“A book is a gift you can open again and again.”
Found by Erin Kinsley
When 11 year old Evan vanishes without trace, his parents are plunged into their worst nightmare, especially as the police, under massive pressure, have no answers.
Then, months later, Evan is unexpectedly found, frightened and refusing to speak. This is the point at which the book starts, with the whole family, Evan included, trying to deal with what has happened and realising life will never be the same again, especially when another boy is abducted and the police really need Evan’s help.
A gripping, heart-wrenching thriller, definitely “unputdownable”.
Educated by Tara Westover
Tara Westover was born to Mormon survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, the youngest of seven children. Here she prepared for the end of the world by stockpiling home-canned peaches and sleeping with her “head-for-the-hills bag”. In the summer she stewed herbs for her mother, a midwife and healer, and in the winter she salvaged in her father’s junkyard.
Her father forbade hospitals and doctors, so the family were treated at home with herbalism, and kept isolated from mainstream society. However, despite having no formal education, Tara began to teach herself and gradually studied her way to college, and then to Harvard and finally Cambridge, where in 2014 she was awarded a PhD in intellectual history.
Tara’s journey is extraordinary and in the course of it, she writes, she found herself through what some might call a ““transformation” and others a “betrayal”, but what she calls an “education”.
This is a superb memoir – an astonishing story about the transformative power of education, but also a tale about the strength of family ties and the grief that family loyalty can cause. Paperback, Windmill Books, 2018
The Salt Path by Raynor Winn
“A beautiful, thoughtful, lyrical story of homelessness, human strength and endurance”. Guardian
Just days after Raynor Winn learned that Moth, her husband of thirty two years, was terminally ill, they lost their home and livelihood. With nothing left and little time, they impulsively decided to walk the 630 mile South West Coast Path, from Somerset to Dorset, via Devon and Cornwall, living wild and free.
This is an astonishing story of two people dragging themselves from the depths of despair along some of the most dramatic landscapes in the country, looking for solutions to their problems and ultimately finding themselves.
Paperback, Penguin, £9.99
Shortlisted for the Costa Book Awards.