nice all read

Fiction Losers hating Steubenville A WELCOME MURDER By Robin Yocum 256 pp. Seventh Street Books Reviewed by Eric Petersen Journalist turned writer Robin Yocum is back with his fourth novel ( A Brilliant Death is also reviewed on this site). That book was a haunting, heart-wrenching murder mystery set in a once great Ohio steel mill town. A Welcome Murder has the same setting, but it’s unlike anything the author has written so far – a comic mystery with an undercurrent of tragedy and featuring alternating first person narration from several characters who all knew each other in high school. Johnny Earl, the main character, begins the novel by introducing the story of how in 1989, he became the prime suspect in a murder not long after returning home to Steubenville, Ohio, following a seven-year prison sentence. Once a great steel mill town, Steubenville is now a decaying shell. In high school, Johnny was the most popular boy – a good student and star baseball and football player who da...

The story started at dawn on the fourteenth of September, 1943 . . .' All her life, London-born Angelika has been intrigued by her mother's secret past. Now planning her wedding, she feels she must visit the remote Crete village her mother grew up in. Angie's estranged elderly grandmother, Maria, is dying. She welcomes Angie with open arms - it's time to unburden herself, and tell the story she'll otherwise take to her grave. It's the story of the Nazi occupation of Crete during the Second World War, of horror, of courage and of the lengths to which a mother will go to protect her children. And it's the story of bitter secrets that broke a family apart, and of three enchanting women who come together to heal wounds that have damaged two generations. Often when I see a book that promises to be great for fans of much loved authors of mine, my heart does an excited little lurch but typically when I pick up the book I am more often than not left disappointed and...

Fiction The stratosphere of Tibet SKELETON GOD: An Inspector Shan Tao Yun Mystery By Eliot Pattison 305 pp. Minotaur Books Reviewed by Alan Goodman This is Edgar Award winner Eliot Pattison’s ninth installment in the Inspector Shan series. The world of Inspector Shan moves along quite slowly as murder mysteries go, particularly in the opening sections. Pattison is a deliberate writer, apparently intent upon setting the detailed backdrop of Tibetan culture as much as he is on drawing the scene of the obligatory opening murder itself. I mention this because while popular mystery writers such as Michael Connelly, with his detective hero Harry Bosch, rush you along with staccato-like narrative, Inspector Shan moves at a much more leisurely pace. Maybe because I had just finished the Harry Bosch series, it took some time to get down to the new speed limit. The reward for making this adjustment was to be introduced to a world that one knows mostly from myth – the stratosphere of worlds – the...

Nonfiction Thinking like humans ALGORITHMS TO LIVE BY The Computer Science of Human Decisions By Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths 368 pp. Picador Reviewed by Sue Ellis An algorithm is a process, a series of logical steps taken to solve a problem, and is typically used to program computers to “think” like humans. In Brian Christian’s and Tom Griffiths’ new book, Algorithms to Live By , they explain eleven algorithms and the applications where they have been useful, and then suggest ways in which the same problem-solving process might help us in our daily lives. A few of the problems covered in the book are: prioritizing one’s way through a list of tasks, how to filter a list of job applicants and make the smartest pick, how to make better use of your memory and understand its limitations, and how to organize a closet. The suggestions are smart, thoroughly explained, and personable. Here’s a tongue-in-cheek excerpt about the roommate of Danny Hillis, inventor of the famous Connection Ma...

Meet Bridget, a successful travel journalist with ambitions to turn her quirky relationship blog into a novel. But, after numerous rejections from publishers, she accepts an alternative proposition: Nicole Dupre died leaving behind a bestselling novel and an incomplete sequel, and the family need someone to finish it. Bridget is just thankful to have her foot in the publishing door. But as she gets to know Nicole’s grieving family, and the woman behind the writing, Bridget’s priorities begin to change … It is that exciting time of the year again when a new Paige Toon novel is released into the wild and bookworms get ready to race to the bookshops to get their copy and let me tell you her new novel The Last Piece of My Heart will not leave fans disappointed. Our main character Bridget is a travel journalist who also has a relationship blog but when she gets an incredible opportunity to write the sequel to a bestselling book she jumps at the chance. Author Nicole Dupre died leaving behin...

The Final Giveaway! A copy of The Hourglass  A Weekly Organiser  A beauty and the beast mug perfect for any bookworm! a Rafflecopter giveaway

This is the second to last giveaway and up for grabs this time is a Hardback Copy of The Night Visitor by Lucy Atkins and a Bookish notebook. a Rafflecopter giveaway