Whitcoulls Recommends: Atmosphere and Inside the Wire

The Sunday Session with Francesca Rudkin

Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid, who is well known for terrific books like The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, and Daisy Jones and The Six. In 1980, Joan Goodwin becomes one of the first women scientists accepted by NASA for the space shuttle programme where she’s part of a close team who work and play together. Vanessa Ford is a brilliant, practical aeronautical engineer and they discover possibilities in their friendship they never knew existed - so when Vanessa’s mission goes badly wrong and Joan, in charge of astronaut communications is responsible for bringing her safely back to earth, the tension and emotion is off the chart. As were mine.

Inside the Wire by Rhonda Hapi – Smith. Rhonda spent almost 20 years as a prison officer in a number of men’s prisons around the country. She’s a tough, physically strong woman - she also worked on the Riot Squad - with a hefty dose of compassion who always understood that in order to get the best out of the people in her care she needed to build relationships but take no nonsense. The book is an insight into life inside the prison walls, both for the incarcerated men and for the staff, and it comes from a career of which she is justifiably proud.

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