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.
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 …
A dark and charming story of friendship, love and social divides in small town America, this book is Alice Hoffman at her magical best. Carlin Leander, a beautiful swimmer, joins the Haddan school on a scholarship and makes friends with loner and social outcast August Pierce, who is secretly in love with her. When Carlin …
Perhaps rather than review this book, I should just launch into a rant? This year I created a reading list for myself of books that were my friends absolute favourites. I have some amazing books on this list, and many of them have already been reviewed. Two that forced their way onto the list are …
Continue reading The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle – Haruki Murakami
Stephen King meets Terry Pratchett, this book is a bit of a doorstopper, (I read the “authors preferred text” which has some parts added back in, making it a bit longer). Following a man called Shadow, who gets out of prison to find that his wife and best friend have just died, and takes up …
Murakami's novels are kind of an acquired taste and are generally a normal story that's a bit weird. In this story, the narrator feels compelled to return to a hotel he stayed in years before, because he feels that someone is calling him back there, possibly a girl he used to be in a …
This was an unusual book, I really enjoyed the mystery of whether the boy could see demons, or only thought he could! The story is about The Troubles in Northern Ireland, and how much that has effected the mental health of the people who have lived through trauma there. Which sounds depressing, but it's actually …
Continue reading The Boy Who Could See Demons by Carolyn Jess-Cooke
I actually didn't realise that Carlos Ruiz Zafon wrote young adult fiction, but I loved The Shadow Of The Wind, and I think this book has some tonal similarities. Following the death of her father in 1937, Irene moves with her mother and younger brother to a small island where her mother can work as …
Continue reading The Watcher In The Shadows by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
This was part of my last years reading list and it's very naughty of me to have only just finished reading it! The final, incomplete and posthumous work of the famous author it was about half complete at the time of Dickens death and much speculation about the ending has amused generations. The book …
Continue reading The Mystery Of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens
Everything is covered in cold, white snow in this novel of family trauma and intrigue in 1908 Wisconsin. Goolrick was inspired to write this book after coming across Michael Lesy's Wisconsin Death Trip, a photographic collection of residents of this area in the early 1900's with stories from records and newspapers of the subject's stories. …
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