General Chat

Hi Jeanette, good to see you on here. No not read any of the books by Vanora Bennett, will look out for her. Mind you I still have 5 of E Chadwick's books on my shelf to read and one other of Philippa Gregory's (plus about 100 others!!!

Ann
Glos x

Thanks Anne.

Hi Ann

Hope you are well. There's a couple of interesting looking books on the list that I'll make a note of.

I've just got The Time of Singing by Elizabeth Chadwick from the library. I'm dying to get on with it but I need to finish the one I'm reading first (Heretic by Bernard Cornwell).

Have you read anything by Vanora Bennett? I can thoroughly recommend her books to anyone who is a fan of historical fiction

Jeanette x

Will hold the result until after then May

Hi Anne, Will not be able to vote until about 9pm today. Going to visit recently bereaved friend this afternoon and will not be back home until then. hope this will be O.K.

May.

thanks Angela.

Ann

Stratton's War by Laura Wilson, London during the Blitz is the setting for this atmospheric detective mystery, where gangers spies and service agents mingle with the Home Front crowd.

Secrets by Freya North, Here are big modern thesmes, debt, single motherhood, come wrapped in the story of tess Joe and Em, Joe has a perfect life in his big house by the sea, until tess answers his house-sitter ad and turns up with her little girl Em. Her arrival makes him question his own life assumptions and he also begins to wonder if Tess has a secret to hide.

Angela

Thank you. Good luck with the reading. Catch you later.

n

Anyone want to join us. you don't need to read both books and you don't have to review by the dead line.

Ann
Glos

thank you aunty Sherlock, sorry you can't join us. Also thank you Deanna, yes, the group has encouraged me to read many authors i would have ignored before, some I have gone back to some I wouldn't read again

Ann
Glos

From Jill

The Outcast by Sandie Jones

One summer day in 1957, nineteen yr old Lewis Aldridge stands alone at Waterford railway station. The only person waiting his return is 15 yr old girl called Kit Carmichael. Like him, she endured a childhood spent after the war in the stifling atmosphere of an English village.

Sovereign by C J Sansom

Will have to look this up on Amazon if you are interested as there is no synopsis

AuntySherlock... I know exactly what you mean. I have been 'tortured' by some of the lovely books described on this thread over the years... and it has been years... I write down the names and authors and am 'trapped' into buying them when I get into a book shop.
Now of course I have Amazon..... HELP ME!!
I cannot join the book club as I would not be able to read the books to order. I very often don't like the books voted for.
But this is a wonderful thread and I think you are all great the way you read the books the majority choose.
Good luck with it... keep up the good work. You have introduced me to many a book I may never have found otherwise... thanks for that.
Deanna X

Hi Ann, Thank you for your invitation to join your group. I need to decline the offer and plead temporary insanity as the reason.

I figured that excuse should be sufficient to explain any lapse of protocol on my part, but still leave the door open just a smidge should I ever wish to stop searching for missing links, and start reading again.

Hater by David Moody

Desciption From Booklist: One day Danny McCoyne’s life tends toward the humdrum: job, family, the usual. The next day, suddenly, without warning or explanation, people are turning into killers, murdering their loved ones, attacking perfect strangers. Soon Danny is trying desperately to keep his family safe, while all around him society seems to be self-destructing, as ordinary men and women turn into animals, filled with hate and violence. This is a truly frightening book because, like Danny, we’re constantly scrambling to process what’s going on.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith

From Amazon "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains." So begins Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, an expanded edition of the beloved Jane Austen novel featuring all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie mayhem. As our story opens, a mysterious plague has fallen upon the quiet English village of Meryton—and the dead are returning to life! Feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet is determined to wipe out the zombie menace, but she's soon distracted by the arrival of the haughty and arrogant Mr. Darcy. What ensues is a delightful comedy of manners with plenty of civilized sparring between the two young lovers—and even more violent sparring on the blood-soaked battlefield as Elizabeth wages war against hordes of flesh-eating undead. Can she vanquish the spawn of Satan? And overcome the social prejudices of the class-conscious landed gentry? Complete with romance, heartbreak, swordfights, cannibalism, and thousands of rotting corpses.

Thanks to all so far.

Aunty Sherlock, are you joining the book readers this time? Thank you for your suggestions but we never criticize anybody's choice (just don't vote for them if we don't want to read.) I need to know if youa re going to join us as we only include suggestions from people who are joining in, voting, reading and reviewing the 2 chosen books. Please do feel free to join us, all welcome with all types of books.

Ann
Glos

I’d like to suggest-

Divas Don’t Knit by Gil McNeil

Slip one A year after her husband's death, Jo Mackenzie is finally starting to get the hang of being a single parent. Knit two together The boys are thriving in their new seaside home, the wool shop is starting to do well and despite two weddings, an in-school knitting project and Trevor the Wonder Dog coming to stay, she's just about keeping her head above water. Cast off But boys, babies and best friends certainly make life a lot more interesting. Can Jo cope when things get really complicated? Because if knitting truly does keep you sane when your life starts to unravel then it looks like Jo is going to need much bigger needles.


Virgin Blue by Tracy Chevalier

Meet Ella Turner and Isabelle du Moulin -- two women born centuries apart, yet tied together by a haunting family legacy. When Ella and her husband move to a small town in France, Ella hopes to brush up on her French, qualify to practice as a midwife, and start working on a family of her own. Village life turns out to be less idyllic than she expected, however, and a strange series of events propels her on a quest to uncover her family's French ancestry. As the novel unfolds -- alternating between Ella's story and that of Isabelle du Moulin four hundred years earlier -- a common thread emerges that pulls the lives of the two women together in a most mysterious way. Part detective story, part historical fiction, the Virgin Blue is a novel of passion and intrigue that compels readers to the very last page.

Heavens!! Don't normally venture onto this thread. You lot have a very serious outlook on your reading.

From the library of an almost complete nutter may I suggest, just as a lighter aside to all that serious literary prose,,,,,

Janet Evanovich and her Stephanie Plum books.

Stephanie Plum is down on her luck. She's lost her job. her car's on the brink of repossession, and her apartment is fast becoming furniture-free. So Stephanie "wins" a job as a bail-bond's person, and the rest is written in the first of the series, "One for the Money".

Two points, I think I'll have Ranger, and I'm modelling myself on Grandma Mazur.

If you have already read them, you'll understand. If you haven't, what are you waiting for??

Daughters of Liverpool by Annie Groves.

When times are hard, everyone needs a family.
Katie's full of trepidation as she arrives in Liverpool. It's her first posting and her work will be so secret that she can't speak about it even to the family she's billited with. But she is delighted to find herself among such warm people, who despite the danger make her feel as if she's one of their own.
Which is just fine with everyone but Luke, son of the household and battle scarred veteran of Dunkirk. His mother can't help worrying about him- but she's got more than enough on her plate with her youngest children, the twins, who don't see why a war should stop them having fun. Then the bombs begin to rain on Liverpool in earnest and everyone, from oldest to youngest, must realise what matters most in life.