General Chat

The Accidental Sorcerer by K E Mills

Gerald Dunwoody, a Third Grade wizard and lowly safety inspector for Ottoslands Department of Thaumaturgy, inadvertently blows up a factory while trying to save it. Summarily fired, Gerald takes a job in almost bankrupt New Ottosland as royal court wizard for King Lional the 43rd. To prove his powers to the doubtful king and his put-upon sister, Prime Minister Princess Melissande, Gerald turns a cat into a lion and transforms the dowdy princess into a literally bewitching fashion plate, but preventing war between New Ottosland and Kallarap and making a highly illegal dragon for the king may be beyond his will and abilities.

The Pindar Diamond by Katie Hickman

Step inside the hidden alleyways and secret gardens of seventeenth-century Venice. Discover an extraordinary tale of forbidden passion, mistaken identity and a priceless diamond.
This is a gripping and superbly told story that goes as deeply into history as into the human mind.

Your new rules idea sounds good to me, Ann
(I do sometimes read my own suggestions - especially when my friend has given them to me from the charity shop!)

OK I am going off line now, nearly bed time. I will sort the vote tomorrow If Michelle has put her suggestion on when she gets in from work.

How about if we changed the rules a bit?

How about if we still suggest the two books and vote on them. Then we only have to read one of the two chosen and the second book can be any one off the list? So you could read your own choice for one of them. The reviews might then give us other books we want to read (like after Perse's review of Zombies we are ALL going to flock to the library to get it??)

Thank you Ann,

Yes I have read what you said and thank you once again - I had to do that it was driving me to distraction. It would sit on my coffee table glaring up at me - such a ghastly cover.

Persie

Slave.....by Mende Nazer & Damien Lewis
True story of a 12 year old girl taken by Arabs and sold into slavery. Passed on to others until eventually help to escape in England.

The Kite Runner....by Khaled Hosseini
A story of life in Afghanistan 1970 and why people fled to the US. Amir's journey back to find his nephew and what he encountered with the Taliban.

Have you read what I put on the thread Perse. Worth keeping on for your reviews.

Ann,

I don't mind, I will carry on reading regardless forever and ever (I think it is in my marriage vows - allow to read through thick and through thin, or is it the bible: Thou shalt read at all available times.)

I thought I might get banned from the group anyway after my scathing review of the "Zombies" - sorry I got carried away.

Persie xx

The Summer House by Marcia Willett.

Matt’s mother kept all his childhood memories in a small inlaid wooden box, amongst the many photos of Matt as a child.
But something about those photos had always puzzled Matt – is that really him? Why does he not remember those clothes? The toys? And where, in the photos, is his sister Imogen? He has grown up with a strange, unresolved feeling that there is something missing in his life.
Imogen, meanwhile, is living with her husband, a country vet, and their gorgeous baby in a rented cottage. Ever since her childhood she has loved the Summer House, a charming folly in the grounds of a beautiful and ancient house on Exmoor, and now they have the chance of buying it. But her marriage is threatened when her husband refuses to move.
Eventually, the Summer House provides the key to the strange and tragic secret which has affected Matt’s whole life.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

This book tells of Scout and Jem's childhood in Alabama and how a series of events shook their innocence, shaped their character and taught them about human nature. Lee examines racism and other prejudices through a page turning story told in a wonderful, Southern voice. This is a must read American classic.

What moves To Kill a Mockingbird to classic status is its morality and ability to draw sympathy out of readers as much today as when it was written in 1960. To Kill a Mockingbird deals with heavy issues--racism, oppression, injustice. Amazingly, it is able to handle these deep and sensitive areas without feeling depressing or preachy. Lee accomplishes this by making the narrator a child and allowing us to learn along with her.

This book is still required reading at both high schools and for those studying English 101 at University.

That is 2 opted out now. Is it really worth running with only 5 of us? Robin also can't now join us because he has a different job.

I'll be back with my suggests later I have to go to work at the moment.

Sorry everyone. I need to opt out at the moment.

Will continue to read this thread, and will try to get correct books.

Still behaind with my reading (and paperwork).

Hope that everyone is well,

Tess

Sorry, Ann, yes, David Guterson.

Helen do we have an author for Snow falling on cedars?

Snow Falling on Cedars

Snow Falling on Cedars is an interracial romance, a murder mystery, a courtroom drama, and a fictionalized chronicle of the World War II internment of Japanese-Americans. This book pulls the reader into an accurate rendering of life on an island in Puget Sound. The disparate aspects of the novel are seamlessly interwoven into a narrative that allows the reader to embrace the plot, the characters, and the dead-on descriptions of the physical characteristics of the novel's setting.

The novel is narrated by Ismael Chambers, the publisher of the only newspaper on San Piedro Island, the fictional stand-in for Bainbridge Island, Washington. The islanders are, with few exceptions, either strawberry farmers or salmon fishermen. When a white fisherman dies under suspicious circumstances, the evidence points towards a Japanese-American fisherman who was the last person to see the dead man alive. Ishmael's boyhood romance with Hatsue, the girl that later becomes the accused man's wife, provides fertile material for interesting flashbacks to the early 1940s, when virtually all of the island's Japanese-American population was carted off to internment camps soon after the bombing of Pearl Harbour.

Anybody Can Do Anything by Betty Bard Macdonald (Available at Amazon)

In Anybody Can Do Anything, Betty describes life with her family and her two young daughters, Anne and Joan, in Seattle after she has left her husband and their egg ranch behind. The Depression is on, and Betty, now a single mother, struggles with her large and interesting clan to make ends meet, somehow finding a lot of laughs and funny adventures, often with her exuberant sister Mary, the inspiration for the book, along the way. Anyone who is interested in what life was like in Seattle in the 1930s, in witty character descriptions, and in a personal glimpse of how families coped with the "Great Depression", will find this book fascinating, not to mention frequently hilarious.

This is a very funny autobiography which has had me laughing out loud on the train to work! And whenever I feel things are tough the true story of Betty, Mary and their zany family keeps me grounded.

Blackthorn Winter by Sarah Challis

In April, when blackthorn blossom clothes the hedgerows like a wedding veil, there sometimes comes a frost so severe that it seems as if the summer will never come. Country people call this a blackthorn winter.
For Claudia Barron, arriving in the Dorset village of Court Barton that April, blackthorn winter seems like a metaphor for everything that has happened to her. Hiding from her previous life, she adopts an assumed name and applies for a job in the local school. But villages don’t much like mysteries and secrets and soon the inhabitants of Court Barton set out to find out what it is that Claudia Barron is hiding from and why.

King's Daughter by Christie Dickason

As First Daughter of England, Elizabeth seems to live a life of privilege and luxury. Yet she is imprisoned by duty; a helpless pawn in the political machinations of her father, James I. She trusts only her beloved brother Henry until she is sent a slave-girl, Tallie, who becomes her unlikely advisor. As their friendship grows, the innocent Elizabeth must learn to listen to dangerous truths about her louche father and his volatile court. Can she risk playing their games of secrecy and subterfuge in order to forge her path to love and freedom?

Other people’s secrets by Louise Candlish
Ginny and Adam Trustlove arrive on holiday in Italy torn apart by personal tragedy. Two weeks in a boathouse on the edge of peaceful Lake Orta is exactly what they need to restore their faith in life – and each other.
24 hours later, the silence is broken. The Sale family have arrived at the main villa: wealthy, high flying Marty, his beautiful wife Bea, and their privileged, confident offspring. It doesn’t take long for Ginny and Adam to be drawn in, especially when the teenage Pippi introduces a new friend into the circle. For there is something about Zach that has everyone instantly beguiled, something that loosens old secrets – and created shocking new ones.
And yet, not one of them suspects that his arrival in their lives might be anything other than accidental

Sands of Time Barbara Erskine
Sands of time features two intriguing long stories that pick up the fortunes of characters from Whispers in the Sand. Still haunted by ancient mysteries and the subject of dark intentions, Anna and Luisa must once more do battle with the past in order to survive the present.

Here too are a host of other tales all with the touch of the unexpected. A happily married woman has an affair – with a man who died in the First World War...... Who is the little girl on the swing in the garden – and why does only Charlotte see her? And how can a traveller find herself transported suddenly from her airplane seat to the snowy Canadian wastes below?
Suspense, romance, passion, unexpected echoes of the past.

Ann

Will do this in morning. I had been waiting for you to come on and then got to watching Television. It is 12.15am 16th here.

Persie