Forthcoming Publications

1 SEPTEMBER

Review of The Skeleton Key by Erin Kelly Thrillers The Golden Bones is going to follow me around for the rest of my life. How can I trust anyone? It all leads back to you! Nell didn't want to go to the reunion to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of The Golden Bones. She'd had no benefit from it - in fact, it had made her life precarious and unbelievably challenging. I'd better explain. The Golden Bones was a treasure quest book painted and written by Frank and Cora Churcher. The story revolved around murdered Elinore whose golden and bejewelled bones were hidden around the country. The clues - some of them quite tortuous - were disguised in the words and pictures of the book - and all the parts were discovered except for the pelvis. As with such quests, some people were obsessive and the theories became more and more outlandish. Full Review

Review of The Rising Tide (D I Vera Stanhope) by Ann Cleeves Crime It's fifty years since a group of teenagers went on a weekend retreat to Holy Island. Some of them found the Only Connect course transformative and they've been coming back for a reunion every five years since then. There was a tragedy at the first reunion when Isobel Hall drove off the island too close to high tide and her car was swept away, but her younger sister, Louisa, has returned with the group each year as her husband, Ken, was one of the original teenagers. Ken now has Alzheimer's and he's a shadow of the man he used to be. Philip Robson now a priest, always gets there early as he likes to have some quiet time alone in the chapel. Annie Laidler lives locally and she provides much of the food: her deli is famous in the area. Full Review

Review of The Last Girl to Die by Helen Fields Crime Seventeen-year-old Adriana Clarke's family moved to Tobermory, on the Isle of Mull, in search of a new life. It was a bit of a change from Las Vegas, but the family seemed determined and Adriana had shown signs of developing a social life - until she disappeared. The local police demonstrated little interest in the case (could it have been because Adriana's mother is obviously Latino?) and Rob and Isabella Clarke called in Sadie Levesque from Banff, who had successfully tracked down missing teenagers. Brandon, Adriana's twin, was upset and surly. Four-year-old Luna just knew that she missed her big sister. It took four days, but Sadie found Adriana in Mackinnon's Cave. She'd been murdered and it looked like a ritual killing. Full Review

6 OCTOBER

Review of Fly by Alison Hughes Confident Readers This is a very impressive read, as it does a lot of what mainstream teen and tween fiction still struggles with. Its focus is courtesy of the first-person narration from Fly, a secondary school lad with cerebral palsy, a down-on-her-luck single mom nearing retirement from being a cleaner, a carer while at school, and a bundle of assumptions people lay on him. First they assume that with a broken body comes a broken mind, then they decide he's a maths savant – they even believe they can get away with calling him Fly, which isn't his real name, but everybody just uses it. Full Review

13 OCTOBER

Review of Red as Blood by Lilja Sigurdardottir and Quentin Bates (translator) Thrillers When Flosi’s wife goes missing, all the evidence seems to point towards her having been kidnapped. The ransom note tells him not to have any contact with the police, so instead he enlists the help of Arora, a financial investigator. She manages to persuade Flosi that they will need the help of the police, and she calls her detective friend, Daniel, whom she met when he was investigating her sister’s disappearance. Together, they start to secretly investigate Gudrun’s disappearance, trying not to arouse the suspicion of anyone, since they have no idea who the kidnappers might be, yet the more they uncover, the more confusing things become. Full Review

21 OCTOBER

Review of The Book of Hope by Jane Goodall and Douglas Abrams Politics and Society The done thing is to read a book all the way through before you sit down to review it. I’m making an exception here, because I don’t want to lose any of the experience of reading this amazing book, I want to capture it as it hits me. And it is hitting me. This beautiful book has me in tears. Full Review

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