A Natural woman: a memoir by Carole King
Carole King takes us from her early beginnings in Brooklyn, to her remarkable success as one of the world’s most acclaimed songwriting and performing talents of all time. A NATURAL WOMAN chronicles King’s extraordinary life, drawing readers into her musical world, including her phenomenally successful #1 album Tapestry, and into her journey as a performer, mother, wife and present-day activist. Deeply personal, King’s long-awaited memoir offers readers a front-row seat to the woman behind the legend.
The book will include dozens of photos from King’s childhood, her own family, and behind-the-scenes images from her performances.
Point man by Mark Townsend
Adult non Fiction 958.1047 TOW
The point man leads the patrol into battle, looking for signs of danger. He is the first to face ambushes, hidden bombs and snipers. Few survive for long. Between 2007 and 2008, 20-year-old Kenny Meighan was the longest-serving point man in Helmand province. An exceptionally skilful and brave private, he was lucky to make it home alive. But in his hometown in Essex, where prospects are bleak and his father still suffers from the nightmares of his own war experience, Kenny’s struggle is far from over.
The House of Hancock : the rise and rise of Gina Rinehart by Debi Marshall
From an early age Gina Rinehart knew she was heir to one of Australia’s largest fortunes. Her father, Lang Hancock, loved her dearly and groomed her to take over the company. Then along came Rose, the Filipina housekeeper Lang married in 1985, and the obsessively private House of Hancock was changed forever. Hancock’s death in 1992 opened floodgates of litigation, with Rose and Gina fixtures in the courts fighting it out for their share of Lang’s mining assets. The Pilbara Princess has now become the Queen of Litigation, taking on her children and anyone else who dares to challenge her through countless court battles.
Hancock’s extraordinary iron ore discovery and his subsequent royalty agreement with Rio Tinto ensured the wealth of the family for generations to come. But when Gina Rinehart inherited the company in 1992 it was mired in debt. Since then, the resources boom and a demonic approach to growing the business has magnified the wealth of the Rinehart and Hancock estates many times over and given Rinehart – thought to be much tougher than her father – a very loud voice in Australian domestic and foreign policy.
Always distrustful of the media, Rinehart is now extending her power and acquiring broadcast and print media interests. Informed by sources close to the Hancock family and other business associates and including exclusive materials never before seen, Debi Marshall asks what next for the woman who has more wealth than the Queen, but appears to have few sustainable relationships in her life?
The Red House by Mark Haddon
Adult Fiction Family Saga
The set up of Mark Haddon’s brilliant new novel is simple: Richard, a wealthy doctor, invites his estranged sister Angela and her family to join his for a week at a vacation home in the English countryside. Richard has just re-married and inherited a willful stepdaughter in the process; Angela has a feckless husband and three children who sometimes seem alien to her. All eight arrive with low expectations for a pleasant holiday.
But because of Haddon’s extraordinary narrative technique, the stories of these eight people are anything but simple. Told through the alternating viewpoints of each character, The Red House becomes a symphony of long-held grudges, fading dreams and rising hopes, tightly-guarded secrets and illicit desires, all adding up to a portrait of contemporary family life that is bittersweet, comic, and deeply felt.
The Red House is a literary tour-de-force that illuminates the puzzle of family in a profoundly empathetic manner–a novel sure to entrance the millions of readers of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.
The Prodigal Son by Colleen McCullough
Adult fiction Mystery
Holloman, Connecticut, 1969. A very rare and lethal toxin, extracted from the blowfish, is stolen from a laboratory at Chubb University. It kills within minutes and leaves no trace behind — unless a doctor knows what to look for — and worried biochemist Dr. Millie Hunter reports the theft at once to her father, Medical Examiner Dr. Patrick O′Donnell.
Patrick′s cousin, Captain Carmine Delmonico, is therefore quick off the mark when the bodies start to mount up. A sudden death at a dinner party followed by another at a gala black-tie event seem at first to be linked only by the poison and Dr. Jim Hunter, a scientist on the brink of greatness and husband to Millie. A black man married to a white woman, Dr. Jim has faced scandal and prejudice for most of his life, so what would cause him to risk it all now? Is he being framed for murder — and if so, by whom?
Carmine and his team of detectives must navigate the competitive world of academic publishing, fraught with politics and prestige. The stakes are high: a valuable art collection, a large inheritance, old and upstanding local families, a gold-digging wife, jealous relatives and a young couple′s future.
ABC Book Talk – 19th June
Before I go to Sleep by S. J. Watson
The First Day of the Rest of my Life by Cathy Lamb
Life on the Rocks : The Art of Survival by Philippa Nikulinsky
The Library Book by many authors
