General Chat

As usual two books please. Vote will be Saturday if I can get on line, otherwise Sunday or when all suggestions are in.

Kate Atkinson Behind the Scenes at the Museum
Ruby Lennox was conceived grudgingly by Bunty and born while her father, George, was in the Dog and Hare in Doncaster telling a woman in an emerald dress and a D cup that he wasn’t married. Bunty had never wanted to marry George but here she was, stuck with 3 little girls in a flat above the pet shop in an ancient street beneath York Minster.
Ruby tells the story of The Family, from the day at the end of the 19th century when a travelling photographer catches frail beautiful Alice and her children like flowers in amber, to the startling, witty and memorable events of her own life.
Review Sunday Times: ‘Enchanting. It hops with sprightly omniscience from past to future and back again.... takes in tragedy, history, mystery and comedy through the sarky, perky, pessimistic voice of Ruby Lennox.’
I think this was her first novel.


The Dream House by Rachel Hore
Everyone has a dream of their perfect house.
For Kate Hutchinson, the move to Suffolk from the tiny, noisy London terrace she shares with her husband Simon and their two young children was almost enough to make her dreams come true.
Space, peace and a measured, rural pace of life have a far greater pull for Kate than the constantly overflowing in tray on her desk at work. Moving in with her Mother in law must surely be only a temporary measure before the estate agent’s details of the perfect house fall through the letterbox.
But when, out walking one evening, Kate stumbles upon the beautiful house of her dreams, it is tantalizingly out of her each. Its owner is the frail, elderly Agnes, whose story – as it unravels- echoes so much of Kate’s own. And Kate comes to realise how uncertain and unsettling even a life built on dreams can be: wherever you are, at whatever time you are living, and whoever you are with......

My suggestions are

The particular sadness of lemon cake by Aimee Bender

On the night before her 9th birthday, Rose bites into her Mums lemon choc cake Isounds deicious !!) and finds that she has a magical gift of being able to taste her mothers feelings in the cake...and discovers that food is suddenly a peril to her..secret knowledges

and


When God was a Rabbit by Sarah winman

Its a story of siblings, of growing up from Essex to New York and the aftermath of 9/ll It has wit and humour , friendship love and secrets.. I believe is a first novel.

Sorry I need to nudge this up

From Perse

Ravenscliffe by Jane Sanderson

This is the sequel to Netherwood which we read some time ago. (re Netherwood for those that may need a memory jog: An engaging period drama set in the Edwardian era, which introduces you to the residents – and servants – of Netherwood Hall Yorkshire, 1904. (Above the stairs). Lord Hoyland owns Netherwood Hall, a splendid estate on the outskirts of town. He maintains his considerable fortune thanks to the profits from his three coal mines in the area.
Meanwhile, (below the stairs), Eve Williams is the wife of one of Lord Hoyland's hard-working employees. When her ordered existence, set amid the terraced rows of the miners' houses, is brought crashing down, she is given the chance to find out how the other half really lives.

Now Ravensliffe..
Yorkshire, 1904. On Netherwood Common, Russian émigré Anna Rabinovich shows her dear friend Eve Williams a house: a Victorian villa, solidly built from local stone. This is Ravenscliffe, and it's the house Anna wants them to live in. It's their house, she says. It was meant to be. As Anna transforms Ravenscliffe, an attraction grows between her and union man Amos . But when Eve's long-lost brother Silas turns up in the closely-knit mining community of Netherwood, cracks begin to appear in even the strongest friendships. Meanwhile, at Netherwood Hall, cherished traditions are being undermined by the whims of the feckless heir to the title, Tobias Hoyland , and his American bride Thea Stirling . Below stairs, the loyal servants strive to preserve the noble family's dignity and reputation. But both inside the great house and in the world beyond, values and loyalties are rapidly changing.

My other recommendation was recommended to me on Facebook ..

Letters of a Woman Homesteader by Elimore Pruitt Stewart

1) it is free to download on kindle
2) if you haven't got a kindle (I don't) you can print off the PDF of it or read it on screen.. it is about 62 pages size A4... so for those of you that find you can't always get a book read in full..

3) It has favourable reviews.. so rather than me review it from the net: http://books.google.co.nz/books/about/Letters_of_a_Woman_Homesteader.html?id=-4UUAAAAYAAJ&redir_esc=y or
http://historianatwork.wordpress.com/2010/09/28/review-letters-of-a-woman-homesteader/......

Seems like it would be a good and easy read and maybe less time consuming.. LOL


Persie

How not to murder your mother by Stephanie Calman

Ms Calman hits the jackpot once more with How 'not' to murder your mother! Having nodded in agreement all the way through Confessions of a Bad Mother and Failed Grown up I wasn't sure if, given my own wonderful relationship with my mother, How 'not' to Murder Your Mother would ring true. My goodness me! I laughed, I cried and I did nod along! A very honest and heartfelt book that anyone who has ever had a mother should read!

Blue Smoke by Nora Roberts

Reena Hale has more reason than most to be afraid of fire. When she was a child, her family's restaurant was burned to the ground, and the man responsible sent to jail. The Hale family banded together to rebuild, and Reena found her life's calling: to become an arson investigator.

With the past firmly behind her, things are going well for Reena. She has a job she loves, a house of her own - and a mysterious new neighbour who's proving a heated distraction. But then she is called in on a series of suspicious fires that seem to be connected - not just to each other, but to her. As danger ignites all around her, Reena must fight to protect the life she's built - even if that means getting burned.

x Jill

Sleeping Arrangements .. by Sophie Kinsella

Chloe needs a holiday. She's sick of making wedding dresses and her partner is having trouble at work. Her wealthy friend Gerard has offered the loan of his luxury villa in Spain - perfect. Hugh is not a happy man. His immaculate wife seems more interested in the granite for the new kitchen than in him, and he works so hard to pay for it all, he barely has time to see their children. But his old schoolfriend Gerard has lent them a luxury villa in Spain - perfect.
Both families arrive at the villa and get a shock: Gerard has double-booked. An uneasy week of sharing begins, and tensions soon mount in the soaring heat. But there's also a secret history between the families - and as tempers fray, an old passion begins to resurface...

Trunk Music .. by Michael Connolly.

The murder of a Hollywood producer has all the signs of a Mafia hit but something doesn't add up to Harry Bosch.
Harry Bosch is back in Homicide after disciplinary leave. In the wooded hills overlooking the Hollywood Bowl, he opens the trunk of a white Rolls Royce and finds a corpse. It looks like a simple case of Trunk Music - a Mafia hit, the victim shot in his own vehicle - but the Mafia weren't the only ones after movie producer Tony Aliso.

Tracing Tony A's Mob laundry in the face of official obstruction puts Harry up against the FBI and back in the arms of a gorgeous ex-felon. Warned off the case by internal investigators, nailing Aliso's elusive killer looks like the only way to make sure that Harry's first case back in Homicide isn't his last in the LAPD.

Be back later after work Thanks Michelle

Philida - Andre Brink

This is what it is to be a slave: that everything is decided for you from out there. You just got to listen and do as they tell you. You don’t say no. You don’t ask questions. You just do what they tell you. But far at the back of your head you think: Soon there must come a day when I can say for myself: This and that I shall do, this and that I shall not.

It is 1832 in South Africa, the year before slavery is abolished and the slaves are emancipated. Philida is the mother of four children by Francois Brink, the son of her master. When Francois’s father orders him to marry a woman from a prominent Cape Town family, Francois reneges on his promise to give Philida her freedom, threatening instead to sell her to new owners in the harsh country up north.

Here is the remarkable story—based on individuals connected to the author’s family—of a fiercely independent woman who will settle for nothing and for no one. Unwilling to accept the future that lies ahead of her, Philida continues to test the limits and lodges a complaint against the Brink family. Then she sets off on a journey—from the southernmost reaches of the Cape, across a great wilderness, to the far north of the country—in order to reclaim her soul.

The Jewels of Paradise - 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. From a masterful writer, The Jewels of Paradise is a superb novel, a gripping tale of intrigue, music, history and greed.

The Firemaster's Mistress by Christie Dickason

In the troubled year of 1605, Papist plots are rife in the gaudy streets of Shakespeare's London as the fifth of November approaches …
Francis Quoynt, Firemaster, is recently returned from Flanders and dreaming of making fireworks rather than war.
Instead, Quoynt is recruited by Robert Cecil, First Minister, to spy on Guido Fawkes and his fellow conspirators. Meanwhile, Sir Francis Bacon is scheming for high position and spying on Quoynt.
Kate Peach, a glove maker, was Quoynt's lover before war took him away. Now living in Southwark, she is brought into grave danger. She is a secret Catholic. A fugitive Jesuit is concealed in her rooms. While Francis hopes to prevent the death of King James I and everyone in his parliament, Kate will have to save herself …

Capital by John Lanchester

The residents of Pepys Road, London - a banker and his shopaholic wife, an old woman dying of a brain tumour, a family of Pakistani shop owners, the young football star from Senegal and his minder - all receive an anonymous postcard one day with a simple message: We Want What You Have. Who is behind it? What do they want?
As the mystery of the postcards deepens, the world around Pepys Road is turned upside down by the financial crash and all of its residents' lives change beyond recognition over the course of the next year.

Just nudging up for Dee who is joining us this time. Sorry new name Vintage something.

I do have Helen's to add but will do that tomorrow when I can get on my net book, it is not so easy on the I pad to copy and paste from e mail.

After the War is Over – Maureen Lee
Liverpool 1945 Three women – the closest of friends – return home from the war, trying to fit back into their old lives. Thrown together by conflict, they have shared the good and the bad times and now their lives seem dull in comparison. But not for long


Leave it to Psmith – P G Wodehouse
A Blandings Novel. I have been enjoying Blandings on TV on a Sunday so thought it might be good to read one of the books

Thanks Dee probably vote tomorrow.

ok Ann

I added or thought I did Helen's suggestions this morning. I will have to go back and do it again as I can't see them.

Suggestions.

The Piano Tuner by Daniel Mason

In1886 piano tuner Edgar Drake receives a strange request from the War Office: he must leave his wife and his quiet life in London to travel to the jungles of Burma to tune a rare Erhard grand piano. The piano belongs to Surgeon-Major Anthony Carroll, an enigmatic British officer, whose success at making peace in the war-torn Shan States is legendary, but whose unorthodox methods have begun to attract suspicion. So begins the journey of the soft-spoken Edgar across Europe, the Red Sea, India, Burma, and at last into the remote highlands of the Shan States. En route he is entranced by the Doctor's letters and by the shifting cast of tale-spinners, soldiers and thieves who cross his path. As his captivation grows, however, so do his questions: about the Doctor's true motives, about an enchanting and elusive woman who travels with him into the jungle, about why he came. And, ultimately, whether he will ever be able to return home unchanged to the woman who awaits him there . . . Sensuous and lyrical, rich with passion and adventure.

The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s third book, stands as the supreme achievement of his career. This exemplary novel of the Jazz Age has been acclaimed by generations of readers. The story of the fabulously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan, of lavish parties on Long Island at a time when The New York Times noted “gin was the national drink and sex the national obsession,” it is an exquisitely crafted tale of America in the 1920s.
The Great Gatsby is one of the great classics of twentieth-century