The Truth About Ruby Cooper by Liz Nugent. Liz Nugent is particularly good at writing about dysfunctional families - I first loved Lying in Wait and the more recently, Strange Sally Diamond. In this new one, Ruby and her sister Erin live a sheltered life in Boston, but when Ruby’s 16, something awful happens which sends shockwaves through the family and tears them all apart. Ruby builds a new life in Dublin where she spends decades trying to outrun the past, but it’s never far away and someday, somehow, there just might be a reckoning.

The Secret Society of Librarians by Kate Thompson. Historical fiction, based during WW2 with much of the story being recreated from actual events. It’s about a group of librarians from various places in England and Poland, who trained together and became very good friends - in particular, two of them - Joyce in London and Dorotha who’s incarcerated in a Polish ghetto, Despite everything which is going on around them, they’re determined to keep getting books into the hands of readers as a means of escapism and of comfort. 

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