Read Across The World Collection

Semi-autobiographical novel told through the eyes of a young child whose mother whisks her and her sister away to a bohemian life in Morocco on a quest to escape the conventions of English life and to find herself. Theirs is a unconventional, chaotic and colourful life, packed with eccentric characters. Allowed to roam freely, she and her sister begin to crave a simple, ordinary life. Evocative, touching and beautifully descriptive.

In aftermath of the Bosnian War, when Hannah Heath, a young book conservator arrives in Sarajevo to restore a precious medieval manuscript which has been recovered from the smouldering ruins of war-torn Sarajevo, she knows she is on the brink of the experience of a lifetime. A renowned book conservator, she must now make her way to Bosnia to start work on its restoration – to discover its secrets and piece together the story of its miraculous survival. But the trip will also set in motion a series of events that threaten to rock Hannah’s orderly life, including her encounter with the young librarian who risked his life to save the book.

Norway. Historical fiction (17th century). Winter 1617. The sea around the remote island of Vardø is thrown into a vicious storm. A young woman watches as the men of the island, out fishing, perish in an instant. Vardø is now a place of women and they must learn to survive by themselves. 18 months later a sinister figure arrives. Absalom Cornet, has been summoned to bring the women to heel. He brings with him his young wife who, encounters something she has never experienced before – independent women. But where she finds happiness and love, her husband sees only a place flooded with a terrible evil which he must root out at all costs.

Norway. Edvard grows up on a remote mountain farmstead in Norway with his tactiturn grandfather. The death of his parents, when he was a small child, has always been shrouded in mystery. His quest to unlock the past takes him on a long journey from Norway to the Shetlands and the battlefields of France and a very unusual inheritance.