Holland House Books

On the 1st December 1838,all slaves were finally freed on South Africa, four years after slavery hadofficially been abolished. First of December followsthree people during the week of November 1838: James and Caroline Kendrick, andan unnamed runaway slave making her way to Cape Town along the coast, desperateto reach it by midnight on the 31st November. Caroline is trapped in anunhappy marriage, in a place she hates, always longing to go home; bored,lonely, without purpose or any sense of belonging. James is forever on themove, desperate for success after a lifetime of failure and humiliation, seeingSouth Africa as his last great hope, preparing for the climax of his work, abank to serve the city. Each resents the other, feeling trapped and unloved,yet with a wish for it all to change. Meanwhile the slave-apprentice, fearfulof being caught before the deadline, meets others living on the coast, at theedge of society, yet always remaining alone, without any clear idea of what toexpect in Cape Town.

TIMES BOOK OF THE MONTHONE OF THE TIMES BEST HISTORICAL FICTION NOVELS OF 2025Inthe summer of 1566 an infernoof political rebellion and image-smashing, the Beeldenstorm, sweptacross Flanders and Holland; young Gillis Vervloet,model and muse to artist Pieter Bruegel, almost didn't survive. Morethan sixty years later, in the Saarland forest, Gil wants only to enter themonastery of St Bartolomeus andlive out his days in peace, but first he must find their long-lost statue of StMichael. And to prove he is not a heretic, Gil must also account for his lifewith Bruegel, who painted a tense path through the artistic riches,intellectual ferment and explosive religious politics of the Low Countries. Ashe writes of his passionate vocation for the priesthood and impossible love forDorothea, his outlaw brother Roeland and radical priest-mentor Pater Paulus,Gil's hard-won understanding must show him where to seek St Michael, and savehim from the Inquisition. TheBruegel Boy is a profound exploration of love,brotherhood, vocation and the power of art to transform lives but also divideand even destroy them.

BeforeReese Witherspoon and Zoella's Book Clubs, there was Oprah Winfrey and Richardand Judy. And before them, there was Hugh Walpole and the Book Society. This isthe story of Britain's first celebrity book club and the judges who changed howwe read. For forty years between1929-1969, the Book Society chose from the best of world literature to mail outone book a month - fiction, history, travel, or biography - to subscribers in overthirty countries. The judges established what a good 'book club book' lookedlike: well-written, entertaining, informative; worth investing your time andmoney in, not too highbrow nor obscure. Making book-buying easier, they starteda revolution. And the legacy of their taste is still with us on bookshelvestoday. HughWalpole, J. B. Priestley, Sylvia Lynd, Cecil Day-Lewis, and Edmund Blunden werethe literary influencers of their day; household names whose personal lives,affairs, and politics informed their recommendations, mixing the personal andprofessional; social history with the domestic; love, disappointment, and war. They made global bestsellers with books that saw readers through Empire and thegrowth of fascism and antisemitism, the Great Depression, Spanish Civil War,and World War Two. Recommended!exploreshow a group of writers shook up the interwar book world, changing forever howwe buy and think about books.

Deidre is a victim, of herfamily, her society, her history. That is how she seesherself, and so she feels free of all obligations, moral and practical. Untilthe police take her back to her family home... In a Cape Town where wateris rationed and has to be collected from trucks each day, with the consequencesof apartheid and the ending of it still evident, Deidre lives from day to dayin squalor - largely created by herself- borrowing, persuading, cadging her way from the water trucks to the bar, testing the tolerance and pity of everyoneshe knows. Then she is contacted by the police, and taken by a respectfulconstable to the house where she grew up and where she lost her leg in ashattering explosion while still young. Faced with what is found there, she hasto accept the truth of her past, and of her older brother, her parents' goldenboy. Then she must confront herself and her responsibility, and what it trulyis to be a victim.