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Belletrista - A site promoting translated women authored literature from around the world

New & Notable
Whether you are a seasoned reader of international literature or a reader just venturing out beyond your own literary shores, we know you will find our New and Notable section a book browser's paradise! Reading literature from around the world has a way of opening up one's perspective to create as vast a world within us as there is without. Here are 60+ new and notable books we hope will bring the world to you.

IRELAND & the UK

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ROOM
Emma Donoghue

It's Jack's birthday, and he's excited about turning five. Jack lives with his Ma in Room, which has a locked door and a skylight, and measures 11 feet by 11 feet. He loves watching TV, and the cartoon characters he calls friends, but he knows that nothing he sees on screen is truly real—only him, Ma and the things in Room. Until the day Ma admits that there's a world outside . . .

Told in Jack's voice, Room is the story of a mother and son whose love lets them survive the impossible. Unsentimental and sometimes funny, devastating yet uplifting, Room is a novel like no other.

Picador, hardcover, 9780330519014 (August)
Little, Brown and Co. (US), hardcover, 9780316098335 (September)

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LIKE BEES TO HONEY
Caroline Smailes

Nina, her son Christopher in tow, flies to Malta for one last visit with her aging parents. Her previous attempt to see them ended in tears. Disowned for falling pregnant while at university in England, she was not allowed into the house. This will be her final chance to make her peace with them. But Malta holds more secrets and surprises than Nina could possibly imagine. What she finds is not the land of her youth, a place full of memories and happiness. Instead she meets dead people. Lots of them. Malta, it transpires, is a transit lounge for recently deceased spirits and somehow Christopher enables her to see them, speak with them and help them. And, in return, they help Nina come to terms with her own loss. One so great that she has yet to admit it to herself. Like Bees to Honey is a story of family, redemption and ghosts. It is a magical tale that will live with you long after you finish reading.

The Friday Project, paperback, 9780007356362

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THE BIRTH MACHINE
Elizabeth Baines

Tucked up on the ward and secure in the latest technology, Zelda is about to give birth to her baby. But things don't go to plan, and as her labour progresses and the drugs take over, Zelda enters a surreal world. Here, past and present become confused and blend with fairytale and myth. Old secrets surface and finally give birth to disturbing revelations in the present. Originally published in the eighties, The Birth Machine was seized on by readers as giving voice to a female experience absent from fiction until then. It was acclaimed as a significant event in women's publishing and quickly became a classic text. Out of print for some years, The Birth Machine is now reissued in a revised version (which first appeared in 1996). Still very relevant today to modern obstetrics and medicine, The Birth Machine is however more than that: it is also a gripping story of buried secrets and a long-ago murder, and of present-day betrayals. Above all, it is a powerful novel about the ways we can wield control through logic and language, and about the battle over who owns the right to knowledge and to tell the stories of who we are.

Salt Publishing, paperback, 9781844717972

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THE TIME IS NOW
Pauline McLynn

The Time is Now is a masterful story of secret lives in the streets of Soho. In the heart of Soho lies an elegant townhouse that is home to a group of extraordinary people. Over the past century, the inhabitants of Broadwick Street have experienced life to the full— war and peace, austerity and wealth, love and death. From an outbreak of typhoid to a stolen painting, the interlinking stories that emerge will enchant and enthrall Pauline McLynn's many fans as she transports her readers to Soho past and present.

Headline Review, hardcover, 9780755343416

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THE STRANGE CASE OF THE COMPOSER AND HIS JUDGE
Pat Dunker

Hurtling breathlessly through the vineyards of southern France to the gabled houses of Lubeck, through cathedrals, opera houses, museums and the cobbled streets of an Alpine village, this ferocious new novel from the acclaimed author of "Hallucinating Foucault" is a metaphysical mystery of astonishing verve and power.

It was New Year's Day, 2000. Hunters on their way home through a forest in the Jura stumble upon a half-circle of dead bodies lying in the freshly fallen snow. A nearby holiday chalet contains the debris of a seemingly ordinary Christmas: champagne, decorations, presents for the dead children. The hunters are questioned and sent away. Judge Dominique Carpentier is in charge of the investigation and Commissaire Andre Schweigen is waiting for her. In the chalet they find a strange leather-bound book, written in mysterious code, containing maps of the stars. And so the pursuit begins. Carpentier, Schweigen and the Judge's idiosyncratic assistant Gaelle, are drawn into a world of complex family ties, ancient cosmic beliefs and seductive, disturbing music. Carpentier, known as the sect hunter, prides herself on her ability to expose frauds and charlatans. She also likes to win.

Bloomsbury, paperback, 9781408804179



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PATTERN OF SHADOWS
Judith Barrow

Mary is a nurse at a Lancashire POW camp during World War II. Life at work is difficult but fulfilling. Soon, she meets Frank, a guard who has been watching her for weeks. But Frank is difficult to love and it's not long before Mary decides to break it off. Matters come to a head when Frank puts two and two together and realises that Mary is about to embark on an affair with one of the camp's German doctors. Frank is not the kind of man who will take no for an answer and pretty soon, Mary's secret threatens to destroy not just her happiness, but her life itself.

Honno Press, paperback, 9781906784058

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THE BRONTES WENT TO WOOLWORTHS
Rachel Ferguson

As growing up in pre-war London looms large in the lives of the Carne sisters, Deirdre, Katrine and young Sheil still share an insatiable appetite for the fantastic. Eldest sister Deirdre is a journalist, Katrine a fledgling actress and young Sheil is still with her governess; together they live a life unchecked by their mother in their bohemian town house. Irrepressibly imaginative, the sisters cannot resist making up stories as they have done since childhood; from their talking nursery toys, Ironface the Doll and Dion Saffyn the pierrot, to their fulsomely-imagined friendship with real high-court Judge Toddington who, since Mrs Carne did jury duty, they affectionately called Toddy. However, when Deirdre meets Toddy's real-life wife at a charity bazaar, the sisters are forced to confront the subject of their imaginings. Will the sisters cast off the fantasies of childhood forever? Will Toddy and his wife, Lady Mildred, accept these charmingly eccentric girls? And when fancy and reality collide, who can tell whether Ironface can really talk, whether Judge Toddington truly wears lavender silk pyjamas or whether the Brontes did indeed go to Woolworths? Originally written in the early 1900s, The Brontes Went to Woolworths is part of a new library of novels from the early twentieth century.

Bloomsbury, paperback, 9781408802939

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THE OLD ROMANTIC
Louise Dean

Obsessed with death and planning his own funeral, Ken is determined to die in the bosom of his family. But it isn't that easy: his family don't want to know him. His oldest son Nick left home over twenty years ago and reinvented himself. At forty, he has returned home to Kent and found happiness with his girlfriend Astrid and her twelve-year-old daughter, and he doesn't want the old man to spoil things. He's come a long way; he's a professional, a country gent, a family man. But the past is coming back for Nick and it won't let him be.

In this dark comedy, Louise Dean sharpens her scalpel again to write about the changing generations, about class and ageing and death, about England now and the England we have left behind.

Fig Tree, paperback, 9781905490196 (August)

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THE NOBODIES ALBUM
Carolyn Parkhurst

Octavia Frost is no stranger to life's twists of fate. She has mourned a husband and a daughter. She has watched her son become a rock star, following his progress through gossip magazines: they have not spoken in four years. And in her own, less spectacular way, she has built a name for herself as a writer. But the news she receives today will make her rethink everything. And though the situation seems bleak, it could give her a chance to redeem the mistakes she's made in the past. She may still have time to bring her own story to a different ending.

Hodder & Stoughton, hardcover, 9780340978146