Top Five Saturday: One Word (Eponymous) Titles

Meet Queenie.

She just can’t cut a break. Well, apart from one from her long term boyfriend, Tom. That’s just a break though. Definitely not a break up. Stuck between a boss who doesn’t seem to see her, a family who don’t seem to listen (if it’s not Jesus or water rates, they’re not interested), and trying to fit in two worlds that don’t really understand her, it’s no wonder she’s struggling.

She was named to be queen of everything. So why is she finding it so hard to rule her own life?

A darkly comic and bitingly subversive take on life, love, race and family, Queenie will have you nodding in recognition, crying in solidarity and rooting for this unforgettable character every step of the way.

She stumbled backwards, her eyes wide, as the figure started coming out of the canvas
…
She tried to be brave. Well, she said, her hands only a little shaky, at least tell me what I should call you.
…
Well, little girl, it replied, I suppose you can call me Pet.

There are no more monsters anymore, or so the children in the city of Lucille are taught. With doting parents and a best friend named Redemption, Jam has grown up with this lesson all her life. But when she meets Pet, a creature made of horns and colours and claws, who emerges from one of her mother’s paintings and a drop of Jam’s blood, she must reconsider what she’s been told. Pet has come to hunt a monster, and the shadow of something grim lurks in Redemption’s house. Jam must fight not only to protect her best friend, but also to uncover the truth.

WITH NOTHING ELSE TO LOSE

Anne Forestier finds herself in the wrong place at the wrong time when she blunders into a raid on a jeweller’s on the Champs-Élysées. Bludgeoned beyond recognition, she is lucky to survive. But her ordeal has only just begun.

HE CAN BREAK ALL THE RULES

Lying helpless in her hospital bed, with her assailant still at large, Anne is in mortal danger. Only one thing gives her hope: Commandant Camille Verhœven.

TO PROTECT THE WOMAN HE LOVES

For Verhœven it’s a case of history repeating itself. He cannot lose Anne as he lost his wife. This time he faces an adversary whose greatest strength appears to be Verhœven’s matchless powers of intuition.

Not far from London, there is a village.

This village belongs to the people who live in it and to those who lived in it hundreds of years ago. It belongs to England’s mysterious past and its confounding present.

It belongs to families dead for generations, and to those who have only recently moved here, such as the boy Lanny, and his mum and dad.

But it also belongs to Dead Papa Toothwort, who has woken from his slumber in the woods. Dead Papa Toothwort, who is listening to them all.

Oh my friend, won’t you take my hand – I’ve been so lonely!

One winter night in Prague, Helen Franklin meets her friend Karel on the street.

Agitated and enthralled, he tells her he has come into possession of a mysterious old manuscript, filled with personal testimonies that take them from 17th-century England to wartime Czechoslovakia, the tropical streets of Manila, and 1920s Turkey. All of them tell of being followed by a tall, silent woman in black, bearing an unforgettable message.

Helen reads its contents with intrigue, but everything in her life is about to change.