That's all folks!

Drawing a line under this blog now. It's become a chore. I'm reading loads and loads and loads of books but no longer feel like reviewing them here.

Over and out.

October books

I seem to be falling into a pattern of a once-monthly update now. Oh dear.

In the Shadow of Deception by David Hough
A Cornish historical crime mystery by a prolific writer.

Policeman Pascoe Carne falls in love with a woman who has a secret, though she doesn't know what it is. As her past is uncovered it causes a rift between them...

I loved the characters here and the many twists and turns. I felt there were possibly a few too many plot elements and I lost sight of the main story at one point, but it kept me reading wanting to know how everything was going to be resolved.

Some Veil Did Fall by Kirsty Ferry
Timeslip novel told in two parts - first the contemporary story then the historical.

Becky puts on a historical costume for a photography shoot, and begins experiencing flashbacks, as does the photographer Jon with whom she is falling in love. They investigate the characters and uncover mysteries from the past.

I loved the setting here - Whitby during the Goths festival and also a country house hotel. Very atmospheric. I enjoyed the contemporary story more than the historical and felt the book would have been improved by alternating the chapters.

Beneath the Moon and the Stars by Amelia Thorne
Pen name for Holly Martin.
Joy Cartier moves into 'Britain's Friendliest Village' and finds it anything but. Hunk Finn MacKenzie lives next door and although there is immediate chemistry between them he seems to push her away unable to form a relationship. Joy has an unusual job of chainsaw carving - taking on commissions to create sculptures in woods, anonymously.

There are loads of twists and turns in this very lively but rather unbelievable story. I absolutely loved it although i did have to suspend disbelief on many occasions. The power of the writing kept me going, and the originality of the plot.

Room In Your Heart by Wendy Clarke
A delightful collection of warm, life-affirming stories all previously published in People's Friend.

Summit 8000 by Andrew Lock
Birthday present from a friend. Andrew is the only Australian to have climbed all of the world's 8000-metre peaks, This is the story of all those climbs and the unsuccessful attempts along the way. It's an exciting read if you love mountain adventure books, but so sad, as there are many little epilogues telling of the fate of people he climbed with along the way.

Catching up

Seem to be a bit behind here, having read a number of books lately and not written them up. All Kindle books.

First to Fall by Carys Jones 
A fellow Carina author. I bought the book when it was on promotion. Not my usual sort of thing but I'll try anything. It's set in the US even though Carys is a UK writer. A lawyer has moved to a small town, and he quickly gets caught up in a case where a young woman has murdered her husband. She's confessed, but there's something wrong here. Trouble is her husband was the town's footballing hero - everyone loved him but the lawyer comes to realise he was a wife-beater...

There's a great twist in this book and it kept me reading. Well written and enjoyable though some aspects of the book didn't ring true, perhaps because it was set in the US.

The Novel Writer's Toolshed by Della Galton
Brilliant little guide to writing novels, especially if you've come from a short story writing background. Concise and informative.

A Not Quite Perfect Christmas by Annie Lyons 
Using characters from her novel Not Quite Perfect, Carina author Annie Lyons has sent them to New York for Christmas. Enjoyable but short romp.

The Bookshop on the Corner by Rebecca Raisin
Another short book using characters introduced in other, longer novels, also from a Carina author. Sarah runs a bookshop and lives through the books she adores. Then a hunky journalist comes to town and her friends at the cafe across the road start pushing them into each others' arms... Fun easy read.

Regency Romance Collection by Christina Courtenay 
Three great little romances in one ebook. I really enjoyed these. They're predictable in the way that all such romances are - you know the main characters are going to end up together - but you don't know how they're going to get there or what obstacles will get in their way first. These books have all sorts of problems for our hero and heroine to overcome - from social ostracism to murder attempts - and they keep you reading.

Two books by mates

The trouble with being a writer is that I know lots of other writers and they write such a lot of very good books and I want to read them all. Have I whinged about that before on here? Very probably. Anyway, here are the latest two I've read.

The Last Dance by Sally Quilford 
Sally is probably the best writer I know at plotting. Her books twist and turn and keep you guessing and turning the pages or clicking the kindle buttons. This is the first of a series (yay!) featuring 1960s policewoman Bobbie Blandford. She's new to the job but in her small town posting still ends up helping solve a murder case. Great setting, very evocative of the era (I can tell loads of research was done on policing in the 1960s!) and some wonderful characters. And through it all, there's a great plot as usual.

The Good Guy's Guide to Getting the Girl by Peter Jones
I first heard chapter one of this a couple of years ago at a writers' conference, and read another chapter on Peter's website afterwards. The finally finished book is structured quite differently I think to what I read before though my memory is atrocious so that might not be the case.

Jason Smith is around 30 and in need of a good woman. He's a good guy, but has no idea how to go about finding and chatting up suitable women. Until he takes up glamour photography, after losing his nine-to-five job. This book follows his adventures, the various women he comes across, some of whom take their clothes off for him (for the photos!) all the while aided or not by his best mate Alex.

There were times I wanted to slap Jason and give him some advice - in the way I'd want to slap a male friend who behaved the way he did. That I think is the mark of a great character - one who begins to feel like he's a real mate of yours.

Warm and humorous and brilliantly written. I hope this is the first of many novels from Peter.

The Gallery of Vanished Husbands

The Gallery of Vanished Husbands by Natasha Solomons

Bought in Waitrose, as I have read her earlier two books and love her quirky style. Plus she's a local Dorset author!

Set mostly in the early 60s, Juliet is a young Jewish mother whose Hungarian refugee husband has deserted her. He just left, on her birthday, taking a portrait of her but leaving no explanation. No amount of searching for him by the local Jewish community throws up any trace as to where he has gone. Juliet needs to rebuild her life - and she does this by opening an art gallery. She has an eye for what's good and what's not, and it becomes a huge success. Along the way she acquires dozens more portraits of herself.

Eventually news comes that possibly her husband is in California, and Juliet goes there with her children in search of him...

I loved this book, just like Solomons' previous titles. Quirky, unusual, firmly rooted in its time period and community and with a heroine I won't forget quickly. As an 'aguna' (deserted wife) Juliet has no real identity in her community. That, I think, is why she felt the need to collect so many portraits of herself.

Two novellas

Gypsy Heart by Rosemary Smith

Read this on the way to London a couple of days ago.  Katharine is a well brought up young lady living with her aunt and uncle. On her 20th birthday she meets a gypsy, Kane, falls instantly in love and marries him secretly. Her aunt disapproves and won't allow her to see him. She needs to uncover the secrets of her birth before he can be accepted by her family.

A gentle, escapist tale. True love wins, and the twist ending is not much of a surprise. A pleasant way to pass a long train journey!

A Place of Peace by Sally Quilford

After the above book, I read this, on the same day. Sally's become a bit of an expert at writing romantic intrugue novellas. In this one, Nell goes to live in a house-swap on an island in New England, where she soon falls for the dishy police chief. She's escaping a scandal in England, but finds herself investigating another possible crime on the island.

A satisfying romance, an intriguing mystery and an unexpected ending - this was the perfect novella.

From Paris With Love

From Paris with Love by Samantha Tonge

This is the sequel to Sam's highly successful Doubting Abbey, and features the same mad woman, Gemma and her aristocratic boyfriend Edward. They're working for a month in Paris, learning more about the restaurant industry, as the plan is to save Edward's ancestral home by setting up a cookery school in it.

Then Gemma gets recruited by MI6 to try to uncover a potential threat to the royal family...

It's a wacky plot, but a really fun read, and is highly recommended for a bit of escapism.

Bring me Sunshine

Bring Me Sunshine by Charlie Connelly

Having read his guide to the shipping forecast and loving his style, I bought another couple of books by this author. This one's a guide to Britain's weather- the history of weather forecasting, biographies of the scientists and crackpots who've tried to understand or control the weather, and the author's own reminiscences and experiences of the great British weather.

Very enjoyable. There are a lot of characters described in this book - mostly obsessive Victorian scientists, who along the way invented the barometer, the Beaufort scale, the weather forecasts and various methods of collecting weather related data.

Excellent little book.

The Moment Keeper

The Moment Keeper by Buffy Andrews

Another Carina author!  This is an unusual story of two girls, a generation apart. One is poor, brought up by her grandmother, bullied at school, with few friends. The other is rich, spoilt by her doting parents, popular at school. On the surface they have little in common, but the first girl, Sarah, who has killed herself, is the 'moment keeper' for the second, Olivia. It's Sarah's job to record the most important moments in Olivia's life. As she watches her grow and develop, Sarah finds they have more in common that was at first apparent.

A warm-hearted tale of love, which keeps you turning the pages. Possibly to my middle-aged English mind the values and preoccupations of the teenage American girls were a little hard to comprehend but it's an enjoyable tale nevertheless. 

Dear Lizzie

Dear Lizzie by Annie Lyons

Annie's a fellow Carina author who I met at the RNA party in the summer. This is her second book published by Carina.

Lizzie's beloved sister Bea has just died of cancer, and Lizzie is bereft. She's estranged from the rest of her family, due to complex events which happened when she was a teenager. Bea was her only link and her only friend. Bea leaves her 12 letters, to read one a month for the year following her death. Each one contains a challenge designed to help Lizzie move on, become stronger, and build a better life for herself.

This is a really warm, tear-jerker of a novel. I can't count the number of times I needed to reach for a tissue. It's a wonderful exploration of human relationships in all sorts of ways, and I would highly recommend it.

Lady of Hay

Lady of Hay by Barbara Erskine

Ms Erskine is always recommended whenever someone mentions timeslip novels, and this is widely regarded as one of her best. I bought the 25th anniversary edition, which has an extra chapter at the end, covering what happened to the characters in those 25 years and with an extra twist or two. It's a whopper of a book - I bought the paperback but at over 800 pages think it would have been an easier read on my kindle.

It has a huge an complex plot. In the present day (well, mid 1980s) journalist Jo Clifford is experiencing regressions to a past life - that of Matilda, a lady from the 12th century. Jo's got trouble in her private life - the love of her life Nick has left her and is seeing someone else. Nick's brother Sam is a hypnotist, and can make Jo regress back to the 12th century and be Matilda for a while. He has her best interests at heart - or does he?

Matilda is married very young to a brute of a nobleman, and in her complex history has several children, consorts with Prince then King John, has a love affair with another man. She's a real character who actually existed at that time, and you can tell the author has done a lot of research.

I found the whole reincarnation thing a bit far-fetched, especially as Jo/Matilda isn't the only one in the book. Everyone seems to have been someone else from that time. I know you have to suspend disbelief when reading any book that has a supernatural element, but for me, this one pushed me a bit far without having an adequate explanation of why it was all happening and why these people were targeted as hosts by the long-dead historical characters. Having said that, I very much enjoyed this novel. Erskine is a superb story teller, and I loved the historical strand of the story.

The Winter House

The Winter House by Dee Weaver

I came across this book in a Facebook group dedicated to historical and timeslip fiction. It sounded interesting so I bought it for Kindle ages ago but only just got round to reading it. So many books and so little time.

Maidservant Lily Brent was murdered in the house, over a century ago. Her ghost lives there still, despite the house having stood empty for 40 years. Fynn McColl, a property developer, has bought it, fallen in love with it, and wants to restore it to live in. But Lily sees the reincarnation of the man who murdered her in Fynn, and wants revenge. Meanwhile Georgia, a local vet, has also fallen in love with the house and then falls for Fynn too. She's sceptical about ghosts but as strange things happen in the house she has to revise her opinion, and quickly.

This book is really well written and edited, and was an enjoyable fast-paced read. I felt at the end things had become too weird, too many ghostly activities, and although you have to suspend disbelief when reading a ghost story, this book pushed that suspension a bit too far. I prefer subtler ghosts I think!

But for lovers of ghostly horror, this one is definitely recommended.

The Humans

The Humans by Matt Haig

Saw the author tweet about this book and it looked good, so I bought it. Proof that marketing on Twitter does work.

Very quirky and enjoyable novel. The narrator is an unnamed alien, who has taken the form of maths professor Andrew Martin. He's been sent to stop the humans finding the proof to the Riemann Hypothesis (you don't need to know what that is) because if they do, it'll unlock all sorts of knowledge to them (us) and they (we) are not mature enough to handle it properly.

The alien is supposed to find out who knows what the prof discovered, and then kill them all including the prof's wife and son. Sounds bleak, doesn't it? But actually this book is funny and warm, and says a lot about what it means to be a human, as the alien gradually learns more about this odd species with its emotions and passions and desires.

A short book and highly recommended. If Dad had still been with us, I'd have passed my copy onto him, knowing he would love it.

The Ghost House

The Ghost House by Helen Phifer 

I heard about this book at the RNA Summer Party, and briefly met the author there. The book appealed very much - timeslip, ghostly houses etc - as it's got elements in common with my novels. So I bought it after the party. I've since been offered a two-book deal from the same publisher so Helen and I are stablemates now, as it were!

I very much enjoyed this book. Annie Graham is a police community support officer, recovering from having been badly beaten by her abusive husband. She's looking after her brother's house, which is set in the grounds of a spooky deserted mansion. Something bad happened there a long time ago. Annie comes across an old diary, and also begins experiencing ghosts of the past. A girl's gone missing and to solve the current day problem, Annie must solve the mysteries of the past.

Really gripping book, with loads of suspense and twists and turns aplenty. Very much enjoyed it. It's one of a series featuring the same main character, so I'll definitely have to read the next one too.

Three short non-fiction ebooks I got for free

These were all links to free promotions which I followed from Twitter or the KDP forums. I'm actually glad I didn't pay anything for any of them, as I wasn't particularly impressed. I think there are a lot of authors, mostly in the US, churning out very short non-fiction books. They give them a great title and cover, but the content isn't up to much.

3-Step e-book Ranking System by E. McNew
Can't provide a link as I can no longer find this on Amazon. It may be this one renamed or a taster of it. The author claimed the book would give you secret ways of improving your ebook rankings. She talks about colours of covers - what colours relate to different genres, and what would draw a browser in. I think the sections on each colour must be written in different colours, because on my basic black and white kindle some of this text was pale grey and hard to read. She talks about pen names and pricing. She mentions very briefly the need to edit and format your book and how to upload it to KDP. Then she talks about categorising your book - the essence of this section seems to be to find a small category and put it there, so you have more chance of hitting number one.

The psychology parts were a bit homespun to say the least. The sections on uploading and editing weren't anything much to do with the point of the book. Some of the stuff on categorising and picking keywords was interesting but is covered in more depth on the KDP help pages.

Short, badly formatted, poorly planned.

Author's Quick Guide to Editing your Book by Kristen Eckstein
Needed an edit itself. Several typos in this book, which is unfortunate given its subject matter, and not really acceptable given its brief length. The book talks about whether you should employ a ghost writer (really?), a structural editor or a copy editor. There's a very brief section on making sure you know the difference between affect and effect, compliment and complement etc, and how to use commas.  Part way through the author admits this book was written in a day, as part of a challenge to publish a book a week. It shows. it's one of a series of quick guides for authors but I won't be downloading any others, even if they're free.

Knee Pain Cure by Ace McCloud
This book wins an award for the longest ever subtitle which I can't be bothered to type out. I have dodgy knees so when I saw this one for free I downloaded it, hoping to pick up a few tips. It's mostly about dealing with and recovering from knee injuries. Arthritis is given a passing mention. There's a lot about possible surgeries to repair knees, and no real advice for coping with or minimising regular age-related wear and tear. So nothing in it for me, and again, another book which came across as poorly planned.

The Oyster Catcher

The Oyster Catcher by Jo Thomas 

This book won the RNA Joan Hessayon award 2014, which was presented at the RAN summer party I attended. So I had to read it, to see how it shaped up to other novels nominated for that award.

Fiona is jilted at the altar, after the vows but before signing the register. Her groom runs off with his best man. She runs off in the campervan they were supposed to honeymoon in, and finds herself on the west of Ireland, with a torn wedding dress, a crashed campervan, unsuitable shoes and no money. None of that is spoilers by the way - that's all given in a prologue. It's in Dooleybridge, a tired, small Irish town, that the novel begins. Fi finds herself a job helping on an oyster farm, with grumpy Sean Thornton, who has a hidden past of his own. Fi needs to get over her fear of water, accept the past and find herself a new future. And of course, she falls in love along the way...

I very much enjoyed this novel. What an unusual setting and background - I learned a lot about oyster farming along the way. The author clearly did her research! I love the west of Ireland so found myself feeling very much at home in this novel. I caught myself thinking about it whenever I wasn't reading it - and couldn't wait to get back to it each time. A real feel-good story with likeable characters and a wonderful sense of place. A well-deserved winner of the award, and it looks like it's doing very well on the Amazon charts as well.

The Wish List

The Wish List by Della Galton

Wendy's trying to move on after a divorce, and discovers a wish list she'd written years before. Her friend helps her start achieving some of them, which involves going to a farm to cuddle a piglet... and the farmer's quite dishy.... you can see where this one's going!

The perfect little novella, lovely characters, an easy read and a feel-good ending. Perfect for reading on a train journey, as I did the other day.

Marlene and Sofia

Marlene and Sofia, a double love story by Pedro Barrento

(will add link once it's been published)

** I was sent an advance review copy of this book **

Having read this author's previous novel, The Prince and the Singularity, I knew I was in for an unusual and imaginative read with this one, and I wasn't disappointed.

The book begins with a marvellous piece of meta-fiction. The author has been given characters and settings for his next novel. Trouble is, they're not quite what he wanted, and it seems he's not at liberty to write his own book using them, anyway. He's got to bow down and do what the all-powerful literary guild tell him. 

But he gets on with writing his own book anyway, starting with the chapters the guild sent him (people with colourful pasts in an old folks home, taking virtual tours (and more!) of Lisbon) and moving on to the title characters, two very different but equally beautiful young ladies. 

There are a lot of characters in the early part of this book, but it all comes together soon, and from that point on it's hard to put the book down. The characters are brilliantly drawn, the writing style is simple and elegant, and the plot is intricate, layered and thoughtful.

Highly recommended. I really hope we see more from this author.

Diamonds and Dust

Diamonds and Dust: A Victorian murder mystery by Carol Hedges

Carol's a recent facebook and twitter friend, so I decided to check out her book, and liked the sound of it very much. I wasn't disappointed - this is a great read. It's told using an unusual omniscient narrator viewpoint - we swoop in on characters, watch them for a while, then swoop off somewhere else over the rooftops of grimy Victorian London.

A gruesome murder is the starting point - leaving Josephine King alone in the world but inheriting her uncle's fortune, and his secrets, which she must try to unravel. Detectives are also trying to find out who committed the murder, but the only clues are pointing them towards an answer which surely cannot be the right one...

Beautifully written, funny in places, full of wonderful characters including the minor ones, and absolutely well worth reading.

The Butterfly Collector

The Butterfly Collector by Adam Dickson

I know Adam from novelists' conferences, and attended a talk he gave at Poole library about this book. I'd already bought it for Kindle but decided to buy the paperback from him and get it signed (another one for my buddies bookshelf!)

It has a beautiful cover - self-published but Adam's son is a graphic designer and created such a gorgeous cover I believe it won an award somewhere. Well deserved.

The book is about property developed Peter Calliet who has it all, but wants more. He's strangely dissatisfied with his life, and frightened by the thought of settling down with his girlfriend who's assumed she'll move in, they'll marry and have kids etc. Peter's a womaniser - a collector of pretty women - hence the title of the novel. He has a dark secret which haunts him. He meets enigmatic Natalie and becomes obsessed by her - chasing her no matter what the cost to his comfortable life.

This is an unusual book in that it primarily explores relationships and emotions, which is more normal for a book about a woman written by a woman. Adam's managed to do a man's version. It's deep and introspective, and while there's not much action there is a lot of development of characters and relationships throughout. It's beautifully written and an intriguing read.