Joan's picks: The Warm Hands of Ghosts and Beyond Hope

The Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden. Set during WW1, Laura Iven is a nurse who returns from the battleground to her native Halifax, where her parents are suddenly killed by the massive explosion resulting from the collision of two ships in the harbour, one of which was carrying munitions for the war. This real event had an extraordinary and terrible impact on the town. When she receives word that her brother and only surviving family member, has been killed in the trenches, something doesn’t add up and she heads back to Belgium as a volunteer at a private hospital. Soon after arriving she hears whispers about ghosts moving amongst the living, and a strange inn-keeper whose wine gives the soldiers the gift of oblivion. Could this have happened to Freddie, her brother – but if so, where is he?   Beyond Hope by Bariz Shah. Memoir of an Afghani man who came to New Zealand as a child refugee, grew up struggling with a sense of not belonging and ended up with the wrong crowd and a stint in Auckland prison. Once he’d served his sentence he did an engineering degree and turned his life around, becoming a pillar of the Christchurch Muslim community and receiving a Civic Award from the City Council there after the 2019 attacks. This is a story of redemption – of finding belonging, a sense of home, and a real life purpose.  LISTEN ABOVE    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.