Category: Books

The Search by

ISBN: 9780749941796 On a chilly morning in February with a misty tain shuttering the windows, Devin and Rosie Cauldwell made slow, sleepy love. Fiona Bristow lives on Orcas Island, a close-knit...

Lady of Quality by

ISBN: 033236490 Miss Annis Wychwood is in her late twenties, and as she is still unmarried, she believes her future to hold nothing but remaining single. However she is not about...

Drood by

by Dan Simmons

On the 9th of June, 1865, ten passengers were killed when a train crashed at Staplehurst. Among the passengers who survived the disaster was the novelist Charles Dickens. Meeting his friend, Wilkie Collins, soon afterwards Dickens describes a strange individual he came across at the site of the crash. This man, Drood, is to drag both Dickens and Collins into the depths of Victorian London’s criminal and poverty stricken underbelly. Will he also lead to murder and insanity?

Uglies by

Tally Youngblood is an Ugly. All her friends have gone off and become Pretties, but she is the youngest, and eagerly awaiting her 16th birthday so that she can join them. But before she reaches that magical age she meets a new friend, Shay, who tells her about a mysterious boy called David, and the notion that some people don’t want to be made Pretty. To Tally this is insane. Science and evolution prove that people like beauty. And back in the “Rusties” day, when they weren’t able to make people pretty there was so much discrimination just over the way people lived. She’ll never go off looking for the Smoke. She’ll stay in the city, and become Pretty, just like all her friends.

Of course, if she did then this book wouldn’t have much of a plot now would it?

Nicholas Dane by

This is the sort of book I don’t usually read. You know the ones, from the “sad story” section of the bookshop. The misery-books as I call them. But a few years ago I’d heard of Melvin Burgess as an author to look out for. I’ve read his Lady : My life as a Bitch and to be honest I wasn’t all that impressed, but I’ll always give an author a second go. So I tried this one.

In the 1980’s Nick Dane is growing up as an average, if bright kid. He comes from a single parent family, and his mother has a secret. She never got off the drugs, not completely. And in the course of having a “taste” she accidentally overdoses and Nick is left all alone in the world. Soon he finds himself carted off to a “home” for boys, and soon learns that the violence and random beatings are not the worse this place has to offer.

RIP v round-up

Happy Hallowe’en everybody. Unfortunately this year I didn’t get to dress up & party. I had my costume, all ready to rock and roll, but on the day I just wasn’t...

Blameless by

ISBN: 9781841499734 An Alexia Tarabotti novel, The Parasol Protectorate: Book the Third Read for RIP challenge If you haven’t yet read Soulless and Changeless then I am afraid that this review...

Changeless by

ISBN: 9781841499741 An Alexia Tarabotti novel, The Parasol Protectorate: Book the Second Read for RIP challenge If you haven’t yet read Soulless then I am afraid that this review will contain...

The Fall by ,

by Guillarmo de Toro & Chuck Hogan

After the events of cite>The Strain New York is in chaos, and the rest of the world is following in a downward spiral. Ephraim Goodweather is trying to keep his son out of the clutches of his vampiric ex-wife, these vampires feel a real need to turn their “Dear Ones”, human love turned into hunger. And Abraham Setrakian is busy trying to track down The Master, as he learns that the events happening are even worse than he could have suspected. Along with Fet, the rat exterminator turned vampire-hunter, they are attempting the impossible, to stop the vampire contagion spreading across the world.

Myths about suicide by

ISBN: 9780674048225 What do you think when you hear that someone has committed suicide? Many probably wonder why? and then begin to speculate. Some will accuse the suicide victim of being...

Tooth and claw by

Bon Agornin has led a successful life in many ways. He has improved his status, and his elder children are well on their way in life. But his three youngest need additional help. The two younger daughters need dowries if they are to marry well, and his youngest son needs in the city. And so Bon Agornin has decided that his wealth is to go to them, with the rest of his family merely taking a token, for remembrance and tradition. And by his wealth he means his treasure and his body, for in dragon society it is practice to eat the dead. But his son-in-law does not agree, believing that Bon Agornin meant only his gold. He and his family take much much more of the dead dragon’s body than one token bite.