A reading group coming-of-age novel about a young British-Ghanaian woman born into the chaos of domestic violence, who realises even as an adult that you can’t escape the way your childhood shapes you.
DIARY OF A MAGPIE
by Marie-Claire Amuah
Oneworld UK, Summer 2022
DIARY OF A MAGPIE tells the story of Stella, a child of Ghanaian parents, born and raised in South West London. Stella is born into the chaos of domestic violence and struggles to make sense of the world around her. She touches wood so that bad things won’t happen to her or her family – until she learns a poem about Magpies, ‘one for sorrow…’ Stella excels academically and achieves professional fulfilment and success once she leaves home. However, she is unable to make evidence-based conclusions about events that unfold around her. Stella continues to rely on superstition to provide meaning to her life; to control the otherwise uncontrollable. She feels her greatest personal happiness when she falls in love but learns that magpies alone can’t protect her from heartbreak, and that the impact of her childhood is something she will have to face – one way or another.
Marie-Claire Amuah is a British-Ghanaian barrister, based in London. She works in private prosecutions and specialises in white-collar crime. When she isn’t writing, or practising law, she can be found walking her dog, practising yoga, or spending time with friends.
Samantha Johnson is a forty-year-old, American influencer who runs a wellness empire – Shakti. With an Oscar-winning adaptation of her NYT-bestselling memoir under her belt, a powerful brand as a nononsense motivational speaker, and a booming business which she is about to sell in a multi-milliondollar deal, she has the world at her feet. She’s also launching a new book, CHASTE, in which she talks about her relationship with her sexuality. After writing a viral essay about her teenaged sexual awakening with her (female) best friend, she comes off stage after a sell-out event to some shocking news from her manager. That female best friend, Lisa, is demanding the magazine retract the essay – she never consented to this experience being shared, and what Samantha sees as a powerful erotic moment she sees very differently. She sees it as abuse. Samantha decides to return to the small town she grew up in, to confront Lisa, and convince her to drop the allegations. Once she’s back home, however, Samantha finds herself immediately wrongfooted by Lisa, now married to her high-school sweetheart, and the perfect suburban mom. Forced to confront the past she has whitewashed for years, she finds herself questioning her own memories. For both women have very different versions of how their relationship ended – so whose ‘truth’ is really a lie?
When Saffy’s beloved grandmother, Rose, goes into a care home Saffy learns that she has inherited her Cotswolds cottage. But as work begins on much-needed renovations, the body of a young woman is uncovered in the garden. Who is she? During Rose’s more lucid moments, she reveals snippets of information that Saffy pieces together. And then another body is discovered. As she delves into Rose’s past, Saffy uncovers dark secrets, calling into question everything she thought she knew about her family.
Nothing gets by Jill Bailey. As a CIA analyst, she’s in charge of investigating and vetting new sources. Sources like FALCON, who’s been on the fast-track to recruitment. He says he’s a Syrian defense official attached to a covert biowarfare program–and with a global pandemic fresh in their minds, CIA officials are desperate to use him. It’s Jill’s job to make sure he is who he claims to be, and that his case officers in the field haven’t been duped–or coerced. But before she can get to work, she gets a call. One that’s every parent’s nightmare. We have your son. And to get him back, Jill does something she thought she’d never do. As it turns out, she isn’t the only one with questions about FALCON. Alex Charles, a journalist eager to break the next big story, begins to investigate an anonymous tip: an explosive claim about the CIA’s hottest new source. This is the story that Alex has been waiting for. As the two begin to work together, they uncover a vast conspiracy that will force them to confront their loyalties to family and country. You Can Run is an edge-of-your-seat thriller that will have you asking: What would you do to save the ones you love?
While searching a windswept mountainside for the fabled ghost moth fungus, a young Tibetan boy unearths a mysterious relic. Moments later the People’s Liberation Army of China marches into his isolated village in the valley below and begins to dismantle an ancient way of life. As the brutal oppression grows, the boy’s precious find becomes first a symbol of hope for the villagers then a tool of survival for a people and a religion. It must be preserved at all costs. Sixty years later, mountain guide Neil Quinn is wrapping up his last climb of the season on the highest mountain in Tibet when a transport shortage leaves him stuck in an empty base camp. An earthquake sets off a chain of mysterious events that directly connect the English climber to the ongoing tragedies of a troubled land where the Chinese authorities strive still for complete control. Unsure of precisely what he witnessed yet determined to protect its truth, Quinn returns to Kathmandu and enlists the help of a famous historian of the Himalayas, an erstwhile American journalist, and a cast of locals as enigmatic as that ancient city-each with their own reasons for joining his quest. Manipulation and murder dog their every step as they strive to piece together a complex puzzle from Tibet’s tortured past while navigating the treacherous present.