| The Playgroup | | Janey Fraser | | With an opportunity to prove herself, Gemma can't wait to take over Puddleducks Playgroup. But the new head of the infant school, Joe Balls, soon tempers her enjoyment. Meanwhile, Nancy is in turmoil. Her only son has just started at the playgroup and her husband has taken a temporary posting to Vietnam. There never was much hope of conceiving her much-wanted second child so what is she to do now? A tumultuous term lies ahead for all. |  | |
|
|
| 1,000 Places to See Before You Die | | Patricia Schultz | This hefty volume reminds vacationers that hot tourist spots are small percentage of what's worth seeing out there. Its scope is from beaches to museums to cathedrals to bustling markets, grand hotels to backwater inns, rugged safaris to the most pampering spas.
|  | |
|
|
| Dead Men | | Richard Pierce | Birdie Bowers, an infamously secretive painter, is a woman given a dead man’s name by her obsessed parents. Her namesake was one of Scott’s companions on his fated expedition to the Antarctic. Almost a hundred years after his death, she is determined to discover what really happened to him accompanied by Adam, a bored computer geek, who falls in love with her. But Scott’s tent is now under 30 metres of ice.
|  | |
|
|
| The kite Runner | | Khaled Hosseini | | In his debut novel, The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini accomplishes what very few contemporary novelists are able to do: provide an educational and eye-opening account of a country's political turmoil - Afghanistan - while also developing characters whose heartbreaking struggles and emotional triumphs resonate with the reader. |  | |
|
