Nicholas Dane

The Killables by

Evil must be identified – Book one in the Killables trilogy In the future the only place of safety is The City. Ruled over by The Great Leader, with the system,...

Angelmaker by

Joe Spork is  mild mannered clockmaker. He wns and runs a shop fixing clockwork devices, from clocks to Victorian dirty toys. He doesn’t make a profit, in fact, he barely scrapes...

All clear by

Sequel to Blackout, and set in the Mr. Dunworthy ‘verse. Or at least that’s what I’m calling this series-ish of books. This is my first read for the 2012 Science Fiction...

Blackout by

Set in the same ‘verse as Doomsday Book and To say nothing of the dog this is a book about historians. But not the sort of historian you or I might...

Wolf by

Cassy lives with her grandmother. Her practical, sensible, responsible grandmother. Her mother is a dreamer, unable to look after herself let alone her daughter. And her father, well, no one ever...

Kraken by

ISBN: 9780330531627 ; Bits I especially liked The sea is full of saints. Billy works in the Natural History Museum in London. The book opens with him running through his usual...

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?

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.