Lucy can sense Frankie beside her, almost see him there ...
This fiery chef, who lived with a passion for food and women in almost equal measure, just might help Lucy cook herself up a better life. But is she brave enough to believe?

 The one who got away /Caroline Overington
We all keep secrets. Some are deadly.

Loren Wynne-Estes appears to have it all: she's the girl from the wrong side of the tracks who's landed a handsome husband, a stunning home, a fleet of shiny cars and two beautiful daughters ...
Then one day a fellow parent taps Loren on the shoulder outside the grand school gate, hands her a note ... and suddenly everything's at stake.
Loren's Facebook-perfect marriage is spectacularly exposed - revealing an underbelly of lies and betrayal. What is uncovered will scandalise a small town, destroy lives and leave a family divided. But who is to be believed and who is to blame? Will the right person be brought to justice or is there one who got away?

The clasp/ Sloane Crosley
Reunited for the extravagant wedding of a college friend: Kezia, the second-in-command to an eccentric jewellery designer; Nathaniel, the former literary cool kid now selling his wares in Hollywood; and Victor, who has just been fired from a middling search engine. They soon slip back into old roles: Victor loves Kezia. Kezia loves Nathaniel. Nathaniel loves Nathaniel. In the midst of all this semi-merriment, Victor passes out in the mother of the groom's bedroom. He wakes to her jovially slapping him across the face. Instead of a scolding, she offers Victor a story she's never even told her son, about a valuable necklace that disappeared during the Nazi occupation of France. And so a madcap adventure is set into motion, one that leads Victor, Kezia, and Nathaniel from Miami to New York and L.A. to Paris and across France, until they converge at the estate of Guy de Maupassant, author of the classic short story The Necklace.

Ghost Girls/Cath Ferla
Winter in Sydney and the city is brimming with foreign students. International students from China, Japan and Korea flood the streets from Sussex south to Haymarket, spilling out from the many private language schools in pursuit of the ultimate goal - learning English. But when one of them, a young Chinese woman known as Wendy, leaps to her death from the tenth floor window of her language school it becomes clear that lurking within the psyche of this particular community is a deep sense of despair and alienation. Things take a turn for the mysterious when it is revealed that the dead woman on the pavement was not Wendy at all, but an impostor who had stolen another student's identity. The question is why and what has happened to the real Wendy Chan? Sophie Sandilands knows a thing or two about alienation. She spent five years living the outsider life in China, the place she ran to following her father's death and upon learning some home truths about his past. She returned alone to Australia and set up a new home in Sydney, determined to lock the bad memories away and start afresh. But Sophie is Wendy's teacher and her student's unexpected death, along with the revelation that she had been hiding a dark secret, brings the past into the present for Sophie. Will Sophie solve the mystery, bring down the criminal gang and find the missing students? Or will the gang catch up with her first so that she too becomes one of the disappeared?