The Year in Books - October

I have decided to have a little change around on Tea and Biscuits and a Good Book.  Over at Circle of Pine Trees Laura invites you to add the books you are going to read to a link on her blog so that you get to share even more about the books you are going to read and find recommendations from other book worms.


So here are my list of October reads

Families have secrets they hide even from themselves....

It should have been an ordinary birth, the start of an ordinary happy family. But the night Dr David Henry delivers his wife's twins is a night that will haunt five lives forever.

For though David's son is healthy boy, his daughter has Down's Syndrome. And, in a shocking act of betrayal whose consequences only time will reveal, he tells his wife their daughter died while secretly entrusting her care to a nurse.

As grief quietly tears apart David's family, so a little girl must make her own way in the world as best she can.



Kate Fisher is Amish. For eighteen years, she has grown up in a community set apart from the modern world by lifestyle and belief, It is a community fiercely protective of its way of life. To turn your back on it is to lose everything - your church, your home and your family.

So in the middle of the night when the baby comes, Kate does the only thing she knows how to do in times of stress: she prays.

Exhausted, she falls asleep, when she wakes the child is gone. Her prayer has been answered.

But faith alone cannot help when the body is found.

Set between England and the Spanish Canary Islands, three women discover a surprising truth about their shared pasts.

Spain 1939

Following the wishes of her parents to keep her safe during the war, Julia is forced to enter a convent in Barcelona. Looking for a way to maintain her links to the outside world, she volunteers to help in a maternity clinic. But worrying adoption practices in the clinic force Sister Julia to decide how far she will go to help those placed in her care.

England 2011

Six months after her parents' shocking death, thirty-four-year-old journalist and jazz enthusiast Ruby Rae has finally found the strength to pack away their possessions and sell the family home. But as she does so, she unearths a devastating secret her parents, Vivien and Tom, had kept from her all her life.


Enter a vanished world: Jackson Mississippi, 1962. Where black maids raise white children but aren't trusted not to steal their silver. 

There's Aibileen, raising her seventeenth white child and nursing the hurt caused by her own son's tragic death: Minny, whose cooking is nearly as sassy as her tongue; and white Miss Skeeter, home from college who wants to know why her beloved maid has disappeared.

Skeeter, Aibileen and Minny. No one would believe they'd be friends; fewer still would tolerate it. But as each women finds the courage to cross boundaries, they come to depend and rely upon one another. Each is in search of a truth. And together they have an extraordinary story to tell.





Kim Edwards The Memory Keeper's Daughter was recommended by the ladies who work in my local Waterstones.  They had recently read it as part of their book club and said it was one I should definitely add to my wish list.

I had recently read Jodi Picoult's the Storyteller which I thought was brilliant and Songs of the Humpbank Whale which I didn't.  My book swap buddy at work wanted to restore my faith in Jodi Picoults novels so has lent me Plain Truth.

At the beginning of this year I had 26 books residing on a bookshelf and I challenged myself firstly to have read 13 out of the 26 by June and if I completed this challenge then I would continue working my way through the remaining 13.  Rosanna Ley's  Bay of Secrets is number 26 so had to be included in my October reads in order for me to empty the shelf ready for more.


And of course there will be my Return to School read challenge and this months book is Educating Rita.  I am far too old to have read this one when I was at school my eldest son had to read it for his GCSE.  I always loved the book and the film.  He on the other hand wasn't that struck. Each to their own as they say.







Not sure which order I will read them in but to start off my October reads  I am going to read Elaine Hussey's The Sweetest Hallelujah which has been patiently waiting on my Kindle.  


Desperate.  Nowhere to turn. Dying women seeks mother for her child. Loving heart required. Call Vinewood 2-8640 Mississippi, 1955 Betty Jewel Hughes is dying of cancer. Her final wish? To find someone to take care of her young daughter Billie., when she's gone. On the other side of town, Cassie Malone, is an outspoken housewife insulated by her wealth and privileged white society. Recently widowed and childless, Betty Jewel's advert speaks to her own deep longing for a child. With racial tension in the South brewing, any bond forged between the two women and Billie will need to be as deep as it is forbidden. 

Happy October reading one and all. 

Mx