I grew up on the books of Charles Dickens. I cried when Dora Spenlow died, and was shocked by Miss Havisham in her crumbling wedding dress and her ward Estella. Dickens created such memorable characters and his plots have always kept me on the edge of my seat or glued to the fireside. I guess …
Continue reading 48 Doughty Street, the house where Charles Dickens wrote Oliver Twist.
There's nothing quite like getting a book in the post from an old friend, with a handwritten note, especially when you're like me, and live on the other side of the world. I am also very lucky to have friends who have excellent taste in books! This book is about Alice, a 29 year old …
Divorced single mothers often move to small town Florida, but none of them are aware like the local population, that the moon in March will make crazy things happen. The turtle moon can make the meanest teenaged boy in town run away with a baby to keep her safe. It can make a mother brave …
Ethan Ford is a pillar of the community and still madly in love with his wife after 13 years together and their son, Collie, is a calm, happy teen. But in Ethan's past is a massive secret that's about to come out: he used to go by another name in and committed a horrible rape …
Certain books were a fixture in our house growing up, and I can remember winters by the fire with illustrated editions of various Victorian novels. Amongst my favourites were the Sherlock Holmes series. (I think everyone in my family loves a mystery story, my mum remembered her Grandmother reading Agatha Christie at the breakfast table …
Continue reading 221b Baker Street, London: A visit to Sherlock Holmes house.
McMurphy is a free spirit and gambler who manages to get transferred to a mental asylum to escape the work unit in prison. But he finds that he's bitten off more than he can chew when he takes on Nurse Ratched. Written in the 60's and set in Oregon, the book says so much about …
Continue reading One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
Disarmingly cheerful, witty and bittersweet, this is the story of a woman who finds herself suddenly single, responsible for a deaf child and the winner of a huge lottery. She decides that a road trip to rethink her life is in order. It's an odd book. Characters they meet on the road often give little …
Continue reading Butterflies In November by Audur Ava Olafsdottir
Two intelligent misfits will finds their lives changed when a new tenant moves into their Paris apartment block. One at the end of her life, the intelligent concierge who hides herself in obscurity, and one beginning her life, a bright 12 year old girl who is frustrated with the hypocrisy of the people around her. …
Continue reading The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
During the political and religious unrest of the dissolution of the monasteries, a commissioner from Thomas Cromwell is murdered at a Benedictine monastery that he was sent to investigate. When Commissioner Shardlake is sent to investigate the murder, he finds murder and corruption, and a race against time to find a killer. But nothing is …
Theo Decker is a 13 year old boy, who ducks into a New York gallery with his ex-model mother on the way to a meeting with his principle about his recent behaviour. But while they're in the gallery, a bomb explodes, killing his mother and knocking him out. Half concussed, he comforts a stranger who …
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