Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (London: Fourth Estate, 2015). I missed the Wolf Hall phenomenon—the book, the Booker Prizes, the play, even the television series although I’ve bought it now and mean to watch it soon. Wolf Hall is book one of a series, published in 2009...
Review of crime thriller, Talking to the Dead by Harry Bingham. The novel introduces Fiona Griffiths, a young detective with a history of severe mental illness and a criminal father as she is recruited into the South Wales Major Crimes unit.
Love in small letters by Francesc Miralles (Love in Small Letters is translated from Spanish by Julie Wark, Richmond, Surrey: Alma Books, 2014) Penguin published this novel about a lonely, linguistics lecturer called Samuel, as Love in Lower Case. With either title,...
The Locksmith’s Daughter, by Karen Brooks. Sydney: Harlequin Mira, 2016. This is the second of Karen Brooks' mega-sized historical romances but her tenth published work of fiction. As with The Brewer’s Tale, research is her forte. Brooks is a writer who brings her...
Undersized, snowy-haired German orphan Werner, is a genius with radios. He and his feisty little sister Jutta are wards in Frau Elena’s children’s home. At night they listen to a radio receiver that Werner found and restored and, sometimes, the enchanting feathery...
Robyn Mundy’s seamless prose doesn’t hit a single discordant note throughout this story of coming of age and regret. When teenage Stephanie West is pulled into her mother’s dream of returning to her childhood home on Maatsuyker Island, it’s a wrench from Steph’s life...
The first book of the Ice and Fire series (dramatized by HBO as A Game of Thrones) had me entranced from the first page. I had to overcome a deep prejudice against the fantasy genre to read this book but I need not have worried as a powerful writer immediately took me...
Gyles Brandreth, Oscar Wilde and the Nest of Vipers, London: John Murray: 2010 The fourth in the Oscar Wilde series, Gyles Brandreth takes us on a journey driven by Oscar’s curiousity, genius and web of influential friends. An unsatisfactorily explained death – in...
You'll all be looking for books to read over the holidays so don't forget to pop into my book reviews, listed in Recommended reading. All these books are in the local library (well, they will be when I return them) and they are all wonderful. Happy Reading. Sara...