One should never make one's debut in a scandal. One should reserve that to give interest to one's old age

List by Merrin/NextReads
Quote by Oscar Wilde

The teahouse fire
by Ellis Avery
Published: 2006

F AVE

In 1865, nine-year-old Aurelia Caillard is taken from New York to Japan by her missionary uncle Charles while her ailing mother dies at home. Charles soon vanishes in a fire, leaving Aurelia orphaned and alone in Kyoto. She is taken in by Yukako, the teenage daughter of the Shin family, master teachers of temae, or tea ceremony. Aurelia, narrating as an elderly woman, tells of living as Yukako's servant and younger sister, and how what begins as grateful puppy love for Yukako matures over years into a deeply painful unrequited obsession.

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The birth house : a novel
by Ami Mckay
Published: 2006

F MAC

The Birth House is the story of Dora Rare, the first daughter to be born in five generations of the Rare family. As a child in an isolated village in Nova Scotia, she is drawn to Miss Babineau, an outspoken Acadian midwife with a gift for healing and a kitchen filled with herbs and folk remedies. During the turbulent years of World War I, Dora becomes the midwife's apprentice. Together, they help the women of Scots Bay through infertility, difficult labors, breech births, unwanted pregnancies and even unfulfilling sex lives. But when Gilbert Thomas, a brash medical doctor, comes to Scots Bay with promises of fast, painless childbirth, some of the women begin to question Miss Babineau's methods - and after Miss Babineau's death, Dora is left to carry on alone. In the face of fierce opposition, she must summon all of her strength to protect the birthing traditions and wisdom that have been passed down to her.

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The last town on earth
by Thomas Mullen
Published: 2006

F MUL

'The Last Town on Earth' is set at the tail end of the First World War and the influenza pandemic of 1918. The novel takes place in a fictional mill town in America's industrial Northwest called Commonwealth, established by Charles Worthy, a utopian businessman, and his suffragette wife, Rebecca, and intended to be a community of dignified workers, a haven from the brutal labour conflict which has gripped the country. When the deadly flu spreads to the surrounding towns, the people of Commonwealth close themselves off from the outside world, installing armed guards at the road leading into the town, in an attempt to prevent the virus from devastating the community they have built. A few days into the quarantine, an outsider appears at the barricade, dressed in a soldier's uniform, setting in motion a chain of events which will ultimately threaten everyone in the town.P>

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The invisible mountain
by Carolina De Robertis
Published: 2009

F ROB

"The sweep of a century, the hand of history, three women whose lives will never be the same again. As the twentieth century dawns, so begins one of the most dramatic periods in the history of South America. Women are emancipated, Che Guevara and Fidel Castro free Cuba, the Perons take power in Argentina, and three generations of Firielli women are to live, love, and fight for their independence and freedom. Pajarita is the founder of the dynasty, born into a rural village and constantly chafing against its narrow confines. A love-match with a circus performer offers her escape, but she is trapped in a cage of another sort when her husband becomes a monster. Her spirited daughter, Eva, enters a world shaken by revolution. Fleeing childhood abuse, and alienated from her mother, she heads to Buenos Aires, but the glittering circles she moves in cannot erase the memories of her past. Her daughter, Salome, driven by political passion becomes a guerrilla fighter, but her idealism turns to tragedy when she is captured, and brutalised." -- Publisher description.

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Under this unbroken sky
by Shandi Mitchell
Published: 2009

F MIT

Set in 1938 on the Canadian Prairies, Under This Unbroken Sky, tells the story of a farming family from the Ukraine who, having survived war and Stalin's labour camps, set out to make a living from an unrelenting land in a new country. The harsh vicissitudes of farming life and tensions within the family combine to generate a conflict that ends in tragedy. This is the harrowing and magnificent tale of an immigrant family whose desperate hands work the earth and preserve its gifts, while equally desperate minds plot much darker deeds. Nearly all is lost when a brother is pitted against a sister, a mother against her newborn, with dramatic and breath-taking consequences.

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