General Chat

Jeanette and Helen, last chance. I assume Maisie and AL are away.

Please give us your suggestions for two books for Oct/Nov.
vote to be either Saturday evening or Sunday, depending if we have all suggested.

Please keep this nudged as I have visitors until tomorrow.

Ann
Glos

Me and Mr Darcy - Alexandra Potter

Emily Albright, 29, a New York bookstore manager, who half-seriously blames Jane Austen's Fitzwilliam Darcy for her abysmal dating life: Darcy sets the bar too high. As Christmas approaches, Emily, to avoid a holiday with co-worker Stella, signs up for a tour of Darcy territory, lighting out, amusingly, with a gaggle of gray-haired Darcy maniacs. As the tour group weaves in and out of Darcy locales, Emily butts heads with Spike Hargreaves, a handsome young journalist interviewing the group. Soon, the jet-lagged, drink-laden Emily finds herself—presto!—time traveling and meeting Mr. Darcy himself, complete with frock coat. As her acquaintance with Darcy deepens, Emily, to her great surprise, finds herself thinking about Spike.

The Third Heaven Conspiracy - Giulio Loeni

Florence, 1291. In a disused church on the outskirts of the city the disfigured corpse of a master mosaic artist sits at the foot of his latest - unfinished - creation. Young, ambitious Dante Alighieri, Prior of the City, is sent out to investigate. He quickly discovers not only that the church hides secrets of its own, but that the murdered man was connected to a shadowy organisation known as the Third Heaven, an assorted band of scholars and adventurers whose influence could undermine the city's government - in favour of the all-powerful Catholic church and its brutal emissaries.

Seeking to uncover the truth in the mosaic that was too dangerous to be told, Dante is drawn into a power struggle that leads him back into the secrets and myths of an ancient imperial dynasty - and into peril as the charms of a mysterious smoky-eyed dancer begin to blind his reason....

The Rose Of Sebastopol by Katharine McMahon

From an online review:

The Rose of Sebastapol isn't the straightforward historical novel it first appears to be, just as the relationships among the lead characters, and indeed the nature of the characters themselves, aren't what they first appear to be. The result is an engrossing adventure set against the rarely written-about Crimean War entwined with a mystery and wrapped around a coming-of-age, sexual-awakening tale. Adding even more complexity to the story is the unreliable narrative and the subtle yet evocative details. After finishing the book, I almost immediately began leafing through it again, seeing certain scenes in a new light, just as the protagonist had.

The Welsh Girl by Peter Ho Davies
From an online review:

The Welsh Girl is set in the mountains of Wales in the waning days of World War II. Esther is the daughter of a nationalist sheep farmer and a part-time barmaid. English soldiers arrive, and being one of the few in the village who can speak English, Esther is sent to find out why they're there. The soldiers are building a prisoner-of-war camp, which doesn't earn the good favor the local Welsh citizens. Esther meets a German soldier, Karsten, ashamed of the fact that he surrendered. The two have an instant attraction. When Karsten escapes, Captain Rotherham, a British Army interrogator of German and Jewish extraction, is sent to investigate. While there, he interrogates the POW camp's most famous prisoner, Rudolf Hess. Peter Ho Davies' novel of nationalism, identity, and love has received mostly positive reviews with the San Francisco Chronicle saying, "To his credit, Davies has never insisted on comfortable endings, and he doesn't come to any easy conclusions about the importance of freedom or the absolute nature of home. In spite of its moments of improbability and contrivance, this first novel still manages to tap the most troubling paradoxes of community and individuality, of loyalty and love."

n

Is this a book club of some sort? If so can anyone join in.....I lurrvvv reading!

Thanks
Bev x

pm Ann glos and ask her to put your name on her list.

Pick 2 books for the vote on the weekend to decide this months reads.

Gill

No Time For Goodbye by Linwood Barclay

The house was deathly quiet. That was the first sign that something was terribly wrong. Fourteen-year-old Cynthia Bigge woke that morning to find herself alone. Her family—mother, father, and brother—had vanished without a word, without a note, without a trace. Twenty-five years later, Cynthia is still looking for answers. Now she is about to learn the devastating truth.

From critically acclaimed author Linwood Barclay comes a new suspense thriller that strikes to the core of our most primal fear. What if you woke one day to find your entire life had changed? If everyone you loved had disappeared overnight without so much as a chance to ask why?

.......................................................................

The Kommandant's Girl by Pam Jenoff

Nineteen year-old Emma Bau has only been married for three weeks when the Nazis invade her native Poland. After her husband, Jacob, is forced to disappear underground as part of the resistance movement, Emma soon finds herself imprisoned in the ghetto with her parents. There she meets one of the resistance leaders and with his help, she is able to escape the ghetto and live under an assumed, non-Jewish identity.

Emma’s already precarious situation is complicated by her introduction to Kommandant Georg Richwalder, a high-ranking Nazi official who insists that Emma come to work for him as his assistant. In this position, Emma has the opportunity to provide information to the resistance movement and potentially help her still-imprisoned parents. To do so, however, she must become perilously close to the Kommandant, a troubled man with a dark secret whose romantic intentions are clear. Emma makes the difficult decision to become involved with the Kommandant and, as their relationship intensifies, she is forced to acknowledge her own undeniable feelings for him. Desperately, Emma wrestles with questions of loyalty and duty until at last she is able to locate information sought by the resistance movement regarding the Nazi liquidation of the ghetto. Spurred by this information, the resistance undertakes the fateful bombing of a Nazi café, unleashing a chain of events that will change Emma’s life, and the lives of those she loves, forever.

Based in part on actual events, The Kommandant's Girl is a compelling tale of love and courage in a dangerous and desperate time. Unique in voice and evocative in historical detail, the novel’s widespread appeal stems not only from its eternally popular subjects of World War II and the Holocaust, but also from its timeless themes of hope, struggle and defiance in the face of overwhelming odds.

We have just read no time for goodbye PP can you nominate a different book in place of that one please.

Gill

nudged for Ann

Interesting concept an online reading group. I may have to PM Ann as I love reading.
Angela

My suggestions are

The Hundred Secret Senses by Amy Tan

Olivia Yee is only five years old when Kwan, her older sister from China, comes to live with the family and turns her life upside down, bombarding her day and night with ghostly stories of strange ancestors from the world of Yin. Olivia just wants to lead a normal American life.


For the next thirty years, Olivia endures visits from Kwan and her ghosts, who appear in the living world to offer her advice on everything from restaurants to Olivia's failed marriage. But just when she cannot bear it any more, the revelations of a tragic family secret finally open her mind to the startling truths hidden in Kwan's unorthodox vision of the world.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

My second book is-

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
by Mary Amm Shaffer

It's January 1946, and writer Juliet Ashton sits at her desk, vainly seeking a subject for her next book.
Out of the blue, she receives a letter from one Dawsey Adams of Guernsey - by chance, he's acquired a second-hand book that once belonged to Juliet - and spurred on the their mutual love of Charles Lamb, they begin a correspondence. When Dawsey reveals that he is a member of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, Juliet's curiosity is piqued, and it's not long before she begins to hear from the other founding members.
As the letters fly back and forth with stories of life in Guernsey under the German Occupation, Juliet soon realises that the society is every bit as extraordinary as its name.
There's gawkey Isola, who makes love potions to sell along with her vegetables; Eben, a fisherman with a passion for Shakespeare; Will, erstwhile ironmonger and creator of the famous potato peel pie: and Dawsey himself, a farmer with a shy manner and a tender heart.

Most poignant of all are the memories of Elizabeth, the founding member of the society, who fell in love with a German officer, saved a starving prisoner, and was sent away yo a concentration camp, leaving her child behind.

Sustained by books and one another, the islanders have battled the bitter hardships of WW11.
Juliet, entranced by their stories and their spirit, decides to visit Guernsey to meet her new friends properly.



Tess

Hi Greaders,

My suggestions this month are......

Under an English Heaven by Robert Radcliffe

'A meticulously accurate picture of life in wartime England...... There is the streetwise evacuee who is "adopted" by the Americans; the wife of a soldier missing in Burma; the suspicious Suffolk villagers; and the simple doggedness of people under continual threat. Radcliffe's theme is survival, which seems remarkable only with hindsight; at the time it was just something you did because there was no alternative. This matter-of-factness the author has captured flawlessly, and the result is enthralling.'
(Daily Mail)

Three Day Road - Joseph Boyden

It is 1919 and Niska, the last Canadian medicine woman to live off the land, has received word that one of the two boys she saw off to the Great War has returned. Xavier Bird, her sole living relative, is gravely wounded and addicted to the army's morphine. As Niska slowly paddles her canoe on the three-day journey to take Xavier back to his home, travelling through the start but stunning landscape of Northern Canada, their respective stories emerge - stories of Niska's life amongst her kin and Xavier's horrifying experiences in the killing fields of Ypres and the Somme.
Niska realises that in the aftermath of war, Xavier's soul is hovering somewhere between the worlds of the living and the dead - but will the three-day journey home be enough to save him?

Sue

Before I Die by Jenny Downham


When you read the final pages of Jenny Downham's debut novel through tears, don't say you weren't warned. Before I Die is narrated by a perceptive, witty 16-year-old called Tessa Scott. Tessa has been living with leukaemia for four years. And, by the end of the book, she will die. There's no use fighting this. It tells you right there in the title. Even with this foreknowledge, it's hard not to feel a stab of resentment as you're confronted by something as sentimentally sucker-punching as Before I Die. This much-hyped novel is destined to drive hundreds of thousands of readers to tears and to swift injunctions to all their friends to read it.

At first glance, it's teenage business as usual. Tessa wants to lose her virginity before she dies. She also wishes that she was as cool and daring as her best friend Zoey. Later, she realises that Zoey has none of the gravitas and emotional grounding she has garnered through her own illness.

Tessa's parents are divorced. Dad is a stay-at-home, and mum is, well, an absent parent - she ran off with a man when Tessa was little and has belatedly reappeared in Tessa's life. There are also drugs, rebellion, boys, and even an annoying little brother who sometimes wishes Tessa would hurry up and die.

Unfortunately, you won't share his outlook. You'll hope, more and more, that Tessa will somehow stave off the end. You'll steel yourself for the final farewell. You'll try to be stoical and still it won't stem the tears.

n

Have just seen this as phone lines have been down for the last two days, so no Internet connection.Something had caught the line and its down at the end of our lane.
Have to pop out for a bit to do changeover next door but will get my book choices on by this evening if that's OK.
If its not here by end of evening the Internet has gone again.
Its very odd at the moment as Internet

xx Jill

Blood Line By Fiona Mountain
The anonymous note means nothing to ancestor detective Natasha Blake. Then one of her clients, an enigmatic old man who had commissioned a family tree of his granddaughter’s boyfriend, is shot dead at his isolated farm, just as shocking facts about the past are brought to light. Is there a link?
Unconnected yet haunting stories begin to emerge from the ancient paper trails: two young soldiers playing football in no man’s land on Christmas day, 1914; Second World War land girls, inseparable friends, until a fatal mistake tore them apart; and the eerie echo of a child in an English country home….
Despite Natasha’s reluctance to delve deeper, she knows that family histories hide many secrets…..


The Duchess by Amanda Foreman (Previously published as Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire)
There were three people in her marriage!
Beautiful, glamorous and charismatic, Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, was an icon of her age; she was also a compulsive gambler, an influential political operator, a drug addict, a doting mother and an adulteress.
In a world of decadence and excess, of great houses, extravagant parties and sexual intrigue, Georgiana, like her descendant, Diana, Princess of Wales, was publicly adored but personally troubled. From her complex ménage a trois with her husband and best friend to her vast gambling debts; from her adoration of her children to her passionate but doomed love for Earl grey, she was a fascinating, contradictory woman whose story still resonates today.


Ann
Glos

there must be more to add.

Just popping upstairs to look at a couple that might be OK.
Angela

n

Dear Ann,
thanks for the pm to remind me....as you know I am a bit busy lately...
I hope you dont mind..I have nominated two books from my bookself that I havent got around to reading yet, so I hope they have not been read already..

The Reluctant Fundamentalist
by Moshsin Hamid

'Excuse me, sir but may I be of assistance? Ah, I see I have alarmed you. Do not be frightened by my beard. I am a lover of America...'

So speaks the mysterious stranger at a lahore cafe as dusk settles. Invited to join him for tea, you learn his name and what led this speaker of immaculate English to seek you out.........
shorlisted for booker prize 2007
(back cover)

On Chesil Beach
Ian McEwan
In July 1962 Edward and Florence, young innocents married that morning, arrived at a hotel on the dorset coast. At dinner in their rooms thay struggle to suppress their private fears of the wedding night to come...
(back cover)

cmd xxx