Recommendations based on "That's All I Know A Novel"

A transporting, irresistible debut novel that takes its heroine, Cristabel Seagrave, from a theatre in the gargantuan cavity of a beached whale into undercover operations during World War II—a story of love, family, bravery, lost innocence, and self-transformation.One blustery night in 1928, a whale washes up on the shores of the English Channel. By law, it belongs to the King, but twelve-year-old orphan Cristabel Seagrave has other plans. She and the rest of the household—her sister, Flossie; her brother, Digby, long-awaited heir to Chilcombe manor; Maudie Kitcat, kitchen maid; Taras, visiting artist—build a theatre from the beast’s skeletal rib cage. Within the Whalebone Theatre, Cristabel can escape her feckless stepparents and brisk governesses, and her imagination comes to life.As Cristabel grows into a headstrong young woman, World War II rears its head. She and Digby become British secret agents on separate missions in Nazi-occupied France—a more dangerous kind of playacting, it turns out, and one that threatens to tear the family apart.

'Compelling and fine and rich, I devoured it' TESSA HADLEY 'A writer to watch' FRANCIS SPUFFORD A stunning new novel of power, desire and the secrets all families carry, from the acclaimed author of Nightingale, Marina Kemp. When fledgling writer Zoe arrives at the Sicilian holiday home of famed novelist Don Travers, she feels that she has made it. And yet as the week unfolds it is not Don but his children and unknowable wife, Lydia, who come to intrigue Zoe most. On the fringes, Don's youngest, Nemony, watches as her older siblings begin to navigate the treacherous waters of the adult world. When her adored oldest sister makes a terrible mistake, the holiday ends suddenly, shattering the fragile balance of their parents' marriage and the siblings' lives. Many years later and in the wake of loss, the events of that summer continue to haunt. Nemony, now a lonely new mother herself, strikes up a chance friendship with Zoe. With her support, Nemony attempts to grapple with the casual damage enacted by her father. But as their relationship deepens, she is soon forced to question the true extent of Zoe's fascination with the Travers family. Tracing their lives through Sicily, London and the old mining towns of Appalachia, Nemony must uncover the stories untold - about her implacable father, her troubled mother, and the siblings she might still do anything for. 'Exquisitely written, subtle and transporting' SUSSIE ANIE, author of To Fill a Yellow House 'Ambitious, immersive' OLIVIA SUDJIC, author of Sympathy 'Complex and nuanced...I adored it' LUCY CALDWELL, author of These Days 'Unflinching, magnificent' KAREN POWELL, author of Fifteen Wild Decembers

During a summer party at the family farm in the English countryside, sixteen-year-old Laurel Nicolson has escaped to her childhood tree house and is happily dreaming of the future. She spies a stranger coming up the long road to the farm and watches as her mother speaks to him. Before the afternoon is over, Laurel will witness a shocking crime. A crime that challenges everything she knows about her family and especially her mother, Dorothy—her vivacious, loving, nearly perfect mother.Now, fifty years later, Laurel is a successful and well-regarded actress living in London. The family is gathering at Greenacres farm for Dorothy’s ninetieth birthday. Realizing that this may be her last chance, Laurel searches for answers to the questions that still haunt her from that long-ago day, answers that can only be found in Dorothy’s past.Dorothy’s story takes the reader from pre–WWII England through the blitz, to the ’60s and beyond. It is the secret history of three strangers from vastly different worlds—Dorothy, Vivien, and Jimmy—who meet by chance in wartime London and whose lives are forever entwined. The Secret Keeper explores longings and dreams and the unexpected consequences they sometimes bring. It is an unforgettable story of lovers and friends, deception and passion that is told—in Morton’s signature style—against a backdrop of events that changed the world.

Soon A Major Netflix Series - From Director Shawn Levy, Starring Louis Hofmann, Lars Eidinger And Marion Bailey, With Hugh Laurie And Mark Ruffalo, And Introducing Aria Mia Loberti. Winner Of The 2015 Pulitzer Prize For Fiction National Book Award Finalist New York Times Bestseller Winner Of The Carnegie Medal For Fiction A Beautiful, Stunningly Ambitious Novel About A Blind French Girl And A German Boy Whose Paths Collide In Occupied France As Both Try To Survive The Devastation Of World War Ii. Marie-laure Has Been Blind Since The Age Of Six. Her Father Builds A Perfect Miniature Of Their Paris Neighbourhood So She Can Memorize It By Touch And Navigate Her Way Home. But When The Nazis Invade, Father And Daughter Flee With A Dangerous Secret. Werner Is A German Orphan, Destined To Labour In The Same Mine That Claimed His Father's Life, Until He Discovers A Knack For Engineering. His Talent Wins Him A Place At A Brutal Military Academy, But His Way Out Of Obscurity Is Built On Suffering. At The Same Time, Far Away In A Walled City By The Sea, An Old Man Discovers New Worlds Without Ever Setting Foot Outside His Home. But All Around Him, Impending Danger Closes In. Doerr's Combination Of Soaring Imagination And Meticulous Observation Is Electric. As Europe Is Engulfed By War And Lives Collide Unpredictably, All The Light We Cannot See Is A Captivating And Devastating Elegy For Innocence. 'sublime' The Times 'such A Page-turner, Entirely Absorbing ... Magnificent' Guardian 'a Masterpiece' Financial Times 'epic ... A Bittersweet And Moving Novel That Lingers In The Mind' Daily Mail 'a Vastly Entertaining Feat Of Storytelling' New York Times

This bestselling and award-winning novel about a teenage girl in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam speaks powerfully to the realities of grief, heartbreak, and bravery, perfect for fans of Kristin Hannah and Ruta Sepetys.Amsterdam, 1943. Hanneke spends her days procuring and delivering sought-after black market goods to paying customers, her nights hiding the true nature of her work from her concerned parents, and every waking moment mourning her boyfriend, who was killed on the Dutch front lines when the Germans invaded. She likes to think of her illegal work as a small act of rebellion.On a routine delivery, a client asks Hanneke for help. Expecting to hear that Mrs. Janssen wants meat or kerosene, Hanneke is shocked by the older woman's frantic plea to find a person—a Jewish teenager Mrs. Janssen had been hiding, who has vanished without a trace from a secret room. Hanneke initially wants nothing to do with such dangerous work, but is ultimately drawn into a web of mysteries and stunning revelations that lead her into the heart of the resistance, open her eyes to the horrors of the Nazi war machine, and compel her to take desperate action.Beautifully written, intricately plotted, and meticulously researched, Girl in the Blue Coat is an extraordinary novel about courage, grief, and love in impossible times.

“A beautiful book. . . . There are phrases in here that will make you laugh out loud, and others that will stop your heart. A definite triumph.” — David Rakoff, author of Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish From Heather O'Neill, the Giller-shortlisted author of Daydreams of Angels and The Girl Who Was Saturday Night, a heartbreaking and wholly original novel about a young girl fighting to preserve a bruised innocence on the feral streets of a big city Baby, all of thirteen years old, is lost in the gangly, coltish moment between childhood and the strange pulls and temptations of the adult world. Her mother is dead; her father Jules is always on the lookout for his next score. Baby knows that “chocolate milk” is Jules’ slang for heroin and sees a lot more of that in her house than the real article. But she takes vivid delight in the scrappy bits of happiness and beauty that find their way to her, and moves through the threat of the streets as if she’s been choreographed in a dance. Soon, though, a hazard emerges that is bigger than even her hard-won survival skills can handle. Alphonse, the local pimp, has his eye on her for his new girl; he wants her body and soul—and what the johns don’t take he covets for himself. At the same time, a tender and naively passionate friendship unfolds with a boy from her class at school, who has no notion of the dark claims on her—which even her father, lost on the nod, cannot totally ignore. Jules consigns her to a stint in juvie hall, and for the moment this perceived betrayal preserves Baby from terrible harm—but after that, her salvation has to be her own invention. Channeling the artlessly affecting voice of her thirteen-year-old heroine with extraordinary accuracy and power, O’Neill’s dazzles with a novel of extraordinary prescience and power, a subtly understated yet searingly effective story of a young life on the streets—and the strength, wits, and luck necessary for survival.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, a New York Times Book Review Top Ten Book, National Book Award finalist, more than two and a half years on the New York Times bestseller listA blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II. Marie-Laure lives in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where her father works as the master of the locks (there are thousands of locks in the museum). Open your eyes, and see what you can with them before they close forever. Marie-Laure has been blind since the age of six. Her father builds a perfect miniature of their Paris neighbourhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate the real streets with her feet and cane. When she is twelve, the German Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo on the Brittany coast, where Marie-Laure’s agoraphobic reclusive great-uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel.In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner Pfennig grows up with his younger sister, Jutta, both enchanted by a crude radio they find that brings them news and stories from places they have never seen or imagined. Werner becomes an master at building and fixing these crucial new radios, a talent that wins him a place at an elite and brutal military academy and, ultimately, makes him a highly specialized tracker of the Resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of Hitler Youth to the far-flung outskirts of Russia, and finally into Saint-Malo, where his path converges with Marie-Laure. The story Illuminates the ways, against all odds, that people try to be good to one another.At the same time, far away in a walled city by the sea, an old man discovers new worlds without ever setting foot outside his home. But all around him, impending danger closes in.Ten years in the writing, a National Book Award finalist, All the Light We Cannot See is a magnificent, deeply moving novel from a writer “whose sentences never fail to thrill” (Los Angeles Times).

A New York Times Bestseller!A Read With Jenna Today Show Book Club Pick!“Remarkably Bright Creatures is a beautiful examination of how loneliness can be transformed, cracked open, with the slightest touch from another living thing.” -- Kevin Wilson, author of Nothing to See HereFor fans of A Man Called Ove, a charming, witty and compulsively readable exploration of friendship, reckoning, and hope that traces a widow's unlikely connection with a giant Pacific octopusAfter Tova Sullivan’s husband died, she began working the night shift at the Sowell Bay Aquarium, mopping floors and tidying up. Keeping busy has always helped her cope, which she’s been doing since her eighteen-year-old son, Erik, mysteriously vanished on a boat in Puget Sound over thirty years ago.Tova becomes acquainted with curmudgeonly Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus living at the aquarium. Marcellus knows more than anyone can imagine but wouldn’t dream of lifting one of his eight arms for his human captors—until he forms a remarkable friendship with Tova.Ever the detective, Marcellus deduces what happened the night Tova’s son disappeared. And now Marcellus must use every trick his old invertebrate body can muster to unearth the truth for her before it’s too late.Shelby Van Pelt’s debut novel is a gentle reminder that sometimes taking a hard look at the past can help uncover a future that once felt impossible.

Winner of the Minnesota Book Award * A Texas Bluebonnet Book“Perfect to be read late into the night.”—Stefan Bachmann, internationally bestselling author of The Peculiar“A spooky sisterhood mystery that is sure to be a hit with readers.”—School Library Journal (starred review)“Grab a flashlight and stay up late with this one.”—Kirkus ReviewsOnce there were two sisters who did everything together. But only one of them disappeared.New York Times–bestselling author Jacqueline West’s Long Lost is an atmospheric, eerie mystery brimming with suspense. Fans of Katherine Arden’s Small Spaces and Victoria Schwab’s City of Ghosts series will lose themselves in this mesmerizing and century-spanning tale.Eleven-year-old Fiona has just read a book that doesn’t exist.When Fiona’s family moves to a new town to be closer to her older sister’s figure skating club—and far from Fiona’s close-knit group of friends—nobody seems to notice Fiona’s unhappiness. Alone and out of place, Fiona ventures to the town’s library, a rambling mansion donated by a long-dead heiress. And there she finds a gripping mystery novel about a small town, family secrets, and a tragic disappearance.Soon Fiona begins to notice strange similarities that blur the lines between the novel and her new town. With a little help from a few odd Lost Lake locals, Fiona uncovers the book’s strange history. Lost Lake is a town of restless spirits, and Fiona will learn that both help and danger come from unexpected places—maybe even from the sister she thinks doesn’t care about her anymore.New York Times–bestselling and acclaimed author Jacqueline West weaves a heart-pounding, intense, and imaginative mystery that builds anticipation on every page, while centering on the strong and often tumultuous bond between sisters. Laced with suspense, Long Lost will fascinate readers of Trenton Lee Stewart’s The Secret Keepers and fans of ghost stories.

Winner of the Carnegie Medal * Winner of the YA Book Prize * Winner of the Children’s Books Ireland Book of the Year AwardTippi and Grace share everything—clothes, friends . . . even their body. Writing in free verse, Sarah Crossan tells the sensitive and moving story of conjoined twin sisters, which will find fans in readers of Gayle Forman, Jodi Picoult, and Jandy Nelson.Tippi and Grace. Grace and Tippi. For them, it's normal to step into the same skirt. To hook their arms around each other for balance. To fall asleep listening to the other breathing. To share. And to keep some things private. Each of the sixteen-year-old girls has her own head, heart, and two arms, but at the belly, they join. And they are happy, never wanting to risk the dangerous separation surgery.But the girls' body is beginning to fight against them. And Grace doesn't want to admit it. Not even to Tippi. How long can they hide from the truth—how long before they must face the most impossible choice of their lives?Carnegie Medal–winning author Sarah Crossan gives us a story about unbreakable bonds, hope, loss, and the lengths we will go to for the person we love most.