Barack Obama
Dreams From My Father

Before Barack Obama became a politician he was, among other things, a writer. Dreams From My Father is his masterpiece: a refreshing, revealing portrait of a young man asking the big questions about identity and belonging. The son of a black African father and a white American mother, Obama recounts an emotional odyssey. He retraces the migration of his mother's family from Kansas to Hawaii, then to his childhood home in Indonesia. Finally he travels to Kenya, where he confronts the bitter truth of his father's life and at last reconciles his divided inheritance.

'A beautifully written personal memoir steeped in honesty' - Oonagh King, The Times

Cecelia Ahern
The Gift

Every day Lou Suffern battled with the clock. He always had two places to be at the same time and two !hings to do at once. When at home with his wife and family, his mind was always somewhere else. On his way into work one morning, Lou meets Gabe, a homeless man. Intrigued by him, Lou gets Gabe a job in the post room. But he soon begins to regret this, as Gabe's very presence unsettles Lou - and how does Gabe appear to be in two places at the same time? As Christmas draws closer, Lou starts to understand the value of time. He sees what is truly important in life yet at the same time he learns the harshest lesson of all.

Even though her husband grew up here, obstetrician Tora Hamilton is an outsider at her new home on the Shetland Islands. Digging on their property, Tora unearths a human body - at first glance a centuries-old bog body, not uncommon. Then Tora realises that the body is much newer, that the woman's heart had been cut out, and that she was killed within days of bearing a child. Tora becomes obsessed with finding out what happened....

'This splendidly crafted, deeply disturbing first novel ... will deservedly be a bestseller' ­The Times