Category Archives: Books

One August Night By Victoria Hislop Book Review.

Posted on by

I read One August Night By Victoria Hislop over two balmy days. I was drawn in immediately even though I have not read The Island. I was whisked away to the gorgeous island of Crete. The book is set in 1957. One August Night is a dramatic and ultimately beautiful story of love, betrayal and tragedy. It is a story with depth that compels you to carry on reading whilst completely absorbed in the story and the characters. Hislop’s books are always so well researched. This is a gorgeous book that you can sink your teeth into. I feel like I learnt a lot about redemption and the power of forgiveness from this perfectly-written book. An essential read.

25th August 1957. The island of Spinalonga closes its leper colony. And a moment of violence has devastating consequences.

When time stops dead for Maria Petrakis and her sister, Anna, two families splinter apart and, for the people of Plaka, the closure of Spinalonga is forever coloured with tragedy.

In the aftermath, the question of how to resume life looms large. Stigma and scandal need to be confronted and somehow, for those impacted, a future built from the ruins of the past.

Number one bestselling author Victoria Hislop returns to the world and characters she created in The Island – the award-winning novel that remains one of the biggest selling reading group novels of the century. It is finally time to be reunited with Anna, Maria, Manolis and Andreas in the weeks leading up to the evacuation of the island… and beyond.

One August Night By Victoria Hislop is available here.

 

CARIADS’ CHOICE: JULY BOOK REVIEWS

Posted on by

Josephine Tey’s Brat Farrar, reviewed by Evonne Wareham

A classic from 1949 by an acclaimed novelist and playwright, this is an impostor story loosely based on a Victorian cause célèbre – The Titchbourne Claimant. A long lost heir, presumed dead, emerges to inherit a fortune. It is made clear to the reader from the start that Brat is a fake, but Tey manages to sustain sympathy and support for him despite this. Alongside a portrayal of loneliness and the desire of an orphan to find a family and to belong, a slow burning mystery unfolds. What exactly did happen the night thirteen year old Patrick  Ashby disappeared, leaving an ambiguous suicide note? Who is Brat and what is his real relationship to the Ashby family? An unusual crime story, displaying attitudes of its time – including to horse training – which can jar, it is still an absorbing portrayal of a lost age and an intriguing crime that would no longer be possible with modern DNA techniques.

 

Isabelle Broom’s The Getaway, reviewed by Jane Cable

I was drawn to this book because it is set in Croatia, as my September release is, so I was very curious to read it. Plus lovely Isabelle sent my a copy.

This is such a good holiday read and the descriptions of the island of Hvar are mouth-watering. At the beginning of the book Kate crashes and burns in the most public fashion, so decides to disappear to Croatia where her brother and his partner are about to open a hostel. The Getaway is about her recovery, and how she grows into an even stronger person in this beautiful place, surrounded by supportive people.

There is humour, there is romance and there is drama. But I won’t say any more because I would love you to read this gorgeous book for yourselves.

 

Mhairi McFarline’s Last Night, reviewed by Carol Thomas

I have greatly enjoyed each of Mhairi McFarlane’s previous novels and this was no exception. She has a fast-paced, economic style that makes for page-turning entertainment; no sentence is wasted as her astute talent for observation shines through. (Within the pages of her novels there are always sentences I wish I had said – or written – that sum up a moment, feeling or action perfectly!)

With relatable characters, struggling to cope in the wake of a loss, Last Night is emotional, witty and thought provoking. The story had me hooked, and the possible romance kept me guessing, even as I headed towards the final chapters and the very satisfying ending. With the theme of loss and mention of dementia this story is a little darker than McFarlane’s previous novels, but those aspects are grounded in reality and balanced perfectly with lighter moments. Last Night is a thoroughly enjoyable read.

 

Anita Shreve’s The Stars Are Fire, reviewed by Angela Petch

Set in the immediate post-war years, this is a fascinating glimpse into the life of an ordinary young mother of two young children trapped in a difficult marriage. In 1947, the woman’s place was in the home and the thought of years stretching endlessly ahead with a man mentally scarred, turned cruel by the war, is grim.

The title is beautiful, taken from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, summarising the story perfectly: “Doubt that the stars are fire, Doubt that the sun doth not move, Doubt truth to be a liar, But never doubt that I love.”

Aptly-named Grace is mostly accepting of her fate but when a fire ravages through her hometown, her husband, a volunteer fireman disappears and Grace’s life opens up.

Written in present tense, Grace and her plight feel very immediate. It’s a short book by usual standards, but perfectly formed and I am now a huge fan of this writer.

 

 

The Devil’s Advocate By Steve Cavanagh Book Review

Posted on by

The Devil’s Advocate is the first Steve Cavanagh book that I have read. Lucky me, I have so many books to read now. I am totally hooked on Eddie Flynn and will be working my way through the series. The Devil’s Advocate is atmospheric with a smart plot that weaves a thrilling tale. The characters are brilliant and the entire book is just waiting to be made into a movie.

This book is a rip-roaring ride which cements Steve Cavanagh not as the next John Grisham, but as John Grisham on speed. I cannot imagine anyone being able to start this book and not finish it. It is impossible to put it down.

The Devil's Advocate By Steve Cavanagh Book Review

A DEADLY PROSECUTOR

They call him the King of Death Row. Randal Korn has sent more men to their deaths than any district attorney in the history of the United States.

A TWISTED RITUALISTIC KILLING

When a young woman, Skylar Edwards, is found murdered in Buckstown, Alabama, a corrupt sheriff arrests the last person to see her alive, Andy Dubois. It doesn’t seem to matter to anyone that Andy is innocent.

A SMALL TOWN BOILING WITH RAGE

Everyone in Buckstown believes Andy is guilty. He has no hope of a fair trial. And the local defense attorney assigned to represent him has disappeared.

A FORMER CON-ARTIST

Hot shot New York lawyer Eddie Flynn travels south to fight fire with fire. He plans to destroy the prosecutors case, find the real killer and save Andy from the electric chair.

But the murders are just beginning.

Is Eddie Flynn next?

The Devil’s Advocate By Steve Cavanagh is available here.

 

Ahead of Her Time By Judy Piatkus Book Review.

Posted on by

It is hard to think about now but female entrepreneurs used to be thin on the ground. Sure we are lucky to have Jo Malone, Anya Hindmarch, Natalie Massenet, Kelly Hoppen and Karen Brady, but before all of them came Judy Piatkus. A single mother-of-three who built a publishing empire with one hand behind her back. Well, almost.

Now Judy has written a book Ahead of Her Time; How a One-Woman Startup Became a Global Publishing Brand and it is the new bible to help other entrepreneurs and people who are interested in business. The book gives a fascinating insight for those who are interested in publishing. Judy did all of this while while taking care of her three children, one of whom is disabled.

I found this book so inspiring that it has made me drag out an old business plan I had and start work on a logo for that, and a new one for Frost. Piatkus books was built at a time when women were discriminated against. We still are, but it has got better.

I implore anyone who is interested in building a business, publishing, or even just loves a story about how someone built something amazing, despite the odds against them, to read this book. It really is brilliant. I will be handing copies out to my female friends. Judy Piatkus truly was ahead of her time.

Ahead of Her Time; How a One-Woman Startup Became a Global Publishing Brand  by Judy Piatkus is an incredibly inspiring book. 

Judy Piatkus did not come from a monied background and began her career as a secretary after failing to achieve a university place. By the time she founded Piatkus Books from her spare bedroom, she was married with a disabled small daughter and pregnant with her second child. Gradually she learned how to be both a publisher and a managing director and to combine that with her family life as she had become a single mother of three. A lot of mistakes were made but she also got a lot of things right. The company prospered, thanks to the risks Judy took in tackling new subjects in the marketplace and also her approach to running the company, which focused on transparency, honesty and trust and was rewarded by the loyalty of the staff, many of whom worked alongside Judy for upwards of twenty years.

In 1979, Judy Piatkus founded what would become a global publishing brand— Piatkus Books — from her spare bedroom.

A single mother, with a child with learning disabilities, at a time when being a self-made woman entrepreneur was rare, Judy defied expectations, influencing, shaping, and giving rise to a new industry of personal growth and development publishing.

 

Long before the bestseller charts were packed with mind/body/spirit, business, and relationship books, Judy created a platform for new, as yet unknown, voices and leading authorities and experts in their fields, including Jon Kabat-Zinn, Mary Berry, David Allen and Brian L. Weiss.

 

‘Ahead of her time’ goes behind-the-scenes and reveals the inner workings of book publishing. Judy details how her combination of financial risk taking, transparent approach in business, and courage to tackle new subjects in the marketplace rather than follow trends, led PiatkusBooks to become a leading global independent publisher.

 

Judy’s memoir is also a fascinating insight into building a company and brand identity and what enables a team and a business to succeed.

 

Judy details her learning experience as an entrepreneur — the triumphs and the pitfalls, what worked and what didn’t, how to reinvent through lean times, learning to be both a publisher and a managing director, and how it felt to overcame obstacles in order to build the career she wanted from the ground up, as a truly self-made woman.

 

‘Ahead of her time’ is published by Watkins Publishing, £14.99, and is available here and from all good bookstores.

 

 

 

THE QUEEN’S SPY – CLARE MARCHANT’S SUPERBLY CRAFTED DUAL TIMELINE NOVEL

Posted on by

Review by Jane Cable and a word from the author…

In her acknowledgements Clare Marchant describes The Queen’s Spy as ‘the difficult second novel’ – or words to that effect. Well she didn’t make it easy for herself, with an Elizabethan main character who is deaf and dumb and a modern day protagonist who is far from instantly likeable.

One of the triumphs of this book is how well the author pulls off both characters. We experience the Elizabethan world through Tom’s eyes, nose, hands… but not his ears. And despite this, it is a rich world indeed, brought vividly to life through the wonderful descriptive language. Despite the danger, intrigue and prejudice it was a world I wanted to return to again and again, which certainly kept me turning the pages.

Like all good dual timeline stories the links between present and past mirror each other well; both protagonists are outsiders, both gifted artistically and with herbs. There are other linking factors too, but to reveal them might spoil the story and I would hate to do that, because it is a book I would definitely recommend you read.

 

So fascinated was I by Tom’s story that I just had to ask Clare about him:

Over the course of my two books the character who has been my favourite is Tom. I always plan my work in great detail so I don’t have any shocks, and yet Tom arrived one day in the still room at Saffron Hall and took me completely by surprise. I’ve loved him from the first moment he appeared. At first he had no way of communicating but slowly he came out of his shell and as he did so, became more confident.

So, it was a no-brainer that Tom would be the main protagonist in my second book, The Queen’s Spy. He’s able to use his disability in a positive way spying for Elizabeth 1st but I won’t lie, it wasn’t easy writing a book where I had to tell his story through the other senses he had; sight, smell and taste. However I think it’s interesting to experience Tudor London as he would have done. With the heightened senses he has it meant the smells (quite often unpleasant!) would have been that much more pungent. And his intensified senses of smell and taste helps him as an apothecary, able to differentiate between and identify many varieties of herbs. I enjoyed him introducing vanilla to the court (in reality it was Hugh Morgan who was Queen Elizabeth’s apothecary) but it was a long time before horticulturalists knew the plants have to be pollenated by hand in the UK.

The fact he has this disability has always left Tom feeling it’s a weakness, a disadvantage, but it takes Francis Walsingham to recognise that Tom’s lip reading can be used as a skill and as the story develops, Tom’s self-confidence grows. For the first time in his life he feels properly valued and this just makes me love him move!

 

Publisher’s blurb:
1584: Elizabeth I rules England. But a dangerous plot is brewing in court, and Mary Queen of Scots will stop at nothing to take her cousin’s throne.

There’s only one thing standing in her way: Tom, the queen’s trusted apothecary, who makes the perfect silent spy…

2021: Travelling the globe in her campervan, Mathilde has never belonged anywhere. So when she receives news of an inheritance, she is shocked to discover she has a family in England.

Just like Mathilde, the medieval hall she inherits conceals secrets, and she quickly makes a haunting discovery. Can she unravel the truth about what happened there all those years ago? And will she finally find a place to call home?

 

WELSH WRITING WEDNESDAYS: INTRODUCING DEBUT ROMANCE WRITER, HELGA JENSEN

Posted on by

As a young child, I was an avid reader, and I was very fortunate that my mother bought me many books. They were beautiful hardback copies of books such as The Waterbabies, Enid Blyton classics, and many books by Hans Christian Andersen. I particularly loved The Princess and The Pea and The Little Matchmaker. Although I grew up in West Wales, as I am half Danish, I was privileged to visit Hans Christian Andersen’s house in Denmark (Odense) many times. It was always a magical feeling when you walked out of there with a new book stamped with the official stamp from his house.

With my love of books, I dreamed of one day becoming a writer, just ‘like Enid Blyton.’ However, there were two dreams I had and being cabin crew was my other dream. Therefore, as soon as I was old enough, I applied to a few airlines for a job. My first dream came true when I successfully got a position with a great airline in Bahrain called Gulf Air. They were some of the best days of my life. I also went on to fly on private jets for royalty which was a fantastic experience.

Having had these experiences, the writer within me started to niggle away at me. So, I did a journalism course through the London School of Journalism in 2002 and started writing. My dream was to write a book, but I thought perhaps if I had published work in magazines and newspapers, it would put me in good stead to get a book published. This led to a successful career as a freelance journalist and I still write for publications in the Middle East.

As I lived in Dubai for almost 25 years, I was extremely lucky to have access to the Emirates Literary Foundation and their annual Literary Festival. At the festival, you had the opportunity to enjoy meetings with prominent writers and agents. At one of the meetings, I met a fantastic agent who encouraged me to keep writing. So, I did, and the following year, the first chapter of my debut novel was a winning entry in the Montegrappa First Fiction competition. Winning this gave me the confidence to believe that I must be doing something right. I then embarked on a BA Hons in English Literature and Creative Writing, which I finished last year. As covid hit, my degree ended a little earlier than expected, which gave me the chance to edit and polish my debut and submit it to publishers. I was delighted when I received two separate two book publishing contracts! I chose to publish with Hera Books, and my debut, Twice in a Lifetime, was released on June 23rd 2021. I am now working on a Creative Writing MA at Bath Spa University, and my second book is due out around spring next year. Both books include settings in Wales. Twice in a Lifetime is set in Laugharne and New York, and my second book will be set possibly in Llanelli and Denmark. I have a few meetings with agents coming up through the Romantic Novelists’ Association, so I am unsure what I will do next, but I still have lots of ideas bubbling away!

 

Follow Helga on Twitter @HelgaJensenF

 

 

 

The Orange Grove by Rosanna Ley Book Review

Posted on by

It is fair to say that few of us will be going on holiday this year- thanks Covid!- but we have Rosanna Ley so all is not lost. The Orange Grove takes us to sunny Seville in all of its glory. This is a stunning book to get your teeth stuck into. With endearing characters and a plot that makes you hungry, you will not want to put this book down. It is a wonderful, sunny read of beautiful escapism. I loved it.

An unforgettable story of past love and family secrets, set in sunny Seville.

Holly loves making marmalade. Now she has a chance to leave her stressful city job and pursue her dream – of returning to the Dorset landscape of her childhood to open Bitter Orange, a shop celebrating the fruit that first inspired her.

Holly’s mother Ella has always loved Seville. So why is she reluctant to go back there with Holly to source products for the shop? What is she frightened of – and does it have anything to do with the old Spanish recipe for Seville orange and almond cake that Ella keeps hidden from her family?

In Seville, where she was once forced to make the hardest decision of her life, Ella must finally face up to the past, while Holly meets someone who poses a threat to all her plans. Seville is a city full of sunshine and oranges. But it can also be bittersweet. Will love survive the secrets of the orange grove?

THE DIARY OF A BOOK, JUNE 2021

Posted on by

Research for The Lost Heir continues – and Jane Cable puts pen to Papyrus

DIARY OF A BOOK… JUNE 2021

June can be instantly categorised as a month when I didn’t get as much work done on The Lost Heir as I’d have liked to. This was for a number of reasons including a long overdue trip to visit my father-in-law and the edits arriving for my first Cornish Echoes book, The Forgotten Maid. But they have now been done and dusted and a review copy is ready and waiting for anyone who wants one (hint!).

But of course that does not mean I have been entirely idle on the next book in the series. Indeed, I have actually put pen to paper. Or to Papyrus to be precise, because I use writing software.

The first task with a new project is to set up the files. It’s not as complicated as it sounds – in fact you can just open a new document and get writing, but that isn’t using the system to its best advantage. In order to track your story and to keep your research together you need to use it properly. It’s an upfront investment in time that saves ages later.

One of the great features of writing software (and I understand that Scrivener works in much the same way as Papyrus) is the ability to move scenes around. So the first thing I did was to set up my scenes in the organiser. Just a line or two, so I know what happens in each, then you tag characters, locations and important items into each one.

Every tagged item has its own file so you can record all the important details about it or them – in other words, I never need forget the colour of a characters’ eyes again. I know perhaps it sounds a bit unprofessional, but while I know their backstory inside out I do struggle to remember physical characteristics. I’m the same in real life – I can’t even picture the faces of those closest to me (apparently it’s a known syndrome) – so to have descriptions to hand is a godsend.

I also loaded in the research sources and notes I wrote about last month, but of course some have stayed in my notebook – like the detailed family tree I spent a couple of days constructing for the Basset family, which started with truth but quickly and necessarily descended into fiction. But for this particular story it was vital to get it right – especially as each timeline deals with one end of it.

Alongside this I drew up some mind maps for my characters, and as I was planning to start writing in the present day timeline, took the contemporary protagonists further with detailed notes on their conflicts and emotional journeys. That done, I was ready to write the opening scene.

I always find it helps to play with your story a little before you settle down, and I know much of what I’ve written so far won’t make the final cut, but it helps me to establish people and places in my own mind. Some of the minor characters even surprised me a little, which is always good, and this is the point to open my heart and mind and listen to them. After all, The Lost Heir will be their story more than it will ever be mine.

There are still some loose ends to tie up before I get stuck into writing the 1810 narrative, largely driven by two more research books which have just arrived from the library. And then the exciting part can begin.