Favourite Winter Reads

There are few things in life better than snuggling underneath the duvet on a cold, rainy weekend afternoon while enjoying a cup of coffee and being totally engrossed in a novel that's so captivating, you're unable to put it down.
I picked up a few books this week in a beautiful 2nd hand bookstore in Franschhoek, and it got me thinking back to the some of my all time favourite books.

Savages - Shirley Conran

A red-carpet junket providing luxurious relaxation for five women while their business-executive husbands attend meetings turns to chaos when a local general ignites a military coup. To escape violence and probable death, the women flee deep into the jungle, accompanied only by Jonathan, the captain of their pleasure boat.

During the long months of the rainy season, they try--and try again--to build a vessel that will carry them to safety. After enduring more perils than Pauline, fate shocks the women with the most taboo act of all, the eating of raw human flesh.

For her survival saga, Shirley Conran has drawn women whose polished talents in seduction, domesticity, and child rearing make them poor prospects for primitive living. Jonathan can teach them wilderness skills, including thirteen ways to kill a man, but he cannot teach them grit and determination. Slowly and painfully, the women build the emotional stamina to take responsibility for their survival.

Meanwhile, seventy miles away in civilization, hardly anyone believes that the women could still be alive. Only one man pieces together enough fragments of evidence to believe that neither sharks nor cannibals consumed the five women. His suspenseful quest vividly emphasizes the plight of the survivors camouflaged by the jungle’s dense canopy. Conran, the author of LACE and LACE II, turns from the romance genre to tales of shipwrecks and castaways. In the tradition of ALIVE, Piers Paul Read’s account of an airplane crash in the Andes, SAVAGES sets a group of virtual strangers in a place of appalling harshness and depicts the inevitable disintegration of civilities and decorum. As depression and enervation take hold, options shrink and choices are starkly measured against a life-or-death standard.

Rage of Angles - Sidney Sheldon

Jennifer is an Assistant District Attorney for the State of New York, New York County. A beautiful, inexperienced, criminal defense attorney, she foils a plot by Michael Moretti, the rising star of one of the most powerful organized crime families in America. Manhattan District Attorney Robert Di Silva, believing that Jennifer is truly responsible, fires her and vows to destroy her for her part in the fiasco with Michael Moretti.

Di Silva arranges for the young lawyer Adam Warner to meet Parker in an attempt to persuade him that she is truly responsible for the bribe. Upon meeting her Adam falls for Jennifer and realizes that she isn't guilty at all. With Adam's help Jennifer begins to rise again, meanwhile Moretti, inspired by her determination to succeed, decides he would like to induct her as the Family consigliere (a mafia lawyer).

Adam Warner, despite being married and groomed for the United States Senate, and with the possibility of a White House destination, can not help falling in love with Jennifer. When Adam tells Jennifer that his wife has asked for a divorce, Jennifer meets with Warner's wife, Mary Beth. Being so close to the Senate election, the two women decide it's best for Adam to wait until after the election. Mary Beth however sleeps with Adam one last time, in the process tricking him into impregnating her. Adam learns that his wife is pregnant, wins the election, and tells Jennifer that he truly loves her but they must end their affair. Jennifer having previously discovered that she too is pregnant and not wanting to hurt Adam, accepts, but doesn't reveal to him that she is carrying his child.

Jennifer gives birth to her son and names him Joshua Adam Parker. She keeps the birth a secret, allowing only Ken Bailey, her assistant, to become aware of her son. She then returns to her practice and soon makes headlines as a successful lawyer. Meanwhile, Michael constantly tries to spark friendship with Jennifer, which she rebuffs at every attempt, reminding him of his earlier tricks. Nevertheless, when her son is kidnapped by a criminal Jennifer is defending, she, in desperation, turns to Michael Moretti for help. After helping her, he seduces her and Jennifer becomes the Family consigliere.

I'll Take Manhattan - Judith Krantz

At twenty-nine, Maxime (Maxi) Amberville is an extremely rich, extremely spoiled young woman. Married and divorced three times and the mother of a precocious eleven-year-old daughter, Maxi believes in self-indulgence. She is passionate, impulsive, and thoroughly likable.

Her comfortable world is shaken to its foundation when she learns that her mother has turned control of the family’s magazine-publishing empire over to her new husband, Maxi’s own uncle, Cutter. Always envious of his brother’s success, Cutter plots to dismantle his brother’s company bit by bit. One of his first moves is to stop publication of four magazines, one of which is the failing trade weekly that was Maxi’s father’s first venture.

Horrified at Cutter’s actions, Maxi enlists the aid of her brothers and friends to save the magazine. As she transforms it into the brightest new publication on the national scene, she learns a great deal about publishing, hard work, and personal relationships. With a definite goal in her life, she finally grows up. Her achievements are sweetened when her mother discovers the full extent of Cutter’s scheming and rejects him and his attempts to destroy the Amberville empire.