nice all read

Fiction Desperate cries muffled UNIVERSAL HARVESTER By John Darnielle 224 pp. Farrar, Straus and Giroux  Reviewed by Sarah Corbett Morgan Jeremy works at the Video Hut in Nevada (pronounced Nev-ay-da), Iowa. It’s the sort of store where we rented VHS tapes back in the ’90s before the advent of Hulu, HBO, and other streaming services. Things are pretty low-key in Nevada, as well as at his job, but one afternoon a woman returns one of the tapes and says, “There’s something on this one.” And so begins John Darnielle’s second novel,  Universal Harvester,  a beautiful, haunting, and at times creepy story full of loss. It takes Jeremy a while, but he finally gets around to watching the film at home where he lives with his dad, Steve. His mom died in a car wreck some years before, and the two grown men share a pleasant enough bachelor’s life. Steve does suggest to his son from time to time that there might be better opportunities for employment beyond the Video Hut.   While...

Following the tragic death of her beloved husband, Anna Hemingway decides it's time for a fresh start. So Anna and her three-year-old daughter Ellie move to a picture-perfect cottage in the beautiful village of Little Somerby, and when she takes over the running of the village tea shop, Ellie and Anna start to find happiness again. But things get complicated when Matthew Carter, the owner of the local cider farm, enters their lives. Throughout a whirlwind year of village fetes and ancient wassails, love, laughter, apple pie and new memories, life slowly blossoms again. But when tragedy strikes and history seems to be repeating itself, Anna must find the strength to hold onto the new life she has built. This beautiful, life-affirming debut novel marks the beginning of the Little Somerby series, and promises to make you smile, cry, reach for a cream tea, and long for a life in the perfect English countryside. Having lost my reading mojo I found myself browsing through the Amazon Kind...

Twenty-eight year old Hannah is ready for an adventure. She and her colleagues are in Spain for a month to film a documentary, and it's a dream come true. Not least because Hannah will get to spend long summer days with Theo, her boss (and gorgeous crush). It couldn't be a more perfect setting to fall in love... If only Tom (Hannah's best friend and cameramen) and Claudette (the presenter) would stop getting in the way... Then things become even more complicated when Nancy, Hannah's half-sister arrives. What on earth is she doing here? For just once in her life, can't Hannah have one perfect summer, free of any drama? I have been eagerly awaiting the arrival of Isabelle Broom’s new release Then.Now.Always after reading her previous two books that had me completely captivated by her idyllic settings. I was longing to see what breath-taking location she would whisk us away to in her new book. Hannah spent her teen holiday with friend Rachel in the stunning Spanish vil...

From the Tundra to the Trenches By Eddy Weetaltuk Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2016 $24.95 Canadian/ $27.95 US Reviewed by Kenn Harper To say that Eddy Weetaltuk lived an eventful life, unlike the lives of his fellow Inuit, is an understatement. He was born in 1932 on Strutton Island in James Bay, one of twelve children. His surname, he points out, means “innocent eyes” (and should really be spelled Uitaaluttuq). His grandfather, George Weetaltuk, was a guide for the film-maker Robert Flaherty in the making of his ground-breaking documentary, Nanook of the North . Eddy’s childhood was what one would expect for an Inuk boy growing up in the 1930s and 40s at the southern limit of traditional Inuit land, in James Bay and on the Quebec coast – periods of joy and hunger in the comfort of a large family.  He went to school in Fort George, and finished the eighth grade at boarding school. By the time he reached adulthood, he was multi-lingual, speaking English, Inuktitut, Frenc...

Nonfiction Whiskey-voiced legend ... DICKEY CHAPELLE UNDER FIRE: Photographs by the First American Female War Correspondent Killed in Action 136 pp. Wisconsin Historical Society Press By John Garofolo Reviewed by William C. Crawford Dickey Chapelle was a woman and an intrepid, pioneer combat photographer. In many important ways she was like the Marines that she often followed into battle. She had a nose for the images of war, but her work also captured the human side. She died in 1965 before Vietnam became a lost cause for American forces. A Marine patrol she joined hit a booby trap south of Chu Lai. Flying shrapnel severed her carotid artery. Legendary combat photographer Henri Huet caught a poignant image of a chaplain administering last rites to Chapelle on the battlefield. Huet and other well known photographers would themselves later perish in a helicopter shot down over Laos in the waning days of the War. Dickey proved herself as a war correspondent during the later years of Worl...

Bella  has always had a sunny outlook and caring nature, despite recently falling on hard times. When she finds a handsome homeless man on her doorstep, her kind heart tells her she must help him. So, she invites  Isaac  into her cottage and into her life in ways she could never have imagined… But Isaac is not what he seems. He’s keeping a huge secret from Bella, yet he never expected to fall for this open, generous and charming woman.  Bella can’t ignore the chemistry between her and Isaac, but she’s had her trust badly broken in her past. Will she run when she learns the truth about Isaac, or will he be the one man who can help Bella believe in love again? Spring at Blueberry Bay is the first book I have read by Holly Martin, the synopsis really called out to me so I wasted no time in downloading my copy and starting it immediately but I never expected to finish it the same day. Bella Roussel has not had the best start in life and now she finds herself jobless and ...

Fiction Grit and wit CATALINA EDDY A Novel in Three Decades By Daniel Pyne 480 pp. Blue Rider Press Reviewed by Eric Petersen Novelist and screenwriter Daniel Pyne is back with a collection of three very different yet loosely connected crime novellas, set in Southern California thirty years apart from each other, all of them focused on murder cases and tied together by characters wounded by regret and longing for atonement. The first novella, The Big Empty , opens in Hollywood, circa 1954, at the apex of the Cold War and the Red Scare. Army veteran turned hard-boiled detective Rylan Lovely literally walks into the hardest case he’s ever worked – the murder of his estranged wife Isla, whom he’d left several years earlier. Lovely blames himself for the failure of their marriage, even though Isla had an affair with his best friend. Her murder is punctuated by the invention of the H-bomb, which has ratcheted up Cold War tensions to a whole new level. Racked with guilt and determined to nai...

Today it is my stop on the Paper Chain tour for one of my favourite authors new books Paper Hearts & Summer Kisses by the fabulous Carole Matthews. REVIEW Carole Matthews is back with another charming read in Paper Hearts and Summer Kisses. I only picked this book up to briefly read the first chapter but ended up completely hooked and finished the book in one sitting as I couldn’t bear to put this book down. Single mum Christie Chapman has for years made the long commute into London for work each day to keep a roof over her sons head. What little time she has at home she spends her time crafting and watching the Creative Craft channel feeding her passion and uber talent for craft often with the reluctant help from her son. Recently son Finn has been increasingly missing time from school feeling poorly and Christie is struggling to juggle everything but can the handsome Max give her an offer she can’t refuse? This book ticked every box for me, I found it uplifting and heart wrenchin...

Fiction Like a vulture on carrion CAST THE FIRST STONE An Ellie Stone Mystery By James W. Ziskin 290 pp. Seventh Street Books Reviewed by Eric Petersen Mystery writer James W. Ziskin is back with the fifth entry (the third book, Stone Cold Dead , is also reviewed on this site) in his popular mystery series set in an unusual time and place for a mystery – upstate New York in the early 1960s – and featuring an unusual heroine. Unusual for her time, that is. At a time when career opportunities for most young women were limited by society to housewife, teacher, or secretary, Eleonora “Ellie” Stone works as an investigative reporter for the New Holland Republic , her hometown newspaper. But then, Ellie Stone isn’t like most young women. In her mid-twenties, she’s a tough-talking, hard-drinking dame with brains, guts, and wit, all of which she uses to get her story – and solve bizarre and brutal murders while she’s at it. She takes no crap from men. Artie Short, the owner and senior editor o...

Nonfiction We’ve all had dates like that THE SOUL OF AN OCTOPUS By Sy Montgomery 272 pp. Atria Reviewed by Marty Carlock Visitors at Boston’s New England Aquarium watch staffers handling an octopus. An incredulous man asks them, “Does it know you?” The answer is yes. The octopus not only knows them, it plays with them. It knows who it likes and dislikes, who feeds it and who doesn’t, who smells good and who smells like medicine. The octopus gets so bored that its friends give it toys to play with – plastic Easter eggs to screw and unscrew, jars to open, rubber toys. The octopus’s friends have to be ingenious to keep it from escaping, because it is curious about everything and has a tendency to want to go exploring. Such an excursion is usually fatal. Naturalist Sy Montgomery likes to write about unlikely animals. An earlier book of hers, The Good Good Pig , was a biography of a porcine named Christopher Hogwood, who lived with her and her family for 18 years. Octopuses, to her dismay,...

Sophie stopped believing in happy endings a long time ago, but could this love change all of that? Sophie Winter  lives in a self-imposed cocoon - she's a single, 31-year-old translator who works from home in her one-bedroom flat. This isn’t really the life she dreamed of, but then  Sophie  stopped believing in dreams when she was a teenager and tragedy struck her family. So, to be safe, she keeps everyone at arm’s length.  Sophie  understands she has a problem, but recognising it and knowing how to fix it are two entirely different things. One night a serious fire breaks out in the flat below hers.  Sophie  is trapped in the burning building until a passer-by,  Ben , sees her and rescues her. Suddenly her cocoon is shattered - what will be the consequences of this second life-changing event? One thing I have come to know and expect from Dani Atkins books is that they are packed full with emotion so I w...