Vote for for August 2013 BOTM: Romance

[Polly Parrot]

These are our members' suggestions:


Charlaine Harris, Dead Ever After
NB. This is book 13 in the Sookie Stackhouse series.

Sookie Stackhouse has one last adventure in store.

Life has taken her from a waitress in Merlotte's Bar, Bon Temps, to part owner; from social outcast to the heart of her community; from a vampire's girlfriend to the wife of one of the most powerful vampires in the state.

She has survived explosions, revolutions and attempts on her life. Sookie has endured betrayal, heartbreak and grief...and she has emerged a little stronger, and little wiser, every time.

But with life comes new trials...

The question is, in the end: who will love, who will live, and who will be dead ever after?

Indu Sudaresan, Splendour of Silence

When Sam Hawthorne, a twenty-five-year-old U.S. Army captain, arrives at the princely state of Rudrakot in May of 1942, it is on a personal quest to find his missing brother. But Sam's mission is soon threatened by the unlikeliest of sources - he falls hopelessly in love with Mila, daughter of the local political agent. And Mila, unexpectedly attracted to Sam, finds herself torn between loyalty to her family and the man she loves. A sweeping and poignant story of forbidden love, The Splendor of Silence opens twenty-one years later with Olivia, Sam's daughter, receiving a trunk of treasures from India, along with an anonymous letter that finally fills the silences of her childhood. She finally learns the heartrending story of her parents' passionate and enduring love affair - throwing them in the path of racial prejudice, nationalist intrigue, and the explosive circumstances of a country on the brink of independence from British rule.

Ian McEwan, Atonement

On the hottest day of the summer of 1934, thirteen-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. Robbie and Cecilia will have crossed a boundary they had not even imagined at its start, and will have become victims of the younger girl's imagination. Briony will have witnessed mysteries, and committed a crime for which she will spend the rest of her life trying to atone.

Robin McKinley, Sunshine

There are places in the world where darkness rules, where it's unwise to walk.But the lake had been quiet for years. . . .She never heard them coming. Of course you don't, when they're vampires.

They took her clothes and sneakers. They dressed her in a long red gown. And they shackled her to the wall of an abandoned mansion - within easy reach of her fellow prisoner.

She knows he is a vampire. She knows that she's to be his dinner, and that when he is finished with her, she will be dead. Yet when dawn breaks, she is still alive. And now he needs her to help him survive the day...

Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler's Wife

This is the extraordinary love story of Clare and Henry who met when Clare was six and Henry was thirty-six, and were married when Clare was twenty-two and Henry thirty. Impossible but true, because Henry suffers from a rare condition where his genetic clock periodically resets and he finds himself pulled suddenly into his past or future. In the face of this force they can neither prevent nor control, Henry and Clare's struggle to lead normal lives is both intensely moving and entirely unforgettable.

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife," so starts this social satire on the marriage market in Regency England.

With five daughters and no money for dowries, Mrs. Bennet's main ambition in life is to find suitable matches for her girls.

When eligible and wealthy Mr. Bingley moves into the area, Mrs. Bennet seizes the opportunity to advance her plan. She embarks on a determined campaign to see him settled with her eldest daughter, Jane.

The discovery that Mr. Bingley's richer, handsomer, but haughty friend, Fitzwilliam Darcy, will also be in residence sets Mrs. Bennet in even more of a spin. This is much to Elizabeth ("Lizzy") Bennet's distress, as Lizzy is daughter number two and so next in line in the suitor stakes.

The path of the Bennet sisters is fraught with misunderstandings, deceptions, jealousy, and hypocrisy, but it is a journey that has captivated readers, making Pride and Prejudice one of the most popular works of all time.

 

[Polly Parrot]

Poll will be open for seven days.

 

[Alix]

Tough call for me. Most of them would be a reread, but I gotta go with Charlaine Harris.

 

[Polly Parrot]

Vote!!

 

[Polly Parrot]

Last chance to vote! Poll closes at 10 AM UK time.