14. The Thirteenth Tale, Diane Setterfield

408 páginas

"Tell me the truth." It is a simple request, but one that shakes the reclusive and enigmatic novelist, Vida Winter, to her very core. For has she not spent the past six decades writing fictional lives that have not only brought her fame and fortune but kept her violent and tragic past a secret? Now old and ailing, Vida Winter cannot escape her own history, no matter how many stories she weaves.

"Tell me the truth." These words from the past echo in the heart of young biographer Margaret Lea, for whom the secret of her own birth, hidden by those who love her most, remains an ever-present pain. With a letter that promises finally to reveal the long kept secrets of her life, Vida Winter invites Margaret on a journey to the past.

Vida's tale is one of gothic strangeness featuring the Angelfield family: the beautiful and wilful Isabelle and the feral twins, Adeline and Emmeline. In succumbing to Vida's storytelling, Margaret finds that it sheds a troubling light on her own life. Both women confront the ghosts that have haunted them and both become, finally, transformed by the truth.

13. The End of Summer, Rosamunde Pilcher

233 páginas

After years in the United States, Jane returns to the tranquil Scottish estate, Elvie, where she spent a magical childhood. Memories of Elvie had always summoned the image of Sinclair, the rakish man Jane had once dreamed of marrying, but now that she is home, she finds Sinclair a different man. His charm has a purpose, and Jane can no longer trust him...or herself.

12. A Sala do Crime, P.D.James

377 páginas

Neither the mystery nor the detective present James's followers with anything truly new in her latest Adam Dalgliesh novel (after 2001's Death in Holy Orders), which opens, like other recent books in the series, with an extended portrayal of an aging institution whose survival is threatened by one person, who rapidly becomes the focus of resentment and hostility. Neville Dupayne, a trustee of the Dupayne Museum, a small, private institution devoted to England between the world wars, plans to veto its continuing operation. After many pages of background on the museum's employees, volunteers and others who would be affected by the trustee's unpopular decision, Neville meets his end in a manner paralleling a notorious historical murder exhibited in the museum's "Murder Room." MI5's interest in one of the people connected with the crime leads to Commander Dalgleish and his team taking on the case. While a romance develops between the commander, who's even more understated than usual, and Emma Lavenham, introduced in Death in Holy Orders, this subplot has minimal impact. A second murder raises the ante, but the whodunit aspect falls short of James's best work. Hopefully, this is an isolated lapse for an author who excels at characterization and basic human psychology.

11. The Lady and the Unicorn, Tracy Chevalier

248 páginas

Tracy Chevalier's tale of artistic creation and late-medieval amours, The Lady and the Unicorn is a subtle study in social power, and the conflicts between love and duty. Nicolas des Innocents has been commissioned by the Parisian nobleman Jean Le Viste to design a series of large tapestries for his great hall (in real life, the famous Lady and the Unicorn cycle, now in Paris's Musee National du Moyen-Age Thermes de Cluny). While Nicolas is measuring the walls, he meets a beautiful girl who turns out to be Jean Le Viste's daughter. Their passion is impossible for their world--so forbidden, given their class differences, that its only avenue of expression turns out to be those magnificent tapestries. The historical evidence on which this story is based is slight enough to allow the full play of Chevalier's imagination in this cleverly woven tale.

10. The Vision, Dean Koontz

270 páginas

Mary Bergen is a clairvoyant, able to foresee murders that will happen in the near future, but unable to prevent them from taking place. But, now she is up against a power stronger than her own, a power that is taking over her and trying to kill her before she can identify it.

9. Lifeguard, James Patterson

311 páginas

Everything is going right for lifeguard Ned Kelley. He is involved with Tess, the most beautiful woman he has ever seen and what's more, a million dollars is within touching distance; his share of the score for the robbery of some world-class art. All he has to do is trigger alarms to throw the cops off the scent. But when Tess is brutally murdered and the others involved in the robbery are massacred, Ned is the prime suspect. He has been set up…

8. Neverwhere - Na Terra do Nada

293 páginas

A ideia que deu origem a este romance é basicamente simples, como todas as ideias geniais. Gaiman representa Londres não como uma cidade mas como duas, a Londres-de-Cima e a Londres-de-Baixo. O protagonista, Richard Mayhew é um rapaz cândido que vem da província para trabalhar em Londres. Quando se cruzar com Door, uma fugitiva que acolherá em sua casa, por humana compaixão, quebra o compromisso com a noiva Jessica. Desde então descobre que ninguém o vê, como se nunca tivesse existido. Resta-lhe acompanhar Door na descida para as profundezas da cidade subterrânea, o mundo da escuridão, dos túneis, dos esgotos, dos edifícios abandonados. Esta fantasia urbana é o aclamado romance de estreia de Gaiman, brilhante, cheio de humor e graça, mesmo quando é assustador.

7. The Tenth Circle, Jodi Picoult

371 páginas

How far would you go to protect the ones you love? Worldwide publication of Jodi Picoult's brand new hardback will be a major event. When Daniel Stone was a child, he was the only white boy in a native Eskimo village where his mother taught, and he was teased mercilessly because he was different. He fought back, the baddest of the bad kids: stealing, drinking, robbing and cheating his way out of the Alaskan bush - where he honed his artistic talent, fell in love with a girl and got her pregnant. To become part of a family, he reinvented himself - jettisoning all that anger to become a docile, devoted husband and father. Fifteen years later, when we meet Daniel again, he is a comic book artist. His wife teaches Dante's Inferno at a local college; his daughter, Trixie, is the light of his life - and a girl who only knows her father as the even-tempered, mild-mannered man he has been her whole life. Until, that is, she is date raped...and Daniel finds himself struggling, again, with a powerlessness and a rage that may not just swallow him whole, but destroy his family and his future.