This post was originally published at Novelicious.com and is now at WritingTipsOasis.com. WritingTipsOasis.com acquired Novelicious.com in June 2022.
New Year’s Eve is great, isn’t it? All smiles and sparkles and things starting anew. The ball drops, friends cheer, streamers stream and champagne is gulped, but then, let’s face it, it’s time to get real. Okay, new year, we say, what awesome new books have you got for us? Don’t be shy. Come and sit by us while we take our heels off and give our feet a rub. Let’s get to know one another. We're rarely disappointed.
For our first Friday book giveaway of the year, we have a fantastic ‘ones to watch in 2015’ book bundle from Little, Brown for you to get to know. Handpicked by the lovely Manpreet Grewal, editor extraordinaire, these are the books you’re going to be hearing an awful lot about in the coming months.
The Cake Shop in the Garden by Carole Matthews
Fay Merryweather runs her cake shop from her beautiful garden. She whips up airy sponges and scrumptious scones, while her customers enjoy the lovely blossoms and gorgeous blooms. Looking after the cake shop, the garden and her cantankerous mother means Fay is always busy but she accepts her responsibilities because if she doesn't do all this, who will?
Then Danny Wilde walks into her life and makes Fay question every decision she's ever made.When a sudden tragedy strikes, Fay's entire world is thrown off balance even further and she doesn't know which way to turn. Can Fay find the strength to make a life-changing decision – even if it means giving up the thing she loves the most? Life, love and family are about to collide in The Cake Shop in the Garden.What Milo Saw by Virginia Macgregor
Nine-year-old Milo Moon has retinitis pigmentosa: his eyes are slowly failing and he will eventually go blind. But for now he sees the world through a pin hole and notices things other people don't. When Milo's beloved gran succumbs to dementia and moves into a nursing home, Milo soon realises there's something very wrong at the home. The grown-ups won't listen to him so with just Tripi, the nursing home's cook, and Hamlet, his pet pig, to help, Milo sets out on a mission to expose the nursing home and the sinister Nurse Thornhill.
The Crooked House by Christobel Kent
Alison is as close to anonymous as she can get: with no ties, no home, a backroom job, hers is a life lived under the radar. She's a nobody; she has no-one and that's how she wants it.
But once Alison was someone else: once she was Esme Grace, a teenager whose bedroom sat at the top of a remote and dilapidated house on the edge of a bleak estuary. A girl whose family, if not happy, exactly, was no unhappier than anyone else's – or so she thought.
Then one night a terrible thing happened in the crooked house, a nightmare of violence out of which Alison emerged the only witness and sole survivor and from which she has been running ever since. Only when she meets academic Paul Bartlett does Alison realise that if she's to have any chance of happiness, she has to return to her old life and confront the darkness that worked its way inside her family and has pursued her ever since.
As she seeks to uncover the truth of what happened that terrible night, Alison begins to question everything she thought she knew. Is there anyone she can trust?
I Let You Go by Clare Mackintosh
In a split second, Jenna Gray's world descends into a nightmare. Her only hope of moving on is to walk away from everything she knows to start afresh. Desperate to escape, Jenna moves to a remote cottage on the Welsh coast, but she is haunted by her fears, her grief and her memories of a cruel November night that changed her life forever.Slowly, Jenna begins to glimpse the potential for happiness in her future. But her past is about to catch up with her, and the consequences will be devastating…
To enter to win, simply leave a comment telling us which book you would read first. A winner will be picked at random after the closing date on Friday 16 January and contacted using the email address used to enter. UK only, please. Good luck!