Richard and Judy's new book list for 2005!

[nikkinaz]

I enjoyed a few of last years books and now Richard and Judy have complied a new list of books they are going to review and read. Here is the list:

THE SHADOW OF THE WIND - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

This wonderful page-turning literary detective story is set in the heart of the old city of Barcelona in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War.
At 10 years old, Daniel Sempere is taken to the ‘Cemetery of Forgotten Books’, a library of obscure and forgotten titles that have long gone out of print. It is here that Daniel is allowed to choose one book to keep. The book, La Sombra del Viento (The Shadow of the Wind), initially seems a charming find yet in later years becomes a devilish curse.
The Shadow of the Wind is an exploration of obsession in literature and love, and the places that obsession can lead.

THE TIME TRAVELER'S WIFE - Audrey Niffenegger

The Time TravelerÂ’s Wife is an extraordinary, magical first novel. It is not a science fiction novel, but the ultimate love story.
As Audrey herself says, ‘It’s not about time travel. It’s about love and separation and how time determines so much about our lives’. It is the story of Clare and Henry. They’ve known each other since Clare was six and Henry was thirty-six, and were married when Clare was twenty-two and Henry thirty.
Impossible but true, because Henry is one of the first people diagnosed with Chrono-Displacement Disorder: periodically his genetic clock resets and he finds himself misplaced in time, pulled to moments of emotional gravity in his life, past and future. His disappearances are spontaneous, his experiences unpredictable, alternately harrowing and amusing.
This story is intensely moving and entirely unforgettable.

THE AMERICAN BOY - Andrew Taylor

Interweaving real and fictional elements, The American Boy is a major new literary historical crime novel. Set in England 1819: Thomas Shield, a new master at a school just outside London, is tutor to a young American boy and the boy's sensitive best friend, Charles Frant. Drawn to Frant's beautiful, unhappy mother, Thomas becomes caught up in her family's twisted intrigues.
Then a brutal crime is committed, with consequences that threaten to destroy Thomas and all that he has come to hold dear. Despite his efforts, Shield is caught up in a deadly tangle of sex, money, murder and lies – a tangle that grips him tighter even as he tries to escape from it.

And what of the strange American child, at the heart of these macabre events – what is the secret of the boy named Edgar Allen Poe?

THE PROMISE OF HAPPINESS - Justin Cartwright

What should you do if the world has turned against you? When Father Anselm is asked this question by an old man at Larkwood Priory, his response, to claim sanctuary, is to have greater resonance than he could ever have imagined. For that evening the old man returns, demanding the protection of the church.
His name is Eduard Schwermann and he is wanted by the police as a suspected war criminal. With her life running out, Agnes Aubret feels it is time to unburden to her granddaughter Lucy the secrets she has been carrying for so long.

Fifty years earlier, Agnes had been living in Occupied Paris, a member of a small group risking their lives to smuggle Jewish children to safety – until they were exposed by a young SS Officer: Eduard Schwermann.

As Anselm attempts to uncover Schwermann's past, and as Lucy's search into her grandmother's history continues, their investigations dovetail to reveal a remarkable story