Every family has its secrets. Some are earth shattering, some most assuredly not, but all of them are held close to the chest of their keeper/s for fear of what they could do to the family itself and to those outside looking in, who seldom let a sound perspective or Continue Reading
Books
Book review: Murder Most Fancy by Kellie McCourt
It’s time to get your Maple on! Or is that Marple? It is, in fact, Marple, but in the gloriously funny sleuthing world of loaded-to-the-gills heiress Indigo-Daisy-Violet-Amber-Hasluck-Royce-Jones-Bombberg, what passes for classic detective work, and classic detectives of the Agatha Christie kind for that matter, are played fast and loose with Continue Reading
UPCOMING READS: Drunk on All Your Strange New Words by Eddie Robson
SNAPSHOTEddie Robson’s Drunk on All Your Strange New Words is a locked room mystery in a near future world of politics and alien diplomacy. Lydia works as translator for the Logi cultural attaché to Earth. They work well together, even if the act of translating his thoughts into English makes Continue Reading
Book review: Mercury Rising by R.W.W. Greene
The idea of alternative timelines where the less than ideal outcomes of our reality find an altogether, hopefully better (though not always) realisation is a seductive one. As a species, humanity is a sucker for the possibility of things being different elsewhere, and it’s why ideas like the multiverse are Continue Reading
Book review: Dinner with the Schnabels by Toni Jordan
Most of us like to think we have life all figured out. We don’t, of course, none of us really, bar some rather opinionated religious types and vague philosophers with scattered words of pseudo wisdom, but it’s the story we tell ourselves to keep our souls from exploding with a Continue Reading
Book review: My Heart is a Little Wild Thing by Nigel Featherstone
Even the most ardently optimistic of us reach a point in life where we have to admit, or more accurately, feel we have to admit, that all of our lofty hopes and dreams are not going to come to fruition (recurrent type A personalities and social media influencers aside, of Continue Reading
Book review: The Charm Offensive by Alison Cochrun
There’s a certain blinkered quality to true love that only becomes when you actually enter a relationship, or are possibly on the way to doing so. All those swirling, richly-red, rose petal-coloured wafty dreams about falling headlong and completely in love suddenly look a lot more earthbound when you run Continue Reading
Book review: A Lady’s Guide to Fortune-Hunting by Sophie Irwin
When you pick up a book with the invitingly whimsical title, A Lady’s Guide to Fortune-Hunting, which is set in 1818 London during the height of the Season when balls are held and marriages sealed among the English elite known as the ton, you have every right to expect there Continue Reading
Book review: Obsidian by Sarah J. Daley
Good fantasy tales often rise and fall on the strength of their world-building. Sure, you need compelling characters in whom you can become invested and a driving narrative that takes you to utterly extraordinary places but none of which really stacks up if the world in which it all takes Continue Reading
#Eurovision 2022 – Italian cultural festival book review: The Eight Mountains (Le otto montagne) by Paolo Cognetti
People often define themselves in terms of context and relationships, and both these important markers of human expression are on poignant display in The Eight Mountains (Le otto montagne) by Paolo Cognetti, a novel which explores how both impact the life of one young Italian man who is surrounded by Continue Reading