Friday, 29 January 2016
Book Beginnings on Fridays - Sweetheart Sweetheart
David Warwick, an
Englishman living in New York, has a sudden premonition that his twin
brother, Colin, is in danger. He returns to England and learns the
shocking truth: both Colin and his young bride Helen have died ghastly
deaths - deaths that no one in the village wants to talk about.
Monday, 25 January 2016
Mailbox Monday
Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came in their mailbox during the last week. It was created by Marcia @ A Girl and Her Books but now has a permanent home here
This week I was lucky enough to get Five Rivers on a Wooded Plain by Barney Norris via Netgalley. This was on my wishlist and is published by Doubleday on 21st April 2016.
'There exists in all of us a song waiting to be sung which is as heart-stopping and vertiginous as the peak of the cathedral. That is the meaning of this quiet city, where the spire soars into the blue, where rivers and stories weave into one another, where lives intertwine.'
One quiet evening in Salisbury, the peace is shattered by a serious car crash. At that moment, five lives collide – a flower seller, a schoolboy, an army wife, a security guard, a widower – all facing their own personal disasters. As one of those lives hangs in the balance, the stories of all five unwind, drawn together by connection and coincidence into a web of love, grief, disenchantment and hope that perfectly represents the joys and tragedies of small town life.
Friday, 22 January 2016
Book Beginnings on Fridays - The Ballroom
Book Beginnings on Fridays is hosted by Rose City Reader and as she says the idea of this meme is
for you to share the first sentence (or so) of the book
you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the
sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the
opener inspires. Please remember to include the title
of the book and the author's name. There's a linky list on
the website and you can use #BookBeginnings on Twitter.
I started reading an ARC of The Ballroom by Anna Hope yesterday evening. It's published by Doubleday and Transworld Publishers on 11th February. I loved the authors previous novel and you can read my review of The Wake here
'Are you going to behave?' The man's voice echoed.
'Are you going to behave?'
She made a noise. Could have been yes. Could have been no, but the blanket was pulled off her head and she gasped for air.
Book Description
Where love is your only escape ....
1911: Inside an asylum at the edge of the Yorkshire moors,
where men and women are kept apart
by high walls and barred windows,
there is a ballroom vast and beautiful.
For one bright evening every week
they come together
and dance.
When John and Ella meet
It is a dance that will change
two lives forever.
Set
over the heatwave summer of 1911, the end of the Edwardian era, THE
BALLROOM is a tale of unlikely love and dangerous obsession, of madness
and sanity, and of who gets to decide which is which.
Wednesday, 20 January 2016
Waiting On Wednesday - The Fireman
Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly meme, hosted by Breaking The Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases we can't wait to be published.
The Fireman by Joe Hill is due to be published in June by Gollancz.
No one knows exactly
when it began or where it originated. A terrifying new plague is
spreading like wildfire across the country, striking cities one by one:
Boston, Detroit, Seattle. The doctors call it Draco Incendia
Trychophyton. To everyone else it’s Dragonscale, a highly contagious,
deadly spore that marks its hosts with beautiful black and gold marks
across their bodies—before causing them to burst into flames. Millions
are infected; blazes erupt everywhere. There is no antidote. No one is
safe.
Harper Grayson, a compassionate, dedicated nurse as
pragmatic as Mary Poppins, treated hundreds of infected patients before
her hospital burned to the ground. Now she’s discovered the telltale
gold-flecked marks on her skin. When the outbreak first began, she and
her husband, Jakob, had made a pact: they would take matters into their
own hands if they became infected. To Jakob’s dismay, Harper wants to
live—at least until the fetus she is carrying comes to term. At the
hospital, she witnessed infected mothers give birth to healthy babies
and believes hers will be fine too. . . if she can live long enough to
deliver the child.
Convinced that his do-gooding wife has made
him sick, Jakob becomes unhinged, and eventually abandons her as their
placid New England community collapses in terror. The chaos gives rise
to ruthless Cremation Squads—armed, self-appointed posses roaming the
streets and woods to exterminate those who they believe carry the spore.
But Harper isn’t as alone as she fears: a mysterious and compelling
stranger she briefly met at the hospital, a man in a dirty yellow fire
fighter’s jacket, carrying a hooked iron bar, straddles the abyss
between insanity and death. Known as The Fireman, he strolls the ruins
of New Hampshire, a madman afflicted with Dragonscale who has learned to
control the fire within himself, using it as a shield to protect the
hunted . . . and as a weapon to avenge the wronged.
In the
desperate season to come, as the world burns out of control, Harper must
learn the Fireman's secrets before her life—and that of her unborn
child—goes up in smoke.
Friday, 15 January 2016
Book Beginnings on Fridays - NOS4R2
Book Beginnings on Fridays is hosted by Rose City Reader and as she says the idea of this meme is for you to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author's name. There's a linky list on the website and you can use #BookBeginnings on Twitter.
Yesterday I started reading NOS4R2 by Joe Hill.
Nurse Thornton dropped into the long term care ward a little before eight with a hot bag of blood for Charlie Manx.
She was coasting on autopilot, her thoughts not on her work.
Book Description
Victoria McQueen has a
secret gift for finding things: a misplaced bracelet, a missing
photograph, answers to unanswerable questions. On her Raleigh Tuff
Burner bike, she makes her way to a rickety covered bridge that, within
moments, takes her wherever she needs to go, whether it’s across
Massachusetts or across the country.
Charles Talent Manx has a
way with children. He likes to take them for rides in his 1938
Rolls-Royce Wraith with the NOS4R2 vanity plate. With his old car, he
can slip right out of the everyday world, and onto the hidden roads that
transport them to an astonishing – and terrifying – playground of
amusements he calls “Christmasland.”
Then, one day, Vic goes
looking for trouble—and finds Manx. That was a lifetime ago. Now Vic,
the only kid to ever escape Manx’s unmitigated evil, is all grown up and
desperate to forget. But Charlie Manx never stopped thinking about
Victoria McQueen. He’s on the road again and he’s picked up a new
passenger: Vic’s own son.
Thursday, 14 January 2016
My Name Is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout
Book Description
Lucy Barton is recovering slowly from what should have been a simple operation. Her mother, to whom she hasn’t spoken for many years, comes to see her. Gentle gossip about people from Lucy’s childhood in Amgash, Illinois, seems to reconnect them, but just below the surface lie the tension and longing that have informed every aspect of Lucy’s life: her escape from her troubled family, her desire to become a writer, her marriage, her love for her two daughters. Knitting this powerful narrative together is the brilliant storytelling voice of Lucy herself: keenly observant, deeply human, and truly unforgettable.
My Thoughts
I loved Oliver Kitteridge and The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout so was delighted to get her latest offering from Netgalley. It is a short novel and written in a disjointed way which along with the lack of background behind Lucy's thoughts and conversations with her mother made it difficult for me to get into. It's obviously meant to be like this and has been getting plenty of rave reviews but unfortunately it didn't work for me and I'm left feeling disappointed.
Monday, 11 January 2016
The Darkest Secret by Alex Marwood
In 2004 Sean Jackson is having a weekend away with family and friends to celebrate his 50th birthday when his 3 year old daughter Coco goes missing overnight. Twelve years on and it's still a mystery as to what happened to her. Some of the people who attended that fateful weekend have met up again (including Coco's twin Ruby and older half-sister Mila), this time for Sean's funeral. The chapters of the book are split between these two periods in time.
Lots more characters, most of whom are unpleasant, are introduced early on. For me this meant that I had to concentrate more than usual to try and recall who was who. I soon got into the story though and liked the way we're gradually fed snippets of information and clues as to what happened to Coco, before the truth is revealed at the end. Also I loved Ruby and Mila, they are very likeable and I was rooting for them throughout.
This is the third book by Alex Marwood, they are all different crime novels, not at all formulaic and I've enjoyed them all.
Thanks to Netgalley for a copy in return for an honest review
Rating: 4 out of 5
Friday, 8 January 2016
Book Beginnings on Fridays - The Darkest Secret
Book Beginnings on Fridays is hosted by Rose City Reader and as she says the idea of this meme is
for you to share the first sentence (or so) of the book
you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the
sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the
opener inspires. Please remember to include the title
of the book and the author's name. There's a linky list on
the website and you can use #BookBeginnings on Twitter.
This week my book beginning is from The Darkest Secret, it's the latest novel by Alex Marwood and was published on the 7th January by Sphere.
Dear all -
Apologies for the general email, but I desperately need your help.
My goddaughter, Coco Jackson, disappeared from her family's holiday home in Bournemouth on the night of Sunday/Monday August 29th/30th, the bank holiday weekend just gone. Coco is three years old.
All police experience suggests that the first forty eight hours are crucial in cases of child abduction, so time is of the essence.
Book Description
When identical twin
Coco goes missing during a family celebration, there is a media frenzy.
Her parents are rich and influential, as are the friends they were with
at their holiday home by the sea.
But what really happened to Coco?
Over
two intense weekends - the first when Coco goes missing and the second
twelve years later at the funeral of her father - the darkest of secrets
will gradually be revealed...
Monday, 4 January 2016
Mailbox Monday
Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came in their mailbox during the last week. It was created by Marcia @ A Girl and Her Books but now has a permanent home here
I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas. This week I downloaded two eBooks from the Amazon 12 days of Kindle sale.
The Good Girl by Mary Kubica
I've been following her for the past few days. I know where she
buys her groceries, where she has her dry cleaning done, where she
works. I don't know the colour of her eyes or what they look like when
they're scared. But I will.
Mia Dennett can't resist a one-night stand with the enigmatic stranger she meets in a bar.
But going home with him might turn out to be the worst mistake of Mia's life...
An addictively suspenseful and tautly written thriller, The
Good Girl is a compulsive debut that reveals how, even in the perfect
family, nothing is as it seems...
Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson
Kate Atkinson's dazzling debut novel is a deeply moving story of family heartbreak and happiness.
Ruby
Lennox begins narrating her life at the moment of conception, and from
there takes us on a whirlwind tour of the twentieth century as seen
through the eyes of an English girl determined to learn about her family
and its secrets.
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