My Stratford Friend – Dominick Reyntiens by Frances Colville

Posted on August 28, 2015 by Margaret Graham

Taking the reader back to the time of Shakespeare and setting the scene of his early years – what’s not to like? Once the author Dominick Reyntiens gets into his stride, he captures the essence of the period and creates believable characters and settings.

I love the way Reyntiens integrates actual names and phrases which appear in Shakespeare’s writing. For example on page 1 we learn that Tom’s horse is called Prospero (an important character in The Tempest), and later on we meet the matched pairs of horses, Lysander and Hermia, Helena and Demetrius, all names used by Shakespeare for characters in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. A man wearing the head of an ass appears as a precursor of Bottom. And we’re introduced to a Robin Goodfellow otherwise known as Puka – a clear link with Shakespeare’s Puck in Midsummer Night’s Dream. This is clever stuff and makes for a fascinating read. I found myself constantly looking out for references to the plays, and at the same time wondering just how many I had missed.

I don’t know, not having done extensive research on Shakespeare’s life myself, whether this is the true version of events. But I don’t think that matters. It’s definitely a possible version, an interpretation of the evidence we have, and a personal view of what might have happened, and that after all is what historical fiction is all about. What’s more, it’s a fast paced well-plotted story. And I very much look forward to reading the next instalment.

Available from Amazon.co.uk

The Gates of Evangeline by Hester Young

Posted on August 19, 2015 by Margaret Graham

When The Gates of Evangeline arrived – kerplunk – on my desk and I read the blurb, ‘Charlotte ‘Charlie’ Cates, a New York journalist and single mother mourning the recent, unexpected death of her young son … my first thought was – not for me. I don’t do grieving mothers. They tear me to shreds.

Thankfully, I flicked through the first page, and was hooked.

Hester Young handles her material with aplomb, and though we are aware of Charlie Cates’ loss we are not manipulated by it. Instead, Young, who writes in the first person present, with spare and finely edged language, takes us on Charlie’s journey -from the urban New York to small town Louisiana.

It is here, in the sultry state with its swamps, and evocative history, that she takes a commission to write a true-crime book based on the case of Gabriel Deveau. Gabriel is the young heir to a wealthy and infamous Southern family who was kidnapped thirty years ago and it is a crime that has never been solved.

Charlie ‘witnesses’ events through hallucinations, which drive her onwards. She uncovers long-buried secrets of love, money, betrayal and murder. The facts appear to implicate those she most wants to trust.

The Gates of Evangeline is gripping, with a tremendous sense of place, (I need to put Louisiana on my list of places to go). It is a sense of place that I found reminiscent of James Lee Burke, one of the most atmospheric authors I have read, and whose work I love.

Young has created a Gothic epic, a great whodunit with a slightly but ‘in context’ supernatural bent. I couldn’t put it down, and found myself trying to work out who indeed ‘dunit’. I was half right, but that’s the thing with Young, there’s always another twist, an unpredictability that is in keeping, but surprising.

In The Gates of Evangeline, Hester Young, who lives with her husband and two children in New Jersey, has created a carefully crafted and fantastic literary debut.

Read it, but don’t expect to be able to put it down. This is a new crime series, which is great news. Can’t wait for the second to hit the bookstands.

Frost is publishing Hester Young’s A Day in the Life in a week.

Hardback by Century at £16.99

Beneath The Bonfire By Nickolas Butler Book Review

Posted on August 13, 2015 by Catherine Balavage

Beneath The Bonfire is a collection of ten short stories, all set in small town America. Each story shows one thing absolutely: the talent of Nickolas Butler. He is a voice of America and a master of human emotion. He may well become one of the great American writers, if he is not there already. I found it hard to put this book down, the stories drew me in and stayed in my mind. Some were happy and others sad, but all came with a slice of Americana and characters it is hard to forget. It is hard to pick a favourite so I won’t, but I will pass this book along to a friend, such is its power to entrance.

Nickolas Butler’s debut novel, Shotgun Lovesongs, has become an international bestseller and won numerous accolades, including France’s Prix Page/America, previously won by Chad Harbach’s The Art of Fielding. Now, in Beneath the Bonfire, he demonstrates his talent for portraying “a place and its people with such love that you’ll find yourself falling for them, too” (Josh Weil, author of The Great Glass Sea).

Young couples gather to participate in an annual “chainsaw party,” cutting down trees for firewood in anticipation of the winter. A group of men spend a weekend hunting for mushrooms in the wilderness where they grew up and where some still find themselves trapped. An aging environmentalist takes out his frustration and anger on a singular, unsuspecting target. One woman helps another get revenge against a man whose crime extends far beyond him to an entire community. Together, the ten stories in this dazzling, surprising collection evoke a landscape that will be instantly recognisable to anyone who has traveled the back roads and blue highways of America, and they completely capture the memorable characters who call it home.

Beneath the Bonfire is available here.

Month 7 of My Reading Challenge by Frances Colville

Posted on August 11, 2015 by Margaret Graham

At the beginning of this month for various (non-book-related) reasons, I wanted to read something light, enjoyable and relaxing, and I found just that in Erica James‘ latest book The Dandelion Years. A quick and easy read, this is a good story with characters I could identify with and of course a happy ending. Just what I needed. And any of Erica James’ 18 other books would have done the same job for me.

All month I’ve been dipping into a fascinating little book called One Hundred Great Books in Haiku by David Bader. For anyone unfamiliar with the term haiku, it describes a very short poetic form, originally Japanese, which traditionally uses no more than 17 syllables, divided into 3 lines in a 5,7,5 format. This particular book as its title suggests, uses the haiku form to express the titles of a hundred famous books. My personal favourite is the following which describes Brave New World by Aldous Huxley:

Euphoric drugs, sex,

cloning, the past forgotten.

So what else is new?

My bet is that once you’ve read the book you’ll want to try writing haiku yourself!

I have my family well trained and they know that a well-chosen book is always at the top of any present list of mine. The haul on my birthday this month didn’t disappoint. The first thing I picked from the pile was an old and battered copy of Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea. I hadn’t read this before and I was intrigued by a quote on the back cover saying that this might just be the best short story ever written. Maybe – maybe not. I don’t feel qualified to judge. But it is superb. And I’m sure that this seemingly simple tale of an old man’s battle of wills against a huge fish, and at the same time against old age and loss of dignity, will stay in my mind for a long time.

I’ve also been reading a couple of very recently published books this month and recommend both for different reasons. One Man’s Everest by Kenton Cool is a fascinating account of the author’s life as a climber, his motivations and obsessions and his many climbing successes. Not just a book for people interested in climbing, and well worth reading. My Stratford Friend by Dominick Reyntiens is also fascinating; the story is told from the point of view of Tom, a lifelong friend of William Shakespeare and is a good combination of fact and fiction as well as being a compelling read. Fuller reviews of both books can be found elsewhere on Frost.

I thought I was ending the month back where I began, with something light and relaxing. But a few chapters into Us by David Nicholls I decided this was a book with hidden depths. It is funny and it is entertaining, and it will make a good film, I’m sure. But it also has serious points to make about relationships (husband/wife and parent/child) and in particular the big question of how you go back to being just a couple once your children have left home and being a parent is no longer the definitive role in your life.

Streets of Sin – A Dark Biography of Notting Hill by Fiona Rule Book Review

Posted on August 5, 2015 by Margaret Graham

Think Notting Hill, the film, then wonder about Notting Hill, the place. Historian Fiona Rule has all the answers in her latest book, Streets of Sin. Rule has researched her subject meticulously, and presents it in a way that is accessible, and fascinating.

She takes us through the area, much as she does in one of her walks, tracing Notting Hill from its beginnings in the mid 1700s to the present. It began as a small rural community, some half an hour’s walk from the edge of the metropolis, and that half an hour was to be crucial in the initial failure of Notting Hill as a money spinning residential area for its developer. It was just too far from the centre to work as well as Marylebone or any of the closer developments.

Rule lifts the layers of Notting Hill’s history, revealing dreams gone wrong, broken people, piggeries, Rachman, the Profumo affair, and London’s first race riots. Add a dollop of characters such as the murderer Christie, and the musician, Hendrix, give it a good stir, and here you have, ladies and gentlemen – Notting Hill.

I found Streets of Sin unputdownable. OK, my own research as an author leads me to devour anything historical, but walk these streets, put places to names, see what’s under the surface and you’ll be hooked. It is an easy read, an informative read. I loved it.

About the author: London-based historian, researcher and bestselling author Fiona Rule is widely respected as a specialist in the history of the capital and the Victorian era. She has appeared as an expert on several radio and television programmes including BBC London’s Breakfast Show and The Robert Elms Show, Find My Past and The Great British Story with Peter Snow. Her previous critically acclaimed historical titles include The Worst Street In London (Ian Allan 2008, reprinted 2009, 2010, 2012) London’s Docklands (Ian Allan 2009) and London’s Labyrinth (Ian Allan 2012).

Streets of Sin: A Dark Biography of Notting Hill by Fiona Rule (published by History Press 8th August RRP £17.99 hardback) is available to purchase online and at all good book retailers. For more information please visit www.fionarule.com or follow her @Fiona_Rule

Rise of the Enemy by Rob Sinclair Book Review

Posted on July 31, 2015 by Margaret Graham

Everyone had a breaking point. Carl Logan might just have found his.

A routine mission to Russia, goes wrong. Carl Logan’s cover is blown, and he’s transported to hell, one he thought he’d never see again.

This is a novel of action, suspense, doubt, and ultimately… No, I won’t tell you. Read it and see.

Written in two time zones, Sinclair manages to draw his character into, and out of, so many ups and downs that in the end, we don’t know who he can trust either. Carl, however, powers on, hanging on to the inner strength which his mentor helped him to develop, but is his mentor who he thought he was? So many page turning questions. Just as a thriller should be.

Rob Sinclair, a forensic accountant for a global accounting firm, was challenged by his wife to write a ‘can’t put down thriller’. He did, Dance with the Enemy, and it proved to be a hit. Here is the next in the Enemy Series.

See his A Day in the Life coming shortly on www.frostmagazine.com

Rise of the Enemy by Rob Sinclair. Published in Hardback by Clink Street, (£14.99)

Murder D.C. by Neely Tucker Book Review

Posted on July 29, 2015 by Margaret Graham

Billy Ellison, the son of Washington, D.C.’s most influential African-American family, is found dead in the Potomac near a violent drug haven. This is when veteran metro reporter Sully Carter knows it’s time to start asking some serious questions – no matter what the consequences.

As with so many things, all is not quite what it seems, and Sully uncovers tentacles that stretch into prestigious social areas; areas which don’t welcome intrusion.

Sully is an edgy, gritty character, an alcoholic haunted by his years as a war correspondent in Bosnia.

(I was there just after the peace, researching a novel, and can empathise with that. It was a dangerous place and that’s when I first knew real fear.)

However, Sully is a reporter, and a bloody minded one at that, and he’s not about to be put off in his hunt for the truth.

I enjoyed this novel. Neely Tucker is that rare and wonderful being, an author who seems almost to be writing his own life story, such is his empathy with his main character. Sully lives and breathes. The style is as fractured as he is, the plot as edgy. This is a gritty novel, full of suspense and depth, which is not surprising I suppose, from a veteran Washington, D.C, reporter.

Ladies and Gentlemen, this novel lives. Go along for the ride. It will be worth it.

Murder, D.C. is available here.Published in Hardback by Century.

The Ways of the Dead, Tucker’s first Sully novel is out in paperback now. Praised by Michael Connelly and the Daily Mail, amongst many, and published by Arrow.

The Very Thought of You by Mary Fitzgerald Reviewed by Jan Speedie

Posted on July 23, 2015 by Frostie

Once again Mary Fitzgerald has woven a story of friendship, love, intrigue and blackmail. Set in 1944 when hopes were high that the war would be over soon; Mary has shown how the friendship and comradeship of a touring variety group brings much needed entertainment to factory workers and troops.

In 1944 Beau Bennett gathers together a touring variety group, the Bennett Players, to perform to factory workers, military hospitals and troops in the UK and France.

Catherine, Della and Frances join the Bennett Players and form a strong friendship as they travel around with the show. The three girls are each searching for something – Catherine seeking news of her husband reported ‘missing in action’, Della is ambitious for fame and Frances needs to keep the impoverished family estate safe for the future.

The shows are a great success and raise moral wherever they go but as they follow the advancing armies through France the girls realise that lies, deceit, betrayal and blackmail are following them and the troupe. Slowly the truth becomes clear and they all will be changed by it. The girls have formed a strong bond which will survive as they return home to their changed futures.

Mary Fitzgerald now lives in the peaceful countryside of Shropshire. After a successful nursing career, marriage and four children, the family eventually settled back in the UK. Mary always loved writing and her characters took on a life of their own as she researches her books. After much rejection a chance email from Random House arrived and Mary was on her way to being a successful published author.

Mary’s characters have warmth and depth to cope with the ups and downs life presents. Read and enjoy.

The Very Thought of You is available here.

Published in Paperback by Arrow on 16^th July 2015 – £5.99

Also available in eBook

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