General Chat

Nudge so people can re-read the synopsis of books.

I think we are all here now. Will have a final check and then put up the vote thread.

Sorry, to hold you up, but my books this time are
Mudbound by Hillary Jordan
When Henry McAllan moves his city-bred wife, Laura, to a cotton farm in the Mississippi Delta in 1946, she finds herself in a place both foreign and frightening. Henry’s love of rural life is not shared by Laura, who struggles to raise their two young children in an isolated shotgun shack under the eye of her hateful, racist father-in-law. When it rains, the waters rise up and swallow the bridge to town, stranding the family in a sea of mud. As the Second World War shudders to an end, two young men return from Europe to help work the farm. Jamie McAllan is everything his older brother Henry is not and is sensitive to Laura’s plight, but also haunted by his memories of combat. Ronsel Jackson, eldest son of the black sharecroppers who live on the farm, comes home from war with the shine of a hero, only to face far more dangerous battles against the ingrained bigotry of his own countrymen. These two unlikely friends become players in a tragedy on the grandest scale.

Slumdog Millionaire by Vikas Swarup
Ram Mohammed Thomas, a poor, 18-year old waiter from the wrong side of the tracks, becomes the biggest quiz-show winner in history, scooping a billion rupee prize in an Indian television programme which goes one better than 'Millionaire'. Unfortunately, the producers don't have the money to pay him, so instead, charge him with fraud. Fortunately, a young lawyer comes to his assistance. Chapter by chapter, the young man recounts his autobiography, the narrative of his fraught life illustrating how it is that an ignorant, uneducated teenager comes to know the answers to all the questions he is asked on the show.

x Jill
If the above has been read then I would suggest The Loop by Nicholas Evans

No problem Tess, I know you have not been well. Plenty of time.

Here are the details of my second suggestion.

The Devil's Acre by matthew Plampin

Spring 1858. After a triumphant display at the Great Exhibition in London, American entreoreneur and inventor, Colenlel Samuel Colt, expands his gun-making buisiness into England. He acquires a riverside warehouse in Pimlico and sets about converting it into a pistol works, capable of mass producing his patented revolvers on an upprecedented scale - aware that the prospect of war with Russia means hihg profits.

Young, ambitious Edward Lowry is hired by Colonel Colt to act as his London Secretary. Although initially impressed by the Colonel's dynamic approach to his trade, Edward comes to suspect that the American's intentions in the Metropolis are not all thet appear.

Meanwhile, Edward becomes romantically involved with Caroline Knox, a headstrong woman from the machine floor, who he discovers is caught up in a plot to steal revolvers from the factorys stores.

Amoung the workforce Colt has gathered from the seething mass of London's poor are a gang of desperate Irish immigrants, embittered refugees from the potato famine, who intend to use these stolen pistols for a political assassination.

As guns go missing, divided loyalties and hidden agendas make the gun-makers factory the setting for a tense story of intrigue, betrayal and murder.

Sorry thatit has taken me so long to add this.


Tess

The Tenth Circle
I’m recommending yet another book by Jodi Picoult. This is because the two books which we previously read (Nineteen Minutes and Picture Perfect) were so in-depth that I felt for the characters. She must use a lot of research for her subjects. This one describes the trauma following a young girl telling her father that she has been raped.

If I am Missing or Dead
by Janine Latus. Non-fiction. Amy is already missing when the note is found. It says 'question Ron'.

We are waiting for Jill and for one more from Tess. well we have the title we don't have a synopsis.

Thank you. No Robin we have not had those before.

Suggestions for Jan/ Feb

Rapture in Death by J. D. Robb (Nora Roberts)
They died with smiles on their faces. Three apparent suicides. Three strangers with nothing in common- and no obvious reasons for killing themselves. But police Lieutenant Eve Dallas is immediately suspicious of the deaths. And her instincts pay off when autopsies reveal small burn marks on the brains of the victims. Is this a genetic abnormality or a high-tech method of murder?

Harlequin by Bernard Cornwell
In the fourteenth century the English were just beginning to discover their national identity, and one of the strongest elements of this was the overwhelming success in battle of the English bowmen. England's archers crossed the Channel to lay a country to waste. Thomas of Hookton was one of those archers. When his village is sacked by French raiders, he escapes from his father's ambition to become a wild youth who delights in the opportunities which war offers -- for fighting, for revenge and for friendship. But Thomas is hounded by his conscience. He has made a promise to God to retrieve a relic stolen in the raid from Hookton's church.

Thank you, doing well so far.

Thirty Three Teeth by Colin Cotterill

Dr. Siri Paiboun of Laos—"reluctant national coroner, confused psychic, [and] disheartened communist"—employs forensic skills and spiritual acumen to solve a series of bizarre killings in Cotterill's quirky, exotic and winning second novel, set in 1977. Could an old escaped bear be mauling Vientiane citizens? Or is it something more mystical—say, a weretiger? When Paiboun is summoned to the capital to identify the nationality of a pair of charred bodies, he quickly flags them as Asians killed in a helicopter crash, and his ability to connect them to the royal family annoys Communist Party leaders. As Paiboun learns of an effort to get the remaining royal family members out of town, he's arrested, accused of damaging government property. But the witness's testimony is questionable, and Paiboun, representing himself in court, escapes this scrape as handily as he's escaped others before. Paiboun's droll wit and Cotterill's engaging plot twists keep things energetic; the rather grisly murders are offset by comedy, including a scene in which a Party member attempts to impose regulations on the spirit world.

Tears of the Giraffe by Alexander McCall Smith

Precious Ramotswe is the eminently sensible and cunning proprietor of the only ladies’ detective agency in Botswana. In Tears of the Giraffe she tracks a wayward wife, uncovers an unscrupulous maid, and searches for an American man who disappeared into the plains many years ago. In the midst of resolving uncertainties, pondering her impending marriage to a good, kind man, Mr. J. L. B. Matekoni, and the promotion of her talented secretary (a graduate of the Botswana Secretarial College, with a mark of 97 per cent), she also finds her family suddenly and unexpectedly increased by two.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

Enter a vanished and unjust world: Jackson, Mississippi, 1962. Where black maids raise white children, but aren't trusted not to steel the silver....

There's Aibileen, raising her seventeenth white child, while nursing the hurt caused by her own son's death;


Minny, whose cooking is nearly as sassy as her tongue;
and white Miss Skeeter, home from College, who wants to know why her beloved maid has disappeared.

Skeeter, Aibileen and Minny. No one would believe they'd be friends; fewer still would tolerate it. But as each woman finds the courage to cross boundries, they come to depend and rely upon one another. Each is in a search of a truth. And together they have an extraordinary story to tell.....

I need another lie down!!!.
Back later with details of "The Devil's Acre" by Matthew Plampin

The Frozen Lake Elizabeth Edmondson
As 1936 draws to its end, Alix Richardson is overcome by a sense of dissatisfaction with her life in London. Three years before, she fled the family home in Westmoreland , desperate to escape from the tyranny of her formidable grandmother. Now she decides to make the journey back to Wyncrag, to spend Christmas in the company of her beloved twin brother.
She isn’t the only exile to return. As news of the great freeze spreads, the threads of destiny draw family, friends and strangers from near and far including enigmatic New Yorker, Hal – to celebrate the season of goodwill amid the frozen grandeur of fells and lakes.
Beneath the sleek and shining surface of the icy lake, the murky depths flow unseen. Beneath the ordered calm of family life at Wyncrag lurk the shadows of old evils, passions and secrets long hidden and Alix, with her restless curiosity, stirs up the ghosts of the past with profound consequence




Missing You Louise Douglas
Fen works in a bookshop and is devoted to her young son Connor, but she keeps herself to herself. Haunted by guilt and a terrible secret, Fen lives a compromised life, isolated from her family, far from home and too afraid of the past to risk becoming close to anyone.
Sean, on the other hand, is enjoying a seemingly perfect life. He has a successful career, lives in his dream home and adores his beautiful wife, Belle, and their six year old daughter, Amy. That is until the day Belle announces she has found someone else and wants Sean to move out.
Circumstance throws Fen and Sean together and slowly their quiet friendship turns into something much deeper. But will the past tear them apart just as they find happiness?


Full of pathos, Missing You is a novel which perfectly encapsulates the nature of human frailty and is a moving portrayal of the power of love.

My suggestions are -
The Devil's Acre

and

The Help

Will be back with details after I have had a nap!

Tess

Hater by David Moody

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 & Seth Grahame-Smith

For more than 50 years, we learn, England has been overrun by zombies, prompting people like the Bennets to send their daughters away to China for training in the art of deadly combat, and prompting others, like Lady Catherine de Bourgh, to employ armies of ninjas. Added to the familiar plot turns that bring Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy together is the fact that both are highly skilled killers, gleefully slaying zombies on the way to their happy ending.

Lovers& Newcomers by Rosie Thomas

Six college friends, wild in the sixties, now reuniting to face their own sixties together.

Miranda Meadowe decides a lonely widowhood in he crumbling country house is not for her. Reviving a university dream, she invites five of her oldest friends to come and join her to live, and to stave off the prospect of old age. All have their own reasons for accepting.
To begin with, omens are good. They laugh, dance, drink and behave badly, as they cling to the heritage they thought was theirs for ever: power, health and stability. They are the baby boomers; the world is theirs to change. But as old attractions resurface alongside new tensions, they discover that the clock can’t be put back.
When building work, reveals an Iron Age burial site of a tribal queen, the outside world descends on the idyllic retreat, and the isolation of the group is breached. Now the past is revealed; and the future that beckons is very different from the one they imagined.

Pandora’s Box by Giselle Green


According to legend, when Pandora's box is opened it unleashes dark secrets and terrible consequences... Rachel Wetherby's life has been on hold since the diagnosis of her teenage daughter Shelley with a debilitating - and fatal - illness. So when Rachel's mother offloads a box of her old possessions, including a diary, Rachel feels compelled to escape into a past which - on the surface - was care-free. However, opening up the box unearths secrets and memories best left uncovered. Shelley, meanwhile, is juggling a secret romance with planning her own death. Convincing Rachel that she'd like to spend her 15th birthday in Cornwall where she spent so many idyllic childhood summers, she devises her plan. But nothing is as it seems and heartache and surprises lie in store for both mother and daughter.

Hi Ann,

Will be back with suggestions tomorrow pm

Tess

Please make your suggestions for january/February 2011.

Two books as usual fiction or non fiction

The vote will be Sunday 9 January PM, unless all suggestions in early.

New readers welcome.