Instructions For A Heatwave [suggested by Ross Allatt]
It’s July 1976. In London, it hasn’t rained for months, gardens are filled with aphids, water comes from a standpipe, and Robert Riordan tells his wife Gretta that he’s going round the corner to buy a newspaper. He doesn’t come back. The search for Robert brings Gretta’s children – two estranged sisters and a brother on the brink of divorce – back home, each wih different ideas as to where their father might have gone. None of them suspects that their mother might have an explanation that even now she cannot share. [Product description from Amazon]
The book doesn’t have a Wikipedia page or its own website/Facebook page, but it seems to have made an appearance on just about every “high profile” book club (Richard & Judy, Mariella Frostrup, etc) and is widely reviewed in all sorts of places.
About the Author
Author’s website.
Wikipedia page.
Shortlisted for this month
Ross’s other two choices for this month were:
Train Dreams
Robert Grainier is a day labourer in the American West at the start of the twentieth century – an ordinary man in extraordinary times. Buffeted by the loss of his family, Grainier struggles to make sense of this strange new world. As his story unfolds, we witness both his shocking personal defeats and the radical changes that transform America in his lifetime. Suffused with the history and landscapes of the American West – its otherworldly flora and fauna, its rugged loggers and bridge-builders – Train Dreams captures the disappearance of a distinctly American way of life. [Product description from Amazon]
About the Author
The Light Between Oceans
A boat washes up on the shore of a remote lighthouse keeper’s island. It holds a dead man – and a crying baby. The only two islanders, Tom and his wife Izzy, are about to make a devastating decision..
They break the rules and follow their hearts. What happens next will break yours. [Product description from Amazon]
About the Author
This is her debut novel but it’s been out for almost two years (since Apr 2012) and M L Stedman doesn’t appear to have anyone managing her Internet presence, as she has neither a website nor a Wikipedia page. Best I could do was this entry in Foyles.