Cloud Atlas

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

Sceptre: paperback published 2004: 529 pages

‘Souls cross ages like clouds cross skies…’

Six interlocking lives – one amazing adventure. In a narrative that circles the globe and reaches from the 19th century to a post-apocalyptic future, David Mitchell erases the boundaries of time, genre and language to offer and enthralling vision of humanity’s will to power, and where it will lead us.

The Shadow of the Wind

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Phoenix fiction: paperback published 2005: 506 pages

Hidden in the heart of the old city of Barcelona is the ‘Cemetery of Forgotten Books’, a labyrinthine library of obscure and forgotten titles. To this library, a man brings his ten-year-old son, Daniel, one cold morning in 1945. Daniel is allowed to choose one book and from the dusty shelves pulls The Shadow of the Wind by Julián Carax. But as Daniel grows up, several people seem inordinately interested in his find. What begins as a case of literary curiosity turns into a race to find out the truth behind the life and death of Julián Carax and to save those he left behind.