I always tell people that the most stressful part of my job as a Content Development Librarian is never having enough time to read all the amazing books I see and handle every day on the job.

My TBR pile is huge, scattered across several Living Rooms in the Fiction area. Here’s a smattering of my recommendations.

Charity Norman’s latest title, Remember me sounds very appealing with an unsolved cold case and  fraught familial relationships in a  New Zealand setting. I’ve read several others of Charity’s books and thoroughly enjoyed them.

I don’t think Patrick Gale could ever surpass his sublime 2007 novel Notes from an exhibition but I’ll read anything he writes regardless. Mother’s boy, his 17th novel apparently,  is based around the known facts of the boyhood and youth of the great Cornish poet, Charles Causley and the life of the mother who raised him singlehandedly.

For Lucinda Riley fans, The murders at Fleat House has just been released in New Zealand. As the title implies this one is a murder mystery and according to very reliable sources – it is a page-turner from beginning to end! Originally written in 2004/2005 and now published posthumously. Reserve it now.

British-Turkish novelist Elif Shafak is a writer I greatly admire. Her pocket-sized non-fiction title How to stay sane in an age of division is an absolute gem. I recently read 10 minutes 38 seconds in this strange world and now her latest The island of missing trees is on my TBR list. Hers is a voice for the unheard, the unloved, the outcast. Listen to this recent interview with her on RNZ  – Elif Shafak: The Island of Missing Trees | RNZ

Reviews for Unsheltered by Wellington based novelist Clare Moleta have consistently been very positive so this one has found a place on my list as well – a dystopian novel where Li is searching for her eight-year-old daughter Matti, who she’s been separated from in a fire which broke out during the clearance of an unsanctioned Makecamp – a refugee settlement. Described by Elizabeth Knox as ‘extraordinarily suspenseful’.

Jill