Death on the Canal comes as I’ve just finished reading the Waterway Girls trilogy by Milly Adams – fabulous. So is Death on the Canal by Anja de Jager also fabulous?

Amsterdam is in the clutches of a bitter winter, and six UK tourists are dead.

I feel I’m in Amsterdam itself as Dutch detective Lotte Meerman is faced with a moral dilemma – does she investigate the murder of a suspected drug dealer, or instead stay silent to ensure that another man, responsible for the drug-related deaths of six tourists in Amsterdam, is convicted?

I was in Amsterdam recently, and I walked the streets with Lotte, summer and winter. All superbly captured, and evocative and the pages kept turning with problems arising, and over lying it all the massive difficulty of whom to trust. A stonking read. Go for it.

Death on the Canal by Anja de Jager. PB. Pub. Constable (who publish good things) £8.99. + ebook.

Golden Prey by John Sandford

Lucas Davenport has a job with the U.S. Marshals Service – an unusual one. He gets to pick his own cases, whatever they are and follow wherever they lead. There was a feel of Ian Rankin’s Rebus about this, because Rebus follows wherever cases lead, and would dearly like to pick ’em as well. And I loved it.

Written with just the right pace, wry humour, action and an absorbing central character. What more to say beyond – buy it, and all Sandford’s other novels. What a fabulous author. I bet he’s an interesting bloke too – after all, John Sandford is the pseudonym for the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist John Camp.

Golden Prey by John Sandford. pb. pub Simon & Schuster. £8.99

One More Lie by Amy Lloyd

A thriller, a chilling one an’ all. Charlotte wants to start afresh. She wants to ditch her past, forget the childhood years in prison, and most of all, Sean. But even with a new identity has anything really changed, most of all, her? After all, there’s comfort in old familiar things, especially if they are the sum of one’s self. So soon she is heading back down towards the darkness. Can she retreat, turn away, turn back, and REALLY change her life. Well, that journey into the darkness requires a catalyst and when that comes along…

This is written with experience and style, which is strange as this is only a second novel. I liked it and though I haven’t experienced obsession I felt Charlotte’s.

One More Lie by Amy Lloyd. hb. + ebook. £12.99  pub. Century.

And lastly:

The Year that Changed Everything by Cathy Kelly.

Women’s fiction to end with. Heart-warming chatty novel which charts three women as they head into a year that could/will change everything for each of them. One is 30, one forty, one fifty and she is celebrating at a party when something heralds change.Reading this is a bit like soaking in a warm bath after battling through the tensions and nail biting of the first three novels. Or if not a bath, then perhaps sipping a great glass of wine after a hectic day…

The Year that Changed Everything by Cathy Kelly pb pub Orion £7.99

Written loosely in the style of the Ladybird for Adults ‘How it Works’ series, this is the first book by a consultant doctor who specialises in Emergency Medicine. Perhaps more to follow?

Using a children’s book format, Dr McHale provides an insight into the different grades of hospital doctor and GPs – a very British hierarchy.  He connects his characters using a humorous story which also highlights political issues affecting the current working of the NHS. His caricatures of consultant figures will strike a cord with anyone who has worked in the NHS.

Don’t be fooled by the large type and the pictures of dolls and toy cars – this book is strictly adult humour. A light-hearted read.

By Dr K Thompson, author of From Both Ends of the Stethoscope: Getting through breast cancer – by a doctor who knows

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01A7DM42Q http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01A7DM42Q

http://faitobooks.co.uk

Our 2018 Christmas was a bit of an experiment. We’d seen the family earlier in December and rather than rush around over Christmas we all decided to stay put.

We moved to Thirsk five months ago, as my roots are in Washington, near Newcastle, and we’d wanted to move up north for ages so in a gap between grand-children we made a run for it.

From Thirsk there is an excellent train service to London, as long as you book well in advance unless you’re a millionaire, so it’s perfect. But what of Thirsk itself? Familiar to many through James Herriot’s books and the TV series All Creatures Great and Small, The Yorkshire Vet, not to forget The Heist, Thirsk is a wonderfully friendly, quirky and interesting market town, and set within glorious countryside.

But back to Christmas. So, here we were, in Thirsk for Christmas – where to eat? I had met a visitor from London walking her dog a few months previously who was up from London, and staying  at The Golden Fleece and enjoying it. A hotel that welcomes dogs? It shouts, welcome, don’t you think. So, we decided to take a punt and choose it for Christmas lunch.

Dating from the 1500s with some of the original features still in place including an inglenook fireplace, The Golden Fleece is believed to have its origins as a private house. However, it was in 1810 that George and Mary Blythe started the hard work that established it as one of the north’s most iconic coaching inns.

Set on the market place and ideally placed for the coach services running along the Great North Road it accepted guests disembarking the coaches at all hours of the day and night, with stabling for 60 horses. The railway arrived in Thirsk in 1841 but The Golden Fleece, nothing daunted, still held sway under the control of William Hall, George Blythe’s great nephew. William extended the clientale to include the townsfolk, and tourists visiting the area.

Still keeping The Golden Fleece in the family, William Hall’s son, William Wellbank Hall had the PR sense to provide a grand luncheon in 1911 for a mix of Europe’s great and good who were competing in a stage of one of the world’s car rallies. Royalty in the guise of Prince Henry of Prussia, and literary royalty – Arthur Conan Doyle – pitched up, amongst others. It wasn’t until the closing stages of the 1st World War in 1918 that The Golden Fleece was sold out of the family.

Just as The Golden Fleece had attracted the coaches in former times, the PR coup of the luncheon of 1911 continued to draw early motorists to The Golden Fleece even under new ownership, though by now the stables were converted to garages, two of them with pits for mechanics to do running repairs on their cars.

In 2015 the hotel was acquired by The Coaching Inn Group, and has undergone a major refurbishment to meet the needs of today’s market while respecting and retaining many features of its fascinating heritage.

So this is The Golden Fleece – but let’s get the lowdown on our Christmas lunch.

We booked well in advance, since our stomachs are of supreme importance to us, and we chose our meal ahead of time. There were two sittings, and we chose the first at 12.30.

I did worry slightly that the ambience would be rather stiff and posh, and Dick kept running round his finger round his collar because he is an anti-tie man these days. Our friend and neighbour, Catherine, made up our party of three, and requires gluten free which sometimes catering finds a pain at these busy times; what’s more, they let that pain be known. So, all in all,  it was with slight trepidation we set off

So was it posh and were they grumpy? Emphatically not. It was huge fun, with a Christmassy décor, and the most amazing crackers on the table,  so elegant were they it seemed a sin to pull them, but pull them we did. For how could we not wear paper hats? The manager circulated, totally accessible and chatty, the staff were efficient, and great fun, Dick relaxed, Catherine enjoyed her gluten-free food, I sipped my wine, gobbled my food, and looked around and saw that everyone was chatting, and laughing, and having the greatest time. What’s more the ages ranged from children to oldies like me – oh no, never you, I hear you shout – and all were having a really good time.

And as a plus we live near enough to walk home, so could have that extra glass of fizz. We had coffee in the lounge looking out over the square and did rather envy those who were staying the night. From all accounts they were loving every minute.

I do like to pick out something that didn’t work, to show I’m not easily impressed, but I can’t. We all loved it, so much so that Catherine is having her birthday lunch there very soon.

ps Look out for the duty manager, Gabriel. She’s great.

The Golden Fleece Hotel, Eatery and Coffee House, Market Place, Thirsk, North Yorkshire YO7 1LL Phone@ 01845 523108. goldenfleece@innmail.co.uk

Reservations: 01845 438300    reservations@innmail.co.uk

www.goldenfleece.com

Dogs are welcomed but only in certain bedrooms. They are not allowed in the restaurant but are in the lounge etc.

Milly Adams is a bestselling Arrow, Random House, author.

Listening to the Animals – becoming the supervet.

Being asked to review Listening to the Animals was a no brainer. I LOVE this bloke. The very thought of him makes me smile, and this memoir by the fantastic Noel Fitzpatrick is imbued with the man we see on the TV. Whimsical, fast talking, full of memories, full of love and strangely full also of self-doubt.

I had the impression this was written as he darted here and there in Fitzpatrick Referrals dodging from one operation to another, and stopping, breathless, to write the next few pages. it is written with immediacy, and honesty. We travel with him from his beloved parents’ farm to school where bullying of this ‘culchie’, a lad from the bogs,  was unremitting.  Noel Fitzpatrick decided early on, though, that he had a choice – to make the most of this education in order to achieve his dream of working with animals in spite of the agony of his day to day existence, or to accept the general opinion that the culchie would come to nothing.

So on he struggled, and no wonder self-doubt became a dominant emotion, in the face of this behaviour. Nonetheless, at this school he received a good education, one which allowed him to strive towards his dream, a dream sustained by his  dog Pirate who was his comfort during his lonely struggle, and of course, his family unaware though they were of the bullying.

Fitzpatrick’s writing is lyrical, raw, humorous, heartbreaking and inspiring. I couldn’t put it down, and hardened book reviewer and author though I am, I cried, and I cheered, I was awestruck.

Is there anything this amazing man can’t achieve?

As the founder of a charity for ill and injured veterans Words for the Wounded I long for this orthopaedic excellence – a prosthetic limb fused directly into the bone of an amputated limb – to reach our veterans as a matter of course. Indeed, I noted in the Bucksfreepress.co.uk recently that  a young man found just this treatment in Australia. Please may it soon reach here, and if Noel Fitzpatrick has anything to do with it, it will. God bless the man.

Becoming The Supervet by Noel Fitzpatrick. pub Trapeze hb £20 ebook and audiobook available.

Read it, love it.

At Frost we’re hopelessly obsessed gardeners, though none of us aspire to an English Country House Garden. We do however most certainly visit, examine, envy and love them.

We love this book too. It is one for the coffee table, but not just for appearances’ sake, it is for dipping into, losing yourself in, finding inspiration, finding calm.

Stroll amongst the images of high yew hedges, the topiary, and traditional planting with oodles of old English roses, the white gardens, the herb gardens… Yes, somehow quintessentially English this book digs deeper and introduces us to the owners, and the stories behind the making of the 25 gardens; the struggles, the obsessions. We learn about the ins and outs of the grand, the personal, the discreet, the private. Its like peeking from the top of a bus into other people’s worlds. The photography covers the gardens throughout the seasons, and somehow captures the nature of the owners as it is reflected in the gardens. I now have a long, long list of places I have to visit this year.

This book is a treat. Keep it with you. Admire its text and images, and visit, visit and cherish the sheer existence of these glorious gardens.

My one disappointment is that Heligan is not included, but then we have followed its rebirth from its early days, so perhaps we don’t need to know more, but maybe in a later issue.

The English Country House Garden by George Plumptre. Photographs by Marcus Harpur pub White Lion Publishing. hb £18.99

Company Directors: Jeremy Thompson & Jane Rowland

Frost Magazine has a soft spot for Matador as it is enormously helpful to one of Frost’s favourite charities, Words for the Wounded and its Georgina Hawtrey-Woore Independent Author Award, and through WforW we know some of its authors’ books, and fine looking and produced beasts they are too.

It was great news, therefore to hear that:  Matador has pipped Amazon into second place as the best self-publishing service provider in the self-publishing sector of The Independent Publishing Magazine’s Publisher Index.

Matador has been ranked as the best self-publishing service provider, knocking Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) off the top spot for the first time, and being rated ahead of big names like IngramSpark, Kobo and Smashwords by The Independent Publishing Magazine (see: www.theindependentpublishingmagazine.com/2018/11/publishing-service-index-november-2018-with-notes.html).

With over 25 years in the industry, Matador, part of Troubador Publishing Ltd, offers authors a range of self-publishing services, from editorial and production, marketing and distribution to ebooks and audiobooks. As the UK’s most widely recommended self-publishing services provider, Matador has moved up to the top spot in the Independent Publishing Magazine’s Publisher Index, which rates self-publishing companies on measures such as customer feedback, the quality of books published, the range of services and the quality of customer service.

The Independent Publishing Magazine produces a ‘Publisher Service Index’ twice a year, in which it independently ranks over 80 self-publishing companies worldwide. Matador have consistently been in the top three of the rankings for five years, alongside the industry ‘big boys’, but in November last year they took the coveted top spot for the first time.

‘We offer a bespoke and high-quality self-publishing service, with a wide range of options for authors, with a team of 24 committed professional staff and a strong emphasis on customer service, quality and producing books that are indistinguishable from those published by mainstream publishers. We are delighted that we have been recognised as the top choice for self-publishing authors serious about their writing and publishing projects. We’ve been helping authors for over 25 years and the publishing landscape has changed significantly since then, so we are thrilled to be at the forefront of helping authors produce and sell quality books. We’ve always been one of the most highly recommended companies, but now it’s wonderful to be recognised as such by an independent industry source too.’ comments Jeremy Thompson, Matador’s Managing Director

Matador publishes over 600 new titles a year for self-publishing authors, but also offers bookshop distribution and trade and media marketing to its authors. The company is selective in what it takes on for self-publishing, preferring to concentrate on quality rather than quantity. Matador is part of Leicestershire based Troubador Publishing, an independent UK publisher offering a range of publishing options to authors. They also organise a range of events for authors, including the annual Self-Publishing Conference (April 27th 2019)

For more information: matador@troubador.co.uk