5 engrossing books worth reading during rainy weather

Ah, there’s a lot to be said for some rain (even during summer). Who doesn’t love an excuse to curl up with a great book?  To keep your mind from wandering (and in case you need a break from Netflix), we have five brilliant books, all previous favourites of mine, worth curling up with

Bridge of Clay by Markus Zusak

We follow the five Dunbar brothers: Matthew, Rory, Henry, Tommy and quiet Clay, whose life is haunted by a tragic act. They live lives without rules – until the father who abandoned them suddenly walks back in. Why did he leave his family? And what is the secret that one boy just can’t forget? This one comes 11 years after Markus Zusak’s renowned The Book Thief and is his first for adults (Doubleday, approx. €21.99).

A Well-Behaved Woman by Therese Anne Fowler

It’s true that well-behaved women seldom make history, and Gilded Age socialite Alva Vanderbilt Belmont is a woman who defied expectations to make her mark. She quite literally fought against – and succeeded over – the constraints placed over her in 1920s society; refusing to accept her husband’s adulterous scandals and becoming a leader in the women’s suffragette movement (Two Roads, approx. €14.99).

Roar by Cecelia Ahern

Thirty women. Thirty stories. All different, but united in that they depict and delve into the different strands of what it means to be a woman trying to make her way in the world. From the woman who can’t stand being left on the shelf any longer to the woman who is getting eaten by guilt and the one who finds her wings. Ahern is on sparkling form (HarperCollins, approx. €12.99).

Every Breath by Nicholas Sparks

Few do gut-wrenching love stories like Nicholas Sparks. Hope Anderson and Tru Walls were never supposed to have met. Hope visits a family cottage in North Carolina to think on her future and Tru arrives at the same place summoned by a man claiming to be his father. But meet they do. It’s electric. Yet fate has other ideas. Wonderfully bittersweet (Sphere, approx. €18.99).

Melmoth by Sarah Perry

It’s been 20 years since Helen Franklin did it – the thing she cannot forgive herself for. Now living an isolated existence in Prague, this all changes when she stumbles upon a manuscript, the legend of Melmoth, a silent woman in black doomed to walk the earth in solitude. Helen reads – and can’t shake the feeling someone or something is watching her. A chilling, lyrical ghost story (Serpent’s Tale, approx. €16.99).