New Year, New Chapter!
Get your 2024 reading off to the perfect start with these three amazing book choices for the Paperback Down Subscription Box.
Local Voices: The Saint of Lost Things by Tish Delaney
What's the craic?
"I had dreams once, but never for anything as extravagant as happiness. Still, Auntie Bell and me have fresh cream cakes every Saturday. They're sweet enough to take the edge off. I hope they're enough to get me through being outed as a fraud. Turns out, I'm more my missing mother's daughter than anyone first suspected."
There was a time when Lindy Morris escaped to London and walked along the Thames in the moonlight. When life was full and exciting.
Decades later, Lindy lives back with her Auntie Bell on the edge: on the edge of Donegal and on the edge of Granda Morris's land. Granda Morris is a complicated man, a farmer who wanted sons but got two daughters: Auntie Bell and Lindy's mother, who disappeared long ago.
Now, Lindy and Bell live the smallest of lives, in a cottage filled with unfulfilled dreams. But when the secrets they have kept for thirty years emerge, everything is rewritten. Will Lindy grasp who she is again?
Paperback Down says...
A deeply moving and unsettling story that follows the life of a naive girl growing up in rural Tyrone, always the outsider, always unwanted, and trapped in a small isolated life dominated by the moods of her misogynistic grandfather.
Tish Delaney vividly portrays the curtain-twitching, pursed lips judgementalism of small rural communities in a way that is all-too recognisable. Written with knife-sharp wit and dark humour, The Saint of Lost Things is a story of how one woman gradually breaks free of both the fear and guilt she carries within herself, as well as the limitations put on her by others.
Science Fiction & Fantasy: Godkiller by Hannah Kaner
What's the craic?
"You are not welcome here, godkiller".
Kissen's family were killed by zealots of a fire god. Now, she makes a living killing gods, and enjoys it. That is until she finds a god she cannot kill: Skedi, a god of white lies, has somehow bound himself to a young noble, and they are both on the run from unknown assassins.
Joined by a disillusioned knight on a secret quest, they must travel to the ruined city of Blenraden, where the last of the wild gods reside, to each beg a favour.
Pursued by demons, and in the midst of burgeoning civil war, they will all face a reckoning - something is rotting at the heart of their world, and only they can be the ones to stop it.
Paperback Down says...
An immersive and gripping tale of found family, gods and politics. In Kissen, the Godkiller at the heart of the story, we have a flawed and realistic heroine full of grit and determination. Along with a baker-Knight, a runaway child-heiress and the God of White Lies, she embarks on a quest to a God-filled abandoned city where she must confront her past in order to protect the future of their world, as well as the safety of her companions. Perfect for anyone who loves character-driven world-building!
Bucket List Books: I Capture The Castle by Dodie Smith
What's the craic?
I write this sitting in the kitchen sink' is the first line of this timeless, witty and enchanting novel about growing up. Cassandra Mortmain lives with her bohemian and impoverished family in a crumbling castle in the middle of nowhere. Her journal records her life with her beautiful, bored sister, Rose, her fading glamorous stepmother, Topaz, her little brother Thomas and her eccentric novelist father who suffers from a financially crippling writer's block.
However, all their lives are turned upside down when the American heirs to the castle arrive and Cassandra finds herself falling in love for the first time.
Paperback Down says...
A classic coming-of-age story first published in 1949, I Capture The Castle frequently features in all those 'Top 100' books lists - and for good reason. Set in the 1930s English countryside and told from the perspective of Cassandra, a charming and engaging narrator, this enchanting story of family eccentricities, self-discovery and first love is an absolute must-read.
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