New purchases

At the recent Book Fair I tried to be very selective and not buy too many books, considering I am moving, and my shelves are already overburdened! I did come out with four books, which is far less than usual. Apart from one author, Karin Fossum, they are all new to me. Here they are with blurbs from the back cover.

A Gathering Light by Jennifer Donnelly

The short review from Sunday Telegraph on the back cover, made me buy this book: "If George Clooney had walked into the room I would have told him to come back later when I'd finished". Must be a good read I would say!

"Based on a real murder at the turn of the century, this outstanding debut novel is a powerful and moving coming-of-age book. Mattie is torn between her familial responsibilities, her desire to be a writer, and the excitement of a first romance. Her dilemmas and choices are quietly reflected in the life of a young woman found drowned in a lake, a woman that Mattie only gets to know through reading her letter."

Don't Look Back by Karin Fossum

"At the foot of the Kollen mountain lies a small village where the children play unafraid in the streets. But this tranquility is irrecoverably shattered when a young woman's naked body is found lying by the lake during a search for another missing girl. Inspector Sejer - smart, tough, and enigmatic - is called in to investigate. Only he can uncover the dark secrets of this quiet community, hidden by deep family ties."

The Book of Secrets by Tom Harper

"In a snowbound village in the German mountains, a young woman discovers an extraordinary secret. Before she can reveal it, she disappears. All that survives is a picture of a mysterious medieval playing card that has perplexed scholars for centuries."

Trains & Boats & Planes by Killen McNeill

"'It's just something else in disguise. Sex or loneliness or ambition or boredom...' Love for Harry Moore will be forever linked with Marie, the beautiful girl from Alsace. Ever since his magical teenage encounter with her in a tiny holiday resort in Donegal, it has never lived up to his expectations. Thirty years later, Harry, middle-aged but not quite disillusioned, travels to Strasbourg to take up the search for Marie and the innocence and longings of his youth. Trains and Boats and Planes is a haunting an evocative debut novel grappling with memory, conflict and tragedy and coming of age issues that may, in Harry's case, never be resolved."

 What do you think? Have you read any of them? Or something else by the same authors?