Monthly Archives: January, 2014

Wolf Sea by Robert Low

The Wolf Sea by Robert Low was the recommended book for my book group.  I was at a bit of a disadvantage as this is the second book in the author’s “Oathsworn” series. In this second novel, the story centres on the eastern Mediterranean. This novel takes the survivors of a Viking band from the streets of …

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Why Didn’t They Ask Evans by Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie is one of my favourite authors of all time.  She writes in my favourite genre and keeps the twist in the tale in every book she writes.  Her books are simply marvellous and so it is with this novel ‘Why didn’t they ask Evans?’.  The protragonists Bobby and Frankie are much younger than …

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Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

Wuthering Heights is a novel by Emily Brontë, written between October 1845 and June 1846, and published in 1847 under the pseudonym Ellis Bell. It was her first and only published novel: she died the following year, at age 30.  Still, if you are only going to publish one novel, what a novel!  There have …

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Aftershock by Quintin Jardine

Quintin Jardine is a major Scottish crime writer who hails from Motherwell in Scotland.  He was born there on 29th June 1945 and educated at University of Glasgow.  He now lives in Scotland and in Spain. Quintin Jardine writes a number of serial style books about recurring characters.  The one I like best is Bob Skinner, …

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This Honourable House by Edwina Currie

I picked this up from my local library just before it was moved to a different branch. It is Edwina Currie’s third political novel.  This Honourable House, opens with an election resulting in a victory for a party not dissimilar to New Labour. It follows with all the sex, spin, and scandal in any good political …

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Beneath the Bleeding by Val McDermid

Beneath the Bleeding is an ambitious novel, written on a grand scale.  It tackles pertinent social issues and is the fifth of McDermid’s novels that develops her two highly memorable characters: forensic profiler Tony Hill and his police ally DCI Carol Jordan.   This book, is as disturbing as it is compulsively readable.  The author continues …

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The Restraint of Beasts by Magnus Mills

Magnus Mills was born in Birmingham, England but brought up in Bristol.   He graduated with an economics degree from  Wolverhampton then started a masters degree at the University of Warwick he but dropped out before completion. Between 1979 and 1986 Mills built high-tensile fences for a living, an experience he drew upon for his first novel, The …

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Monday Mourning by Kathy Reichs

Kathleen Joan Toele Reichs was born on July 7, 1948.  She now writes crime novels but is also an academic and qualified forensic anthropologist.   She is a professor of anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte USA.  She divides her work time between the Laboratoire des Sciences Judiciaires et de Médecine Légale for the province of Quebec in …

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Stone Cradle by Louise Doughty

  Louise Doughty is an English novelist, playwright and journalist who has a Romany background.  She was born in Melton Mowbray, 4 September 1963.  She attended the University of Leeds and  is an alumna of the University of East Anglia’s Creative Writing Course. This story is narrated by two women, one of whom is Romany, and …

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