These are the books our Books Editor received recently. They may be reviewed later.
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The Gracekeepers
By Kirsty Logan (Penguin Random House, R285)
This is a magical story about a floating circus and two girls searching for a home.
They live in a time when the sea has flooded the earth and North lives aboard a floating circus boat where she and her bear dance in exchange for food from people living on the scattered islands that remain.
North has to be careful – she has a secret that could capsize her life with the circus.
Callanish lives alone on an island – her only company the birds and fish around her.
She is serving penance for a terrible mistake. So now she works as a gracekeeper – tending the graves of those who die at sea.
A storm leads to a chance meeting between the two girls and from there the world as they knew it changes.
Drawn to each other and the promise of a new life, the girls have to navigate treacherous waters to attain their dream.
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Endangered
By CJ Box (Head of Zeus, R290)
Joe Pickett dislikes Dallas Cotes, and for good reason.
Things get worse when Joe’s 18-year-old foster daughter, April, runs off with Dallas.
She is found barely alive in a ditch along a highway and doctors cannot say if she will survive.
Dallas denies having anything to do with what happened to April, claiming she ran off from him too.
But Joe knows in his gut that Dallas is responsible. He just has to prove it.
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Wake
By Elizabeth Knox (Little Brown, R290)
Police officer Theresa Grey drives into a living hell when she is called to the New Zealand town of Kahukura.
The locals are overwhelmed by a sudden, collective madness – they’re killing each other and themselves in horrific ways.
When she arrives, Theresa tries to help, then she is forced to flee for her life. An hour later she returns to a scene of utter carnage.
Only 13 people have survived. All of them are trapped in the town by some kind of invisible force field. They are completely cut off from the world outside.
Slowly, they regroup. They have to bury the dead, become a community and ultimately confront their own fears and weaknesses.
But the darkness has not passed – whatever caused the insanity is still at large and it’s still after the survivors.