General Chat

Please add your suggestions for June/July. Two books each as usual. vote to be Wednesday/ Thursday. Don't forget to give a synopsis of each story thanks.

Ann
Glos

The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton
Before her eyes the garden changed. Weeds and brambles, decades in the growing receded. Leaves lifted from the ground, revealing paths and flowerbeds and a garden seat. Light was permitted entry once more………..
1913 On the eve of the first World war a little girl is found abandoned after a gruelling ocean voyage from England to Australia. All she can remember of the journey is that a mysterious woman she calls the Authoress had promised to look after her. But the Authoress has vanished without trace.
1975
Now an old lady, Nell travels to England to discover the truth about her parentage. Her quest leads her to Cornwall, and to a beautiful estate called Blackhurst Manor, which had been owned by the Mountrachet family. What has prompted Nell’s journey after all these years?
2005
On Nell’s death her granddaughter, Casandra, comes into a surprise inheritance. Cliff Cottage in the grounds of Blackhurst Manor is notorious amongst the locals for the secrets it holds – secrets about the doomed Mountrachet family. But it is at Cliff Cottage, abandoned for years, and in its forgotten garden, that Casandra will uncover the truth about the family and why the young Nell was abandoned all those decades before.


Sepulchre Kate Moss
1891. 17 year old Leonie Vernier and her brother abandon Paris for the sanctuary of their Aunt’s country house near Carcassonne the Domaine de la Cade. But Leonie stumbles across a ruined sepulchre – and a timeless mystery whose traces are written in blood.
2007. Meredith Martin arrives at the Domaine de la Cade to research a biography. But Meredith is also seeking the key to her own complex legacy and becomes immersed in the story of a magic love, a missing girl, a unique deck of tarot cards and the strange events of one cataclysmic night a century ago.



Ann
glos

Morning all, here are my suggestions.

A Metropolitan Murder.

The last train of the night pulls into Baker Street underground station. a young woman is found strangled, her body abandoned in a second-class carriage.

Ken Follett

The Pillars of the earth

Set in the turbulent times of twelfh-century England when cival war,famine,religious strife and battles over royal succession tore lives and families apart, The Pillars of the Earth tells the story of the building of a magnificent Cathedral.

Sorry missed this

A Metropolitan Murder by Lee Jackson.

Thanks Helenx

A Quiet Belief In Angels by RJ Ellory.

1939. In the small rural community of Augusta Falls, 12 year old Joseph Vaughan hears of the the brutal assault and muder of a young girl, the first in a series of killings that will blight the community over the next decade. Joseph and his friends are determined to protect Augusta Falls against the evil in their midst and form The Guardians, but the murderer evades them and they watch helplessly as one child after another is taken.

Even when the killings cease, a shadow of fear follows Joseph for the rest of his life. The past won't stay buried, and 50 years later, Joseph must confront the nightmare that has overshadowed his entire life.

from book cover.


City of Dark Hearts by James Conan.

It is 1893 and Anna Zemeckis, a young New Yorker, goes missing in America's most dangerous city: Chicago. Home to the World's Fair, Chicago is a city of glitz and razzmattazz - a city intoxicated by its own spectacular wealth - but beneath the sophisticated facade lies a sinister underworld of pornography, prostitution and violence. It's a lethal place for the weak or vulnerable - and Anna isn't the first young woman to disappear without trace.

Emily Strauss, an inexperienced but ambitious reporter from the New York World, is given a treacherous assignment: to find out what happened to Anna, and to the other missing women. Against a punishing deadline, alone in a dangerous and unfamiliar world, she faces a near impossible task. And, she soon discovers, a powerful enemy....

from book cover.

Hide by Lisa Gardner

Bobby Dodge, once a sniper for the Massachusetts State Police and now a police detective, gets called to a horrific crime scene in the middle of the night by fellow detective and ex-lover D.D. Warren. An underground chamber has been discovered on the property of a former Boston mental hospital containing six small naked mummified female bodies in clear garbage bags. The suspense builds as the police uncover links between patients at the hospital and long-ago criminal activities. Through expert use of red herrings, Gardner takes the reader on a nail-biting ride to the thrilling climax. (From Amazon).

Diamond and Daises by Bernadette Strachan

Novelist Sunny Parkinson might write scorching romances, but her own life is decidedly lacking in passion. A knicker-snatcher is at large in her block of flats. Her best friend's marriage is crumbling over a luncheon meat scandal. She lives with a spherical couch potato and a workaholic virgin. And an Irish nun has just moved in to their spare room. But one night at the launderette she meets Count Fabio Carelli -- a man so traffic-stoppingly sexy he could have stepped straight from the pages of her latest novel...Candlelit dinners, luxury spa dates and weekends in Paris are a far cry from the weekly pint and pork scratchings with her ex-turned-TV-gardener. Sunny is understandably dazzled. But is this the happy ending she's always craved or is it too good to be true?

Michelle

n

hello

Death on the Holy Mountain by David Dickinson

1905 sleuth torn between Ireland and England is sent to Investigate some odd occurences in Ireland.

Strong Poison by Dorothy L Sayers
a Peter Wimsey novel about a trial of a crime writer accused of murdering her lover.

Gill

Harlequin - Bernard Cornwell

Thomas of Hookton is one of those archers. When his village is sacked by French raiders, he makes a promise to God: to retrieve the relic stolen from Hookton's church. Escaping his father's ambitions, he becomes a wild youth who delights in the life of an army on the warpath. Driven by his conscience and protected by his fearsome skills, he enters a world where lovers become enemies and enemies become friends, where his only certainty is that somewhere, beyond a horizon smeared with the smoke of fires set by the rampaging English army, a terrible enemy awaits him. This enemy would harness the power of Chistendom's greatest relic: the Grail itself. Here, in the first book of a new series, the quest begins. It leads him through the fields of France, to the village of Crecy where two great armies meet on the hillside to do battle.


Lifeless - Mark Billingham

To friends and enemies alike, it looks as though Tom Thorne's career is on the skids. Depressed by the recent loss of his father and berated for seriously overstepping the mark on his last case, he's been encouraged to take 'gardening' leave. For an ambitious detective - especially one without so much as a window box - it's a fairly dire situation. But not as dire as the situation for London's homeless. Three men, sleeping rough on streets paved with anything but gold, have been murdered - each victim kicked to death and found with a £20 note pinned to his chest. Were these men just random alcoholics, junkies and jetsam? Or were they targeted for a reason?

Thorne is perfectly placed to find out, and is seconded to the streets. Not as a policeman on the beat but as one of life's rejects. It fits: he looks the part - and feels it aswell. In a harsh and harrowing netherworld, with its own rules and moral code, Thorne discovers the horrifying link between the homeless victims and the perpetrators of a fifteen year old atrocity. Those that know are saying nothing. But the word on the streets is that the killer is a cop. A policeman, it seems, was sniffing around long before Thorne came on the scene...

Jeanette x

The Alchemist - Paulo Coehlo

Santiago an Andulasian shepherd dreams of travelling the world in search of treasure. He journeys from Spain to the exotic markets of Tangiers and then to the Egyptian desert where a fateful encounter with an alchemist awaits him. 'The Alchemist is a transforming novel about the essential wisdom of listening to our hearts, learning to read the omens strewn along life's path and above all following our dreams.'

Sheltering Rain - Jojo Moyes

On Coronation night in 1953 the expat community in Hong Kong gathers for a party. While straining to listen to the proceedings on a faulty wireless 21 yr old Joy falls in love. She is engaged within 24 hrs but will not see her fiancee again for a year.
In 1980 18 yr old Kate's rebellion is to run away from Wexford with her illegitimate child.
15 yrs later Sabine leaves trendy Hackney to visit the grandparents she has never known and finds that time in WExford has stood still.
When Sabine, her mother and grandmother are brought together a deeply buried family secret is discovered as well as some fundamental truths about the conflict between love and duty, about women's choices and about mothers and daughters.

Kate x

n

Hi all,

my suggestions are

Once in a house on fire by Andrea Ashworth.

Although this is an autobiography it reads like a novel.
Andrea Ashworth was born in 1969 in Manchester her story starts:-

"My father drowned when I was five years old. A picture of me framed in gold plastic, was found in his pocket and returned to my mother with a soggy wallet and a bunch of keys. The keys were to our new terraced house, which could now be paid for with his life insurance"
At that time her younger sister is three and her mother, who was prone to depression, was 25.
From then on Anrdea had two, often violent step-fathers. A brief stay in Canada, and a poverty-stricken childhood, much of it spent staying with various relations in Manchester.
Because of the strained circumstances in her home, Andrea often had to look after her younger sister and half-sister, as well as her mother.
She learnt to escape into the world of books, both reading and writing.
This is a memoir of a child's resistance to the crulty of her surroundings. Set mainly in the Manchester of the 70's and 80's, the scene is also set with the music of the time.
A story of childhood, teenage years and growing up.

------------------------------

My second suggestion is:-

Only in America
by
Dominic Holland

This book is sent in the present in England and America.
It is mainly about Milly, who works in Recption of The Shelton Tower (Hotel) in Park Lane, London. Meeting and greeting many well know people
Her dream though is to be a screen-wrtier.
She writes a film-script, which stays in the hands of her agent for ages, phone calls to her agent are not returned.
However a second copy of the script gets lost and somehow turns up in the hands of a Hollywood studio boss.
He loves the script but has no idea who wrote it.
Mitch, an LA movie executive has to cut through all the Hollywood madness, find the writer and get him/her to sign in the dotted line, to save his job.
All without admitting that he knows nothing about the script, what it is about or who wrote it

Will Mitch be able to find Milly in time to save his job? Can he rescue her from obscurity?

How will it all pan out?

This is a funny, light relief book, a magnificent holiday read.


Tess

Can I suggest the following:

Innocent Traitor by Alison Weir

Lady Jane Grey was born into times of extreme danger. Child of a scheming father and a ruthless mother, for whom she was merely a pawn in a dynastic power game with the highest stakes, she lived a life in thrall to political machinations and lethal religious fervour.


My Forbidden Face by Latifa (true story)

Latifa was born in Kabul in 1980, into an educated middleclass Afghan family, at once liberal and religious. As a teenager she was interested in fashion & cinema and going out with her friends. Then, in 1996 the Taliban seized power. From that moment Latifa 16 yrs old, became a prisoner in her own home...The simplest and most basic freedoms - walking down the street, looking out of a window - were no longer hers. She was forced to cover herself entirely with a burqa.

AL

n

n

Maisie is away so unable to give her suggestions, So, just Cathy CMD and Jill although I have a feeling that Jill is also away.

Ann
glos

n

Ann - you beat me to it with Sepulchre. lol

My suggestions...

ENGLISH PASSENGERS - by Matthew Kneale

"Determined to prove the literal truth of the bible against atheist geologist, the Rev Geoffrey Wilson sets out from England, in the summer of 1857, with an expedition to find the Garden of Eden, which he is convinced lies on the island of Tasmania.
Unknown to him, others in the party have very different agendas, notably the surgeon, Dr Potter, who is developing a revoluntionary and sinister thesis of his own on the races of man.
To complicate matters further, the ship Wilson has hurriedly chartered, crewed by Capt Kewley and his secretive Manxmen, is in fact an ill-starred smuggling vessel, its hidden compartments filled with contraband brandy and tobacco.
As the vessel journeys haplessly southwards, in Tasmania itself an Aboriginal named Peevay recounts his people's struggle against the invading British, who prove as lethal in their good intentions as in their cruelty.
This is no Eden but a world of hunting parties and colonial ethnic cleansing.
As the English passengers near Peevay's land, their bizzare notions ever more painfully at odds with reality, it grows clear that a mighty collision is approaching.
English Passengers is narrated by over 20 different characters, each so distinct that the effect is of a story not so much told as peopled. In a storm of hugely entertaining voices it brings a past age to vivid and memorial life.

THE ROSE LABYRINTH - by Titania Hardie

A riddle to unravel, a legacy to unearth, a heart to mend.
A single sheet of parchment and a silver key.
A secret passed down through generations.
A mystery waiting to be unlocked.
As Lucy awaits heart surgery in London, Will travels Europe attempting to unravel his mother's legacy. It is a search which will leave him and Lucy inextricably linked. But can it bring together the answers he seeks? For Will is not the only one trying to reach the truth at the heart of The Rose Labyrinth.

Sue

still looking for CMD, Cathy and Jill.

just got in frome work,,,
will come back on this evening
xx
cmd