General Chat

Please suggest your two books and please say if you want the review date to be the week before or the week after Christmas. Thanks.

My Suggestions

The Haunting by Alan Titchmarsh

How can the mysterious disappearance of Anne Flint in 1816 and the drowning of a young girl in a chalk stream so long ago possibly affect the life of schoolteacher Harry Flint some two centuries later?
Having left his job and with a failed marriage behind him, Harry begins to research his ancestors. The deeper he digs, the more he realises that the past is closer than he had ever imagined.
The Haunting is a story of love and betrayal, intrigue and murder. Where people are not what they seem, and the past is no more predictable than the future....

Lady of the English By Elizabeth Chadwick

Two very different women ...Linked by destiny and a power struggle for the English crown. Empress Matilda, daughter of Henry I, is determined to win back her crown from Stephen, the usurper king, against all odds and despite all men. Adeliza, Henry's widowed queen and Matilda's stepmother, has always been on Matilda's side but now she is married to William D'Albini, a warrior of the opposition. In a world where a man's word is law, how can Adeliza obey her husband while supporting Matilda, the rightful queen? What does it cost to be 'Lady of the English'?

I think I would rather review after Christmas, Please.

The Art of Love by Elizabeth Edmondson
1930s Bloomsbury: young artist Polly Smith is struggling to make a living when her rich friend Oliver invites her to stay with his father, the disgraced Lord fraddon, at his extraordinary house in the south of france.
Evicted by her landlady, and deeply unsatisfied with her painting, polly is happy to escape from grey skies as well as from her staid fiancé, but her happiness is shattered when she applies for a passport only to discover to her horror that she is not in fact Polly Smith.
On the Riviera Polly finds herself mingling with a glamorous circle of artists, aristocrats, millionaires and miscreants, none of whom, like Polly herself, sre quite what they seem.
Revelling in the brilliant light, and intrigues by her new friends, Polly paints with a new-found passion, unaware of the danger she is in. As secrets, past and present, are revealed, her own future begins to take on a new and fascinating shape.

Daughters of the Grail by Elizabeth Chadwick

Thirteenth century France: Bridget has grown up mastering the mystical gifts of her ancestor Mary Magdalene, whose unbroken female lineage has kept a legacy of wisdom alive for a thousand years. But the all-powerful Catholic church has sworn to destroy Bridget for using her healing talents and supernatural abilities.
Bridget’s duty to continue the bloodline leads her into the arms of Raoul de Montvallant – a Catholic. But when the church’s savage religious intolerance causes Raoul to turn rebel, a terrible vengeance is exacted by Simon de Montfort, the unstoppable Catholic leader.

Pammy, that is a coincidence I had not seen your suggestions, two by the same author.

Have seen this and will put my suggestions on as soon as I have eaten

xx Jill

The Kingmaker's Daughter by Philippa Gregory

'I have lost my father in battle, my sister to Elizabeth Woodville's spy, my brother-in-law to Elizabeth Woodville's executioner, my nephew to her poisoner, and now my son to her curse...' The gripping and ultimately tragic story of Anne Neville and her sister Isabel, the daughters of the Earl of Warwick, the most powerful magnate in England through the Cousins' Wars. In the absence of a son and heir, he ruthlessly uses the two girls as pawns but they, in their own right, are thoughtful and powerful actors. Against the backdrop of the court of Edward IV and his beautiful queen, Elizabeth Woodville, Anne turns from a delightful child growing up in intimacy and friendship with the family of Richard Duke of York to become ever more fearful and desperate as her father's enemies turn against her, the net closes in and there is, in the end, simply nowhere she can turn, no one she can trust with her life.

And another by Philippa Gregory Fallen Skies
Terrific novel set in the Roaring Twenties, reissued to accompany Philippa Gregory’s new bestselling novel, The Last Boleyn.

Lily Valance wants to forget the war. She's determined to enjoy the world of the 1920s, with its music, singing, laughter and pleasure. When she meets Captain Stephen Winters, a decorated hero back from the Front, she's drawn to his wealth and status. In Lily he sees his salvation – from the past, from the nightmare, from the guilt at surviving the Flanders plains where so many were lost.

But it's a dream that cannot last. Lily has no intention of leaving her singing career. The hidden tensions of the respectable facade of the Winters household come to a head. Stephen's nightmares merge ever closer with reality and the truth of what took place in the mud and darkness brings him and all who loves him to a terrible reckoning…

xx Jill

Week after Christmas might be better but will fall in with what is best xx

I love Elizabeth Chadwick, Ann - I've even got my husband reading them!

Thanks Pammy and Jill. That is two for after Christmas which would suit me also so that is three.

The Headhunters by Jo Nesbo. From perse

Nesbo's Harry Hole series, starring the troubled Oslo police detective, vaulted the author to the Scandinavian crime-fiction A-list.

Now he tries something completely different: a twisty, plot-driven Hitchcockian thriller starring an Oslo headhunter, Roger Brown, legendary in the city's high-end business world for never recommending an executive who wasn't hired. But behind the image, Roger has deep trouble: in order to keep his art-gallery-owner wife, Diana, in the luxurious lifestyle he feels she deserves, he moonlights as an art thief, stealing paintings from the candidates he interviews. That's fine, except he may now have met his match: the former chief executive of a GPS manufacturer, who claims to own a long-missing Rubens and who may also be sleeping with Roger's wife. Nothing is as it seems in this deliciously plotted thriller, and as the tale unwinds, Nesbo delivers one shock after the other, culminating with a doozy of a switcheroo at the finish.

I didn't select one of the Harry ones because there are so many..


Persie

From Perse

Baker Towers
by Jennifer Haigh



Haigh's second novel, following the glowing Mrs. Kimble (2003), is set in Bakerton, a mining town in post-World World II Pennsylvania. Haigh's focus is the Novak family, particularly the five children being raised by their Italian mother after their Polish father drops dead. All five make attempts to escape Bakerton at one point or another; some are successful, others are not. George, a veteran of WW II, neglects his Bakerton fiancee and marries a cold socialite. Dorothy goes to the nation's capital to work, but a nervous breakdown brings her home. Brilliant, cold Joyce thinks her future lies with the military, but she is sorely disappointed. Sandy is the golden son who escapes to dubious success. And Lucy is the youngest, who finds herself in college despite the nagging feeling that she never wanted to leave home in the first place. Haigh creates a real sense of a community and brings her mining town to life through a large cast of minor characters who pass in and out of the Novaks' lives. The mines that the town is built upon cannot be forgotten either, even as their time comes, disastrously, to pass. Baker Towers is a novel possessing a rare, quiet power to evoke a time long past and the character of the people who lived then.

Persie

A good morning post to bump this up xx

The Jewels of Paradise by Donna Leon

Caterina Pellegrini is a native Venetian, and like so many of them, she’s had to leave home to pursue her career. With a doctorate in baroque opera from Vienna, she lands in Manchester, England. Manchester, however, is no Venice. When Caterina gets word of a position back home, she jumps at the opportunity.

The job is an unusual one. After nearly three centuries, two locked trunks, believed to contain the papers of a baroque composer have been discovered. Deeply-connected in religious and political circles, the composer died childless; now two Venetians, descendants of his cousins, each claim inheritance. Caterina’s job is to examine any enclosed papers to discover the “testamentary disposition” of the composer. But when her research takes her in unexpected directions she begins to wonder just what secrets these trunks may hold.

The Disciple of Las Vegas (Ava Lee) by Ian Hamilton

Fifty million dollars has disappeared into thin air from the accounts of one of the richest men in the Philippines, Tommy Ordonez. His one hope is Ava Lee---sleek, capable forensic accountant and sleuth. With the help of her Triad-connected partner, Uncle, Ava follows the money trail from San Francisco to Costa Rica to the casinos and illegal gambling dens of Las Vegas. Meanwhile, a vengeful adversary from Ava’s past has put out a contract on her life, and the shadowy hit man is close at her heels every step of the way. Will Ava recover the stolen cash without stepping into the crosshairs of a growing list of enemies? The first book of an electrifying new series, The Disciple of Las Vegas introduces Ava Lee: a deadly martial artist with a taste for luxury and a mind like a steel trap

After Christmas please, I know I won't get to finish a book before hand - Thanks Michelle

From Helen
Oryx and Crake – Margaret Atwood

Is this Sci-Fi or a psychological drama? In Oryx and Crake, a science fiction novel that is more Swift than Heinlein, more cautionary tale than "fictional science" (no flying cars here), Margaret Atwood depicts a near-future world that turns from the merely horrible to the horrific, from a fool's paradise to a bio-wasteland. Snowman (a man once known as Jimmy) sleeps in a tree and just might be the only human left on our devastated planet. He is not entirely alone, however, as he considers himself the shepherd of a group of experimental, human-like creatures called the Children of Crake. As he scavenges and tends to his insect bites, Snowman recalls in flashbacks how the world fell apart.

A Sixpenny Christmas – Kate Flynn

As the worst storm of the century breaks across the North West, sweeping through Snowdonia and across the Mersey to burst upon Liverpool, two women. Molly and Ellen, give birth to girls in a Liverpool maternity hospital. Despite their different backgrounds, they become firm friends. Molly lives on a hill farm in Snowdonia while Ellen is married to Sam O'Mara, a dock worker who is quicker with a punch than a kiss.
After one punch too many, Ellen throws her husband out, and eventually leaves Liverpool to live with Molly in Snowdonia. Ellen and her daughter throw themselves into their new life with enthusiasm, unaware of the threat that is lurking in the Welsh mountains.
And as another horrendous storm breaks across the hills, the two women's lives are about to take a new turn, but this time they will face the danger together.

Thanks, Ann

Helen x

Losing You – Susan Lewis

Lauren Scott is bright, talented and beautiful. At eighteen, she is the most precious gift in the world to her mother, and has a dazzling career ahead of her. Oliver Lomax is a young man full of promise, despite the shadow his own, deeply troubled, mother casts over him. Then one fateful night, Oliver makes a decision that tears their worlds apart. Until then Lauren and Oliver had never met, but now they become so closely bound together that their families are forced to confront truths they hoped they'd never have to face, secrets they'd never even imagined...


The Black Echo by Michael Connolly

One Sunday LAPD homicide detective Hieronymus 'Harry' Bosch gets a call-out on his pager. A body has been found in a drainage tunnel off Mulholland Drive, Hollywood. The body looks like yet another OD, but Bosch isn't convinced. The one new puncture wound amidst the scars of old tracks strikes an odd note. And something else: Harry knows him. Billy Meadows was a fellow tunnel rat out in Vietnam, running against the VC and against the fear they used to call the Black Echo. Harry let Meadows down once, he won't do it again.

Just Jan to come now I think, unless I have missed anyone

Nudging up for Jan

My suggestions are


City of Dark Hearts by James Conan

Set in 1893 New Yorker goes missing in the then most dangerous city in America..Chicago. Home to the Worlds fair, it is above a city full of its own wealth, but beneath the surface is a terrible underworld. The story is picked up by a female reporter and she is drawn into a very dangerous world , trying to find the missing girl.

The Lantern by Deborah Lawrenson

A whirlwind romance. a beautiful yet abandoned old house in Provence, The strange disappearance of a mans first wife, and a connection to a girl who lived in the house decades before.....

Sorry late been at WI AGM :-D