Mrs Sinclair's Suitcase by Louise Walters

I really enjoyed this book.

For starters it is another book set in a bookshop (head start in the good reading stakes).  But it is also well written, some lovely descriptive passages, interesting characters and avoids (most of) the clichéd plot twists of a novel with a romance.

Roberta works in the Old and New bookshop, owned by Phillip, along with a couple of other woman.  She is particularly fond of the notes and letters that people hide in their books and forget to remove.  Whenever a note is found in a book bought in for sale, she collects the note up and takes it home.  Then one day her father, John, brings in some of her grandmother's books.  One of them includes a letter to her grandmother, from 1941, from Jan Pietrykowski, Roberta's grandfather.  However the contents of the letter do not marry with family history.  The plot follows Roberta's attempts to solve the mystery, interspersed with flashbacks to her grandmothers life as a young married woman, whose husband is away fighting in WW2.

I read this quickly, carried along wanting to know how the story would end.

Recommended.