January miscellany

2015/2016 Winter reads

The Guernsey Literary Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows 

It's 1946 and author Juliet Ashton can't think what to write next. Out of the blue, she receives a letter from Dawsey Adams of Guernsey - by chance, he's acquired a book that once belonged to her - and, spurred on by their mutual love of reading, they begin a correspondence. When Dawsey reveals that he is a member of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, her curiosity is piqued and it's not long before she begins to hear from other members. As letters fly back and forth with stories of life in Guernsey under the German Occupation, Juliet soon realizes that the society is every bit as extraordinary as its name.

WOW what an amazing book.  When I first started reading it I did not know how I would get on with the format of it being letters to and from different people.  But that actually helped as I really felt I was the sender/receiver of these letters.  The book exposes an amazing history of Guernsey that I expect a lot of people are not fully aware of.  The hardships they endured and saw endured during the German occupation.  But also the other side of the German army and the legacy they left the islanders with.  A truly compelling book to read.

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Calendar of love by George Mackay Brown

In this, George Mackay Brown's first collection of short stories, the themes he would develop over his career are set out - an obsession with his home Orkney, its dark and violent Viking past, the cycle of the seasons, and the struggle of its inhabitants. The characters of these stories - the fishermen, the crofters, the farmers and the wild tinkers - are all struggling to live their lives and find their identities in a harsh habitat and a cruel age. The stories in this collection share the same melancholy tone and sense of the ceaseless renewal made possible by the natural cycle.

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Little Black Lies by Sharon Bolton

What's the worst thing your best friend could do to you?

Admittedly, it wasn't murder. A moment's carelessness, a tragic accident - and two children are dead. Yours.

Living in a small island community, you can't escape the woman who destroyed your life. Each chance encounter is an agonizing reminder of what you've lost - your family, your future, your sanity.

How long before revenge becomes irresistible?

With no reason to go on living, why shouldn't you turn your darkest thoughts into deeds?

So now, what's the worst thing you can do to your best friend?
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Lady Cyclists Guide to Kashgar

It is 1923 and Evangeline English, keen lady cyclist, arrives with her sister Lizzie and their zealous leader Millicent at the ancient city of Kashgar to establish a mission. As they encounter resistance and calamity, Eva commences work on her Lady Cyclist's Guide to Kashgar...

In present-day London, Frieda opens her door to find a man sleeping on the landing. Tayeb, a Yemeni refugee, has arrived in Frieda's life just as she learns that she is next-of-kin to a stranger, a woman whose abandoned flat contains many surprises. The two wanderers embark on a journey that is as great, and as unexpected, as Eva's.

I really enjoyed this book.  It takes you between 1923 and the present day and how lives are entwined.  It makes you think about prejudices in both eras - have we changed at all?

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The Girl in the Spiders Web by David Lagercrantz 

THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO IS BACK.

Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist have not been in touch for some time.

Then Blomkvist is contacted by renowned Swedish scientist Professor Balder. Warned that his life is in danger, but more concerned for his son's well-being, Balder wants Millennium to publish his story - and it is a terrifying one.

More interesting to Blomkvist than Balder's world-leading advances in Artificial Intelligence, is his connection with a certain female superhacker.

It seems that Salander, like Balder, is a target of ruthless cyber gangsters - and a violent criminal conspiracy that will very soon bring terror to the snowbound streets of Stockholm, to the Millennium team, and to Blomkvist and Salander themselves.
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The Storied Life Of A J Fikry 

Originally published as The Collected Works of A. J. Fikry.

"Who the hell are you?" A.J. asks the baby.

For no apparent reason, she stops crying and smiles at him. "Maya," she answers.

That was easy, A.J. thinks. "How old are you?" he asks.

Maya holds up two fingers.

"You're two?"

Maya smiles again and holds up her arms to him."

A.J. Fikry, the grumpy owner of Island Books, is going through a hard time: his bookshop is failing, he has lost his beloved wife, and a prized rare first edition has been stolen.

But one day A.J. finds two-year-old Maya sitting on the bookshop floor, with a note attached to her asking the owner to look after her. His life - and Maya's - is changed forever.

I could not put this book down. It is well written and just drags you into the story as if you are there.
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The Redemption of Alexander Seaton by Shona Maclean

Banff, Scotland in the 1620s. A young man walks unsteadily through the streets. Is he just drunk or is there something more sinister happening? When he collapses in front of two sisters on that dark, wet night, the women guess that he's been poisoned. His body is discovered in the house of Alexander Seaton - a fallen minister, the discovery of whose clandestine love affair has left him disgraced. Why was the body in Seaton's house? And why would anyone want to murder this likeable young man? Seaton sets out to find answers, embarking on a journey not only through the darkest part of other men's souls, but also his own.

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2016 February Library Thing Book Reviews

The Library Thing - Early Reviewers

These are the first books that I have been awarded in The Library Thing's Early Reviewers. The review copies are only available on e-book.

Letters for Scarlet by Julie C Gardner

Pain can take a lifetime to heal, but hope lasts even longer…

Corie Harper is twenty-eight years old when she is first visited by a ghost—in the form of a graduation letter she forgot she wrote. Although she spent a decade burying that desperate girl and her regrets, each page resurrects the past, dragging Corie back to a time when all she craved was Scarlet Hinden’s friendship and Tuck Slater’s heart. But she couldn’t keep them both and keep her word.

Scarlet is haunted in her own way, by memories of Corie and of a night that left her wishing she were dead. But Scarlet is not only alive, she’s carrying new life: a baby she never wanted and is terrified to have. Convinced she would be a disastrous mother, she questions whether or not she deserves the love of any man. Especially the father of her child.

LETTERS FOR SCARLET traces one friendship from deep roots to branches torn by broken promises and loss.

LETTERS FOR SCARLET is set for release April 4 2016.

Publisher's web page

 Octopus: The Case of the Throttled Tragedienne by Michael Gallagher

‘“O fly your fate. Thou art a dead thing. Never see her more,”’ intoned Mr Bone, and, though he was murmuring these phrases under his breath, in the silence that had fallen in the auditorium we all heard every word.

‘What’s he on about?’ demanded Mr Willoughby.
Mr Bone looked at him and blinked. ‘They’re lines from later in the play, sir, that the duchess speaks from her grave. It seemed an appropriate tribute to the late Miss Prynn.’
‘The late—?’
‘Miss Isabella Prynn. She is dead, sir. She is dead.’

Gooseberry, the fourteen-year-old Victorian boy detective, is having his fair share of problems. Not only must he juggle the task of being Mr Bruff’s newly-appointed chief investigator with the unwanted responsibility of managing London’s entire criminal underclass, he also has to decide whether a drunken wretch of a man—who turns up on his doorstep claiming to be his father—is who he says he is.
But when the leading actress dies in mysterious circumstances on stage during a performance of The Duchess of Malfi at the Sadler’s Wells Theatre, Gooseberry feels duty-bound to investigate. It is, after all, a great deal more exciting than the last case he was assigned to: the tracking down of a rich old lady’s errant cat!
Join Octavius and his ragtag bunch of friends on their latest adventure, a revenge tragedy (of sorts) in (roughly—very roughly) three acts.

Publisher's web site

2016 World Book Night

What Killin are handing out...

Lizzie's book....

Whispering Shadows by Jan-Philipp Sendker

Paul Leibovitz was once an ambitious advisor, dedicated father, and loving husband. But after living for nearly thirty years in Hong Kong, personal tragedy strikes and Paul’s marriage unravels in the fallout. When he makes a fleeting connection with Elizabeth, a distressed American woman on the verge of collapse, his life is thrown into turmoil. Less than twenty-four hours later, Elizabeth’s son is found dead in Shenzhen, and Paul, invigorated by a newfound purpose, sets out to investigate the murder on his own.

The first in a gripping new trilogy, this is a suspense-filled story following an American journalist-turned detective who tries to crack a murder case in contemporary China as he battles his own personal demons. Perfect for fans of cinematic thrillers and neo-noir.

Amanda's book....

Someone Else's Skin by Sarah Hilary

Introducing DI Marnie Rome, this powerful novel that will enthral fans of Val McDermid and Mo Hayder.

Called to a woman’s refuge to take a routine witness statement, DI Marnie Rome instead walks in on an attempted murder. Trying to uncover the truth from layers of secrets, Marnie finds herself confronting her own demons. Because she, of all people, knows that it can be those closest to us we should fear the most…

A gripping crime thriller with lots of twists and turns. The novel deals brilliantly with issues from honour crimes, domestic violence and adoption, making it thematically accessible with several talking points.

Roots by Alex Haley and Born to Run by Christopher McDougall

October 2015

Roots by Alex Haley

The extraordinary account of Alex Haley's own twelve-year search for his family's origins.

Brought up on the stories of his elderly female relatives—including his Grandmother Cynthia, whose father was emancipated from slavery in 1865—Alex Haley claimed to have traced his family history back to "the African," Kunta Kinte, captured by members of a contentious tribe and sold to slave traders in 1767. In the novel, each of Kunta's enslaved descendants passed down an oral history of Kunta's experiences as a free man in Gambia, along with the African words he taught them. Haley researched African village customs, slave-trading and the history of African Americans in America—including a visit to the griot (oral historian) of his ancestor's African village. He created a colorful history of his family from the mid-eighteenth century through the mid-twentieth century, which led him back to his heartland of Africa.

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Born to Run by Christopher McDougall

Born to Run: The Hidden Tribe, the Ultra-Runners, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen

Born to Run succeeds at three levels. First, it is a page turner. The build up to a fifty-mile foot race over some of the world's least hospitable terrain drives the narrative forward. Along the way McDougall introduces a cast of characters worthy of Dickens, including an almost superhuman ultramarathoner, Jenn and the Bonehead--a couple who down bottles of booze to warm up for a race, Barefoot Ted, Mexican drug dealers, a ghostly ex-boxer, a heartbroken father, and of course the Tarahumara, arguably the greatest runners in the world.

Born to Run is such a rip-roaring yarn, that it is easy to miss the book's deeper achievements. At a second level, McDougall introduces and explores a powerful thesis--that human beings are literally born to run. Recreational running did not begin with the 1966 publication of "Jogging" by the co-founder of Nike. Instead, McDougall argues, running is at the heart of what it means to be human. In the course of elaborating his thesis, McDougall answers some big questions: Why did our ancestors outlive the stronger, smarter Neanderthals? Why do expensive running shoes increase the odds of injury? The author's modesty keeps him from trumpeting the novelty and importance of this thesis, but it merits attention.

Finally, Born to Run presents a philosophy of exercise. The ethos that pervades recreational and competitive running--"no pain, no gain," is fundamentally flawed, McDougall argues. The essence of running should not be grim determination, but sheer joy. Many of the conventions of modern running--the thick-soled shoes, mechanical treadmills, take no prisoners competition, and heads-down powering through pain dull our appreciation of what running can be--a sociable activity, more game than chore, that can lead to adventure. McDougall's narrative moves the book forward, his thesis provides a solid intellectual support, but this philosophy of joy animates Born to Run. I hope this book finds the wide audience it deserves.

I absolutely loved this book.  I couldnt put it down.  I lent it to a slow reader after I had finished, even they handed the book back (read) in record time it was such a page turner.   It certainly made me think about my running and nutrition even more.

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The Wild One by Janet Gover and Us by David Nicholls

August 2015

The Wild One by Janet Gover

Iraq war veteran Dan Mitchell once disobeyed an order – and it nearly destroyed him. Now a national park ranger in the Australian outback, he’s faced with another order he is unwilling to obey ... 

Photographer Rachel Quinn seeks out beauty in unlikely places. Her work comforted Dan in his darkest days. But Quinn knows darkness too – and Dan soon realises she needs his help as much as he needs hers. 

Carrie Bryant was a talented jockey until a racing accident broke her nerve. Now Dan and Quinn need her expertise, but can she face her fear? And could horse breeder, Justin Fraser, a man fighting to save his own heritage, be the man to help put that fear to rest? 

The wounds you can’t see are the hardest to heal...

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Us by David Nicholls

Douglas Petersen understands his wife's need to 'rediscover herself' now that their son is leaving home.

He just thought they'd be doing their rediscovering together.

So when Connie announces that she will be leaving, too, he resolves to make their last family holiday into the trip of a lifetime: one that will draw the three of them closer, and win the respect of his son. One that will make Connie fall in love with him all over again.

The hotels are booked, the tickets bought, the itinerary planned and printed.

What could possibly go wrong?

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Sixty Degrees North by Malachy Tallack and State of Emergency by Andy McNab

September 2015

discuss at October meeting

Sixty Degrees North by Malachy Tallack

The sixtieth parallel marks a borderland between the northern and southern worlds. Wrapping itself around the lower reaches of Finland, Sweden and Norway, it crosses the tip of Greenland and the southern coast of Alaska, and slices the great expanses of Russia and Canada in half. The parallel also passes through Shetland, where Malachy Tallack has spent most of his life.

In Sixty Degrees North, Tallack travels westward, exploring the landscapes of the parallel and the ways that people have interacted with those landscapes, highlighting themes of wildness and community, isolation and engagement, exile and memory.


Sixty Degrees North is an intimate book, one that begins with the author's loss of his father and his own troubled relationship with Shetland, and concludes with an acceptance of loss and an embrace -- ultimately a love -- of the place he calls home.
Those in the group who had read this had mixed opinions.  Some found it slow, others found it interesting and thought provoking.

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State of Emergency by Andy McNab

3 AM on a frozen winter’s night, only hours after the results of the general election. A small craft skims the Thames closing in on London’s most exclusive new riverside hotel. On board is a lone assassin, his target - Britain’s most powerful new politician. In a nation threatened by extremist jihadis and torn apart by civil unrest, Vernon Rolt has just been catapulted into government on an extreme anti-terror platform.

Rolt’s plans for a zero-tolerance crackdown on ethnic violence has touched a popular nerve. But his move into politics has made him some unlikely enemies – British ex-servicemen, once his most committed supporters who now want him dead.


Ex-SAS trooper turned MI5 operative Tom Buckingham is undercover inside Rolt’s organisation. His mission: to neutralise the rogue assassins for whom he also has become a target, and to discover the deadly intentions of Rolt’s new financier, shadowy Crimean oligarch Oleg Umarov. But all too soon, Tom gets caught up in a far more devastating plot which will change the political landscape of Europe - for ever...

Never having read any of Andy McNab's books before I did not know what to expect.  I was grabbed straight away.  The descriptions were so detailed I really felt that I was viewing the scenes for real.  Gripping from the start and no hint of what the ending would be.
Others who read the book felt that although it was good it could have been written by anyone and was not out of the ordinary.

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July 2015

July 2015

Read one or more of the books presented in April 2015

Lisette's List by Susan Vreeland

In 1937, young Lisette Roux and her husband, André, move from Paris to a village in Provence to care for André’s grandfather Pascal. Lisette regrets having to give up her dream of becoming a gallery apprentice and longs for the comforts and sophistication of Paris. But as she soon discovers, the hilltop town is rich with unexpected pleasures.

Pascal once worked in the nearby ochre mines and later became a pigment salesman and frame maker; while selling his pigments in Paris, he befriended Pissarro and Cézanne, some of whose paintings he received in trade for his frames. Pascal begins to tutor Lisette in both art and life, allowing her to see his small collection of paintings and the Provençal landscape itself in a new light. Inspired by Pascal’s advice to “Do the important things first,” Lisette begins a list of vows to herself (#4. Learn what makes a painting great). When war breaks out, André goes off to the front, but not before hiding Pascal’s paintings to keep them from the Nazis’ reach.

With German forces spreading across Europe, the sudden fall of Paris, and the rise of Vichy France, Lisette sets out to locate the paintings (#11. Find the paintings in my lifetime). Her search takes her through the stunning French countryside, where she befriends Marc and Bella Chagall, who are in hiding before their flight to America, and acquaints her with the land, her neighbors, and even herself in ways she never dreamed possible. Through joy and tragedy, occupation and liberation, small acts of kindness and great acts of courage, Lisette learns to forgive the past, to live robustly, and to love again.

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Hotel Quadriga by Jenny Glandfield 

Before the glittering facade of the hotel Quadriga at the Brandenburg Gate, the eventful life of the hotelier family Jochum plays. The first part of the trilogy is about the early days in 1870, the construction of the hotel, the balls, artists festivals and scandals of the imperial period, the tragedies of World War I, the Roaring Twenties and of the political turmoil until Hitler came to power 1933rd

"Hotel Quadriga" is the self-contained first volume of a large three-volume family saga that, impressively told German history through the hotel Quadriga, which is similar to the Adlon in Berlin confusingly.

Further volumes: "Viktoria" ranges from 1933 to the end of World War II, "Victoria's Heritage" tells of the reconstruction until the fall of the Wall in 1989th

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Dear Louisa by Dr R E Gordin

History of a Pioneer family in Natal 1850-1888 by Dr RE Gordon (TW Griggs, 1970) It's a compilation of Ellen McLeod's letters to her sister in England from the Byrne Valley (in the Richmond area) and includes notes on Hosking, Peel, Fayers, Fearne, Tarver, Talbot, Biddulph and Ratsey families who came out with the Byrne settlers 1848-51 as well as interesting details about the area and graveyard.

The Island by Victoria Hislop

On the brink of a life-changing decision, Alexis Fielding longs to find out about her mother's past. But Sofia has never spoken of it. All she admits to is growing up in a small Cretan village before moving to London. When Alexis decides to visit Crete, however, Sofia gives her daughter a letter to take to an old friend, and promises that through her she will learn more.

Arriving in Plaka, Alexis is astonished to see that it lies a stone's throw from the tiny, deserted island of Spinalonga - Greece's former leper colony. Then she finds Fotini, and at last hears the story that Sofia has buried all her life: the tale of her great-grandmother Eleni and her daughters and a family rent by tragedy, war and passion. She discovers how intimately she is connected with the island, and how secrecy holds them all in its powerful grip...

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The Girl On The Train by Paula Hawkins

Rachel catches the same commuter train every morning. She knows it will wait at the same signal each time, overlooking a row of back gardens. She’s even started to feel like she knows the people who live in one of the houses. ‘Jess and Jason’, she calls them. Their life – as she sees it – is perfect. If only Rachel could be that happy.

And then she sees something shocking. It’s only a minute until the train moves on, but it’s enough.

Now everything’s changed. Now Rachel has a chance to become a part of the lives she’s only watched from afar.

Now they’ll see; she’s much more than just the girl on the train…

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Bird Brain by Guy Kennaway

It begins for Basil 'Banger' Peyton-Crumbe the day he dies in a pheasant-shooting incident.

A tragic shooting accident, thinks the local constable, but Banger's gundogs and Buck, the police dog, exhibiting a level of intelligence vastly superior to that of their owners, suspect murder. And for Basil, proud slayer of over 41,000 birds with the cheap old 12-bore he's had since childhood, things go from bad to very bad.

For Basil has been reincarnated. As a pheasant.

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The Unit by Ninni Holmqvist

Single, childless, fifty and deemed economically worthless, Dorrit leaves behind her married lover, her beloved dog and her ramshackle house and joins the residents of the Second Reserve Bank Unit for biological material, resigned to making her contribution to society by giving herself, organ by organ, to the ‘necessary’ population outside the Unit.  

Despite constant surveillance and the regular disappearance of inmates making their ‘final donation’, Dorrit and her new friends eat well, sleep well, keep fit, play hard and even make love, their fears deadened by the luxury of their surroundings, their new-found companionship, the atmosphere of calm, their freedom from financial worries. Is it possible that against all the odds, real happiness can exist in the Unit?

When something truly extraordinary happens to Dorrit, highlighting the grotesque reality of her situation, she faces the hardest decision of her life. Will she exchange one nightmare for another?

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Out of Africa by Karen Blixen

From the moment Karen Blixen arrived in Kenya in 1914 to manage a coffee plantation, her heart belonged to Africa. 

Drawn to the intense colours and ravishing landscapes, Karen Blixen spent her happiest years on the farm and her experiences and friendships with the people around her are vividly recalled in these memoirs. 

Out of Africa is the story of a remarkable and unconventional woman and of a way of life that has vanished for ever.

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Blue Labyrinth by Preston Anchild

A corpse, stiff with rigor mortis and bound in heavy ropes, has been dumped on the doorstep of FBI Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast.

The murder has the hallmarks of the perfect crime - no witnesses, no motive, no evidence - save for one enigmatic clue: a piece of turquoise lodged in the stomach of the deceased.

The gem leads Pendergast to an abandoned mine on the shore of California's desolate Salton Sea where an ingenious killer is determined to make him pay for the long-buried sins of his forefathers.


But Pendergast already knows what is at stake, for the dead man left on his doorstep wasn't just anyone, it was his son.
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Traveling to Infinity by Jane Hawking

In this compelling memoir his first wife, Jane Hawking, relates the inside story of their extraordinary marriage. 

As Stephen's academic renown soared, his body was collapsing under the assaults of motor neurone disease, and Jane's candid account of trying to balance his 24-hour care with the needs of their growing family will be inspirational to anyone dealing with family illness. 

The inner-strength of the author, and the self-evident character and achievements of her husband, make for an incredible tale that is always presented with unflinching honesty; the author's candour is no less evident when the marriage finally ends in a high-profile meltdown, with Stephen leaving Jane for one of his nurses, while Jane goes on to marry an old family friend. 

In this exceptionally open, moving and often funny memoir, Jane Hawking confronts not only the acutely complicated and painful dilemmas of her first marriage, but also the faultlines exposed in a relationship by the pervasive effects of fame and wealth. 

The result is a book about optimism, love and change that will resonate with readers everywhere.

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