Weekly Wrap Up (October 16)

Thank you for those of you who sent lovely messages due to my absence, unfortunately I had a rather nasty bug followed by a business trip to Stockholm where internet access was an issue! I did however manage to make a trip to see my friend before flying back to Jersey. We talked about everything as best friends of too many years to count are wont to do but books got a mention, and as I’d lent her my copy of The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins (she really is a very good friend and can be trusted with my books) we decided that we’d watch the film at the cinema. It was a little disconcerting to see palatial homes backing onto train lines in the opening sequence instead of those I’d imagined from the UK scenery however all in all it was faithful to the book and far better than I’d feared. Plus it allowed us to rest our voices for a while so that a quick G&T soon had us chatting long into the night.

On my return to ordinary life I was delighted to see a quote from my review in the paperback edition of My Husband’s Son by Deborah O’Connor which appeared alongside a number of other blogger’s wise words.

Picture courtesy by Abbie of Bloomin Brilliant Books

You can read the entire review here if you should so wish

This week I posted my review of Ward Zero by Linda Huber, a psychological thriller set in a hospital which kept me guessing. Sadly I think by the time I got to this one I’d overdosed yet again on the genre and have made a deliberate decision to step away for a while and have promptly fallen into a string of historical crime books, both fiction and non-fiction, so expect a different flavour on the blog while I review them all.

On Tuesday’s Post I featured an excerpt from The Two O’clock Boy by Mark Hill, a former book blogger and now a fully-fledged writer, which I’ve just started reading, and I have to say early impressions are very favourable indeed.

Wednesday’s post also had the addition of the Man Booker shortlist book His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet which I’ve now finished, a review will follow shortly.

I have also written and published my review for The Chemistry of Death by Simon Beckett which was excellently executed crime fiction, and the beginning of a series featuring David Hunter – I can see that I will be adding more books by this author to the TBR before too long.

This was followed on Friday with a review for a brilliant historical crime book, this one loosely based on an actual crime known as The Edgeware Road Murder in 1837. Debut novelist Anna Mazzola has added layers to the known facts creating an incredibly engrossing book, The Unseeing. I gave this one the full five stars with no reservations at all.

I then moved to the 1920s with a woman Private Investigator and my review of Death at the Seaside by Frances Brody reveals how well the author not only created a book that is set in such a good era but also has a cracking plot and a strong woman as the protagonist.

This Time Last Year…

I was reading The Girl With No Past by Kathryn Croft an accomplished psychological thriller that had me captivated – it was one of those books where from the first page, there was no doubt that something awful is going to happen.

 

Blurb

Years spent running from your past. Today it catches up.
A gripping psychological thriller for fans of Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train.
Leah Mills lives a life of a fugitive – kept on the run by one terrible day from her past. It is a lonely life, without a social life or friends until – longing for a connection – she meets Julian. For the first time she dares to believe she can live a normal life.
Then, on the fourteenth anniversary of that day, she receives a card. Someone knows the truth about what happened. Someone who won’t stop until they’ve destroyed the life Leah has created.
But is Leah all she seems? Or does she deserve everything she gets?
Everyone has secrets. But some are deadly. Amazon

Stacking the Shelves

Somehow despite not having read anywhere near as much as normal, see paragraph one, I am still acquiring books at a fair old rate – here is what’s appeared since by last wrap-up and I have an inkling there are a few more on the way with the postman. Discussing this in brief with fellow blogger Fiction Fan, we have decided that this is due to Cleopatra’s Theorem – the number of books that are acquired are always more than the reading rate, the slower you go the more that appear, it’s probably worked out using the picture to the right but since it’s a mathematical fact there is nothing to be done!

From NetGalley I had to request a copy of Tattletale by Sarah J Naughton because Liz of Liz Loves Books wrote such a tantalising review. I’m presuming I will be in the right frame of mind for some psychological thrillers by the time this is published in January 2017.

Blurb

The perfect brother. The perfect fiance. The perfect lie.
One day changes Jody’s life forever.
She has shut herself down, haunted by her memories and unable to trust anyone. But then she meets Abe, the perfect stranger next door and suddenly life seems full of possibility and hope.
One day changes Mags’s life forever.
After years of estrangement from her family, Mags receives a shocking phone call. Her brother Abe is in hospital and no-one knows what happened to him. She meets his fiancé Jody, and gradually pieces together the ruins of the life she left behind. But the pieces don’t quite seem to fit… NetGalley

In the post I received a copy of The Devils Feast by M.J. Carver from Penguin books, they couldn’t have known my genre of the month is historical crime – could they?

Blurb

London, 1842. There has been a mysterious and horrible death at the Reform, London’s newest and grandest gentleman’s club. A death the club is desperate to hush up.
Captain William Avery is persuaded to investigate, and soon discovers a web of rivalries and hatreds, both personal and political, simmering behind the club’s handsome façade-and in particular concerning its resident genius, Alexis Soyer, ‘the Napoleon of food’, a chef whose culinary brilliance is matched only by his talent for self-publicity.
But Avery is distracted, for where his mentor and partner-in-crime Jeremiah Blake? And what if this first death was only a dress rehearsal for something far more sinister? Amazon

And Harper Collins’ Carina offered me an exciting new debut, For All Our Sins by T.M.E. Walsh which is to be published later this month. This was original self-published by the author for the kindle so some of you may have read it.

Blurb

Years ago there was a silent witness to an act of evil. Now, a twisted killer is on the loose fuelled by revenge.
Called to the brutal murder of a priest, it is immediately clear to DCI Claire Winters that the victim’s death was prolonged, agonising…and motivated by a lust for revenge.
The killer has been clever, there are no clues, no leads. But Claire Winters has never let a killer remain on the streets. Looking for an answer at any cost Claire begins to get closer to the victim’s family, but what it reveals turns her murder case into something far more sinister…
When one body becomes two, and then three, Claire finds herself in a race against time to connect the dots between a host of devastating secrets, before the killer strikes again. Amazon

Lastly I have a copy of Manipulated Lives by H.A. Leuschel, a series of five novellas which is available for reading now.

Blurb

Five stories – Five Lives. Have you ever felt confused or at a loss for words in front of a spouse, colleague or parent, to the extent that you have felt inadequate or, worse, a failure? Do you ever wonder why someone close to you seems to endure humiliation without resistance?
Manipulators are everywhere. At first these devious and calculating people can be hard to spot, because that is their way. They are often masters of disguise: witty, disarming, even charming in public – tricks to snare their prey – but then they revert to their true self of being controlling and angry in private. Their main aim: to dominate and use others to satisfy their needs, with a complete lack of compassion and empathy for their victim.
In this collection of short novellas you meet people like you and me, intent on living happy lives, yet each of them, in one way or another, is caught up and damaged by a manipulative individual. First you meet a manipulator himself, trying to make sense of his irreversible incarceration. Next, there is Tess, whose past is haunted by a wrong decision, then young, successful and well balanced Sophie, who is drawn into the life of a little boy and his troubled father. Next, there is teenage Holly, who is intent on making a better life for herself and finally Lisa, who has to face a parent’s biggest regret.
All stories highlight to what extent abusive manipulation can distort lives and threaten our very feeling of self-worth. Amazon

TBR WATCH

Since my last post I have read 4 books, and gained 4 and so my TBR remains steady at 181 books!

91 physical books
69 e-books
21 books on NetGalley

What have you found to read this week?