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These books are all available from Medway Libraries. Select the title and it will open up in a new window on the book's page on the Amazon website, which gives a review of the book and often the first few pages.
Select the link above to return to the index of books grouped aphabetically by the author's name.
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Author
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Title
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Copies
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Notes
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MacDonald, Lyn
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To the Last Man, Spring 1918
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12
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This book describes the first months of 1918 when the stalemate of the trenches was brought to an end by a massive German assault on the Western Front, breaking the British line, providing an account of the battle, the stand at Amiens which stopped the offensive and the story of the men involved.
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Martel, Yan
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Life of Pi
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10
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After the tragic sinking of a cargo ship, a solitary lifeboat remains bobbing on the wild, blue Pacific. The only survivors from the wreck are a 16-year-old boy named Pi, a hyena, a zebra (with a broken leg), a female orangutan - and a 450-pound Royal Bengal tiger.
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Martin, Andrew
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The Necropolis Railway
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12
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A chance encounter leads young Jim Stringer, a railway porter, to move from Yorkshire to Waterloo, and a better job. But the London of 1903 is a world of garish pubs and tawdry brothels, boxed in by towering blank-faced factories.
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Maugham, W S
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Short Stories
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12
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The stories in this collection move from Malaya to America and England, and include some of Maugham's most famous tales.
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McCall Smith, Alexander
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The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency
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12
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If you've got a problem, and no one else can help you, then pay a visit to Precious Ramotswe, Botswana's only - and finest - female private detective.
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McCall Smith, Alexander
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The Kalahari Typing School for Men
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12
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In this novel, full of gentle humor and wisdom, Mma Ramotswe deals with two clients, one of whom committed a minor crime many years ago and for which he now wants to make amends, and one of whom is worried about a philandering husband. Both cases require the utmost in tact and sensitivity.
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McCarthy, John
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A Ghost Upon Your Path
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12
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Autobiography: When McCarthy sets up home in a wild and isolated corner of County Kerry where his ancestors were living a thousand years before, he realises that he is about to undertake not only a journey into that small rural community but also into his own history and his family.
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McEwan, Ian
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Atonement
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11
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On the hottest day of the summer of 1934, 13-year-old Briony Tallis sees her sister Cecilia strip off her clothes and plunge into the fountain in the garden of their country house. Watching her is Robbie Turner, her childhood friend who, like Cecilia, has recently come down from Cambridge. By the end of that day, the lives of all three will have been changed for ever.
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McEwan, Ian
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Enduring Love
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12
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One windy spring day in the Chilterns Joe Rose's calm, organized life is shattered by a ballooning accident. The afternoon, Rose reflects, could have ended in mere tragedy, but for his brief meeting with Jed Parry.
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Meloy, Maile
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Liars and Saints
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12
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Set in California, the narrative follows four generations of the Santerre family from the Second World War to the present as they navigate a succession of life-changing events.
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Miller, Andrew
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Ingenious Pain
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12
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At the dawn of the Enlightenment, James Dyer is born unable to feel pain. A source of wonder and scientific curiosity as a child, he rises through the ranks of Georgian society to become a brilliant surgeon. Yet as a human being he fails, for he can no more feel love and compassion than pain.
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Mistry, Rohinton
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Family Matters
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6
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Nariman Vakeel, a 79-year-old Parsi widower, beset by Parkinson's disease and haunted by memories of the past, lives in a once-elegant apartment with his two middle-aged stepchildren. When his condition worsens he is forced to take up residence with Roxana, his own daughter, her husband, Yezad, and their two young sons.
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Mosse, Kate
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Labyrinth
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12
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When Dr Alice Tanner discovers two skeletons during an archaeological dig in southern France, she unearths a link with a horrific and brutal past.
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Moyes, JoJo
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Night Music
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12
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The Spanish House is a hotch-potch of designs, Georgian, Gothic and Moorish, as if whoever started it had simply got bored. It has long been known as an architectural folly to locals, and is now nearly derelict to boot. When its reclusive owner dies intestate the house is left to his city-dwelling niece. For Isabel, recently widowed, the house is a potential lifeline
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Murphy, Dervia
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Tibetan Foothold
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10
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In July 1963 Dervla Murphy arrived in a sweltering Delhi by bicycle. Deciding that the heat precluded further cycling until November, she worked in Tibetan refugee camps in Northern India. Using extracts from the diaries she kept at the time, Dervla describes the day-to-day life in the camps where hundreds of children are living in squalor while a handful of dedicated volunteers do their best to feed and care for them, attempting to keep disease at bay with limited resources.
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Murphy, Margaret
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Darkness Falls
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12
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Clara Pascal had everything. A high-flying barrister and devoted mother, she was envied and admired by her peers. Now, robbed of everything that gives her life meaning, she lies chained to the stone wall of a dark cellar - without food, without warmth, without sleep, without even the most basic communication, for her kidnapper will not even tell her what he wants from her.
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Murphy, Margaret
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Weaving Shadows
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12
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A woman is beaten to death. A man is shot in cold blood. A crooked cop taking backhanders Barrister Clara Pascal thought she was taking on a simple child custody case. Traumatised by her own experiences as a kidnap victim, Clara works to keep the shadows of the past from affecting her friends, family and work. But the dreams don't get any easier and the past won't go away.
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Nafisi, Azar
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Reading Lolita in Tehran
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12
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This is the true story of seven young women in Tehran who came to Azar Nafisi's house every Thursday morning for two years to read and discuss forbidden works of Western literature including Pride and Prejudice, Daisy Miller and Lolita.
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Nair, Anita
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Ladies Coupe
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12
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Meet Akhilandeswari, Akhila for short: 45 and single, an income tax clerk, and a woman who has never been allowed to live her own life - always the daughter, the sister, the aunt, the provider. Until the day she gets herself a one-way ticket to the seaside town of Kanyakumari.
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Newby, Eric
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A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush
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12
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Eric Newby's travels from Mayfair to the mountains of the Hindu Kush, north-east of Kabul, offering insight into the numerous eccentric characters and adventures he met along the way, and descriptions of the spectacular wilderness of Afghanistan.
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Nobbs, David
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Going Gently
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11
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Kate Thomas was beautiful, intelligent, witty, passionate and sexy. Now, at 99, she is trapped in a hospital ward of sad, mad and bad old women. She escapes by playing to herself the video of her life.
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Oates, Joyce Carol
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The Falls
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6
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This is a tale of murder, loss and romance in the mist of Niagara Falls.
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O'Hagan, Andrew
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Our Fathers
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4
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The theme of this Scottish Catholic novel is the collision of the old Scotland of municipal socialism and the new.
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Osborne, John
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Look Back in Anger
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6
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On May 8,1956, Look Back in Anger opened at the Royal Court Theatre to violently mixed reviews. Set in a one-room Midlands flat, it consists of a series of tirades by Jimmy Porter against middle class inertia.
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Parsons, Tony
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Man and Boy
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12
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A fabulously engaging and exciting novel about a man who has to learn about life and love the hard way.
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Parsons, Tony
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Man and Wife
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12
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A novel about love and marriage -- about why we fall in love and why we marry; about why we stay and why we go.
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Parsons, Tony
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One for my Baby
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10
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Alfie Budd found the perfect woman with whom to spend the rest of his life, and then lost her. He doesn't believe you get a second chance at love.
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Paxman, Jeremy
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The English
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12
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The combative television interviewer asks the question: Who or what exactly are the English? Anecdotes deal with the English attitude to foreigners, sport, language, their enjoyment of persecution, their odd attitudes to sex and food, and their capacity for hyprocrisy.
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Penny, Stef
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The Tenderness of Wolves
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12
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It is 1867, Canada: as winter tightens its grip on the isolated settlement of Dove River, a man is brutally murdered and a 17-year old boy disappears.
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Pollen, Bella
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Hunting Unicorns
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12
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American Maggie Monroe is a journalist for New York's hard-hitting current affairs show Newsline. Independent and fearless, the more cutting-edge the story, the happier she is.
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Priest, Christopher
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The Separation
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12
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This is the story of twin brothers, rowers in the 1936 Olympics.
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Prior, Lily
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Ardour
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12
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When a lonely olive grower sows seeds of love in search of romance, he cannot know the chaos he will cause. Instead of the voluptuous woman of his dreams, the District Health Authority mule, Gezabel, falls head over hooves in love with him.
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Prior, Lily
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Nectar
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12
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Romona Drottoveo is an Italian chambermaid whose skin exudes an intoxicating scent. This unusual asset makes her irresistible to men and despised by women but her infidelity on her wedding night brings bad luck to the village and she is exiled - until her scent unexpectedly vanishes.
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Quinn, Karen
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The Ivy Chronicles
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12
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Having lost her high-powered Wall Street job, her husband and her plush Park Avenue apartment in one afternoon, Ivy Ames emerges broken but unbowed. The newly-single mother-of-two picks herself up, dusts herself down and reinvents herself as a private school admissions adviser whose well-heeled clients will do (literally) anything to get their children into the A-list schools.
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Rankin, Ian
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Dead Souls
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11
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Stalking a poisoner at the local zoo, Inspector John Rebus comes across a paedophile taking pictures of children. When the social workers claim he is there for legitimate educational reasons, Rebus is faced with a dilemma - should he be outed to protect local kids or given a chance to start anew?
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Rattigan, Terence
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The Browning Version
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12
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This play is about an unpopular and unloved classics master at a public school in the 1940s. Deserted by his wife and on the verge of retirement, Crocker-Harris finds a form of redemption in an unexpected parting gift from a previously unregarded pupil - a secondhand copy of Robert Browning's translation of the Agamemnon.
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Rhys, Jean
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Wide Sargasso Sea
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12
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Set in the lush, beguiling landscape of Jamaica in the 1830s. Born into an oppressive, colonialist society, Creole heiress Antoinette Cosway meets a young Englishman who is drawn to her innocent sensuality and beauty. After their marriage the rumours begin, poisoning her husband against her.
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Richards, Ben
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The Mermaid and the Drunks
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12
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Fresia Castillo's father left Chile smuggled in the boot of a car; her mother crossed the Andes by bus with two small children. Fresia, a photographer, has lived all of her life in Britain, but following the death of her father, she has decided it is time to return.
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Robertson, James
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The Testament of Gideon Mack
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12
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For Gideon Mack, faithless minister, unfaithful husband and troubled soul, the existence of God, let alone the Devil, is no more credible than that of ghosts or fairies.
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