Book Of The Month

June's Reading Room Book of the Month
Dark Places

Dark Places

Libby Day was just seven years old when her older brother massacred her family while she hid in a cupboard. Her evidence helped put him away. Ever since then she has been drifting, surviving for over twenty years on the proceeds of the 'Libby Day fund'. But now the money is running out and Libby is desperate. When she is offered $500 to do a guest appearance, she feels she has to accept. But this is no ordinary gathering. The Kill Club is a group of true-crime obsessives who share information on notorious murders, and they think her brother Ben is innocent.

Ben was a social misfit, ground down by the small-town farming community in which he lived. But he did have a girlfriend - a brooding heavy metal fan called Diondra. Through her, Ben became involved with drugs and the dark arts. When the town suddenly turned against him, his thoughts turned black. But was he capable of murder? Libby must delve into her family's past to uncover the truth - no matter how painful...

Your brother murdered your family. Your evidence put him away. But what if he didn't do it? The thrilling new novel from the award-winning author of Sharp Objects.

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Book Of The Month

May's Reading Room Book of the Month
Lavinia by Ursula Le Guin

Lavinia by Ursula Le Guin

'Like Spartan Helen, I caused a war. She caused hers by letting men who wanted her take her. I caused mine because I wouldn't be given, wouldn't be taken, but chose my man and my fate. The man was famous, the fate obscure; not a bad balance.'

Lavinia is the daughter of the King of Latium, a victorious warrior who loves peace; she is her father's closest companion. Now of an age to wed, Lavinia's mother favours her own kinsman, King Turnus of Rutulia, handsome, heroic, everything a young girl should want. Instead, Lavinia dreams of mighty Aeneas, a man she has heard of only from a ghost of a poet, who comes to her in the gods' holy place and tells her of her future, and Aeneas' past...

If she refuses to wed Turnus, Lavinia knows she will start a war - but her fate was set the moment the poet appeared to her in a dream and told her of the adventurer who fled fallen Troy, holding his son's hand and carrying his father on his back...

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Book Of The Month

April's Reading Room Book of the Month
The Crimson Rooms

The Crimson Rooms by Katherine McMahon

Living at home with her mother, aunt, and grandmother, Evelyn is still haunted by the death of her younger brother James in the First World War. She is also determined to make a career for herself as one of the first female lawyers. So when the doorbell rings late one night and a woman appears, claiming to have mothered James's child, her world is turned upside down.

Evelyn distrusts Meredith at first, but also finds that this new arrival challenges her work-obsessed lifestyle. So far her legal career has not set the world alight. But then two cases arise that make Evelyn realise perhaps she can make a difference. The first concerns a woman called Leah Marchant whose children have been taken away from her simply because she is poor. The second, Stephen Wheeler, has been charged with murdering his own wife. It is clear that Wheeler is innocent but he won't talk.
In the meantime, Meredith makes an earth-shattering accusation about James - and Evelyn falls in love with a man engaged to be married. With the Wheeler case coming to a head, and her heart in limbo, Evelyn takes matters into her own hands...

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