General Chat

Good morning Jill (and everyone else).
Grandsons woke at 7am and have been on the computer. They are now having breakfast, so have grabbed the chance to come on here. However need to eat my own breakfast, so will be back later.


Tess

Losing You – Susan Lewis
Lauren Scott is bright, talented and beautiful. At eighteen, she is the most precious gift in the world to her mother, and has a dazzling career ahead of her.
Oliver Lomax is a young man full of promise, despite the shadow his own, deeply troubled, mother casts over him.
Then one fateful night, Oliver makes a decision.

Summer Affair – Sarah Challis
When Jodie Roberts goes missing from a sleepy Dorset village, the repercussions that reverberate through the small community are as far-reaching as they are devastating. Rachel begins to question her marriage for the first time after routine police enquiries reveal that her husband, Dave, lied about his whereabouts that evening. It seems that her loving family is about to be torn apart.

For Henry, Rachel’s neighbour, Jodie’s disappearance is also deeply traumatic. Feelings of guilt, loneliness and grief are brought to the surface, and he struggles to cope with painful memories.

Good morning x

We still have Berona to come.

2nd Suggestion

Flora and Grace - Maureen Lee

It's 1944 and Flora Knox is enjoying a beautiful spring morning in the Swiss mountains, waiting on a railway station platform for a train. Having been educated in Switzerland, Flora has been unable to return home to the UK since the outbreak of war, much to her delight. She is far happier there than she had been with her elderly aunt. As Flora watches, a cattle train draws closer to the station, pulling a fleet of slatted trucks behind. But the trucks don't contain animals. From within come the sounds of humans, groaning, pleading, on a desperate journey across the Swiss countryside. Horrified, Flora runs to the train as it slowly clatters through the station, and as she does so, a filthy bundle of rags is pushed out into her arms. Through the slats of the train, she hears a desperate plea: 'Take him. His name is Simon.'

As the train disappears, Flora is left holding a tiny baby boy. Everything looks just the same as it did moments before - the sun, the sky, the station - but nothing will ever be the same again.

My first suggestion......Book One: TO CATCH A DREAM - Set in 1876-1900, this is a moving story of love, passion, and betrayal. Bridie O’Hara, a beautiful young girl, is torn away from her native Ireland by her father – a freedom fighter, turned traitor, when he has to flee the wrath of the Fenians. Violated by him she ends up in a correction convent. Her escape, and meeting up with Bruiser Armitage, a pimp, sets her fate. One man tries to save her, Will Hadler, a kind, hard-working miner, whose love for Bridie knows no bounds. His rescue of her brings her happiness, but the demons inside her never give her peace.

When Andrew Harvey, master of Hensal Grange, takes a fancy to her it is the beginning of Bridie sinking back into degradation. Her daughter, Bridget pays the price. Unprotected by her drunken mother, Bridget suffers rape and the heartbreak of having to give up her child, Megan.

Home in time to post :-)
Gravity by Tessa Gerritson
Dr Emma Watson, a brilliant research physician, has been training for the mission of a lifetime: to study living organisms in space. Jack McCallum, Emma’s estranged husband, has shared her dream of space travel, but a medical condition has grounded him. Now he must watch from the sidelines…

The mission aboard the space station turns into a nightmare when a culture of single-celled organisms begins to regenerate out of control – and infects the crew with agonising and deadly results. Emma struggles to contain the deadly virus, while back home Jack and NASA work against the clock to bring her home. But there will be no rescue, as the astronauts are left stranded in orbit where they are dying one by one…

The Beach Cafe by Lucy Diamond
Evie Flynn has always been the black sheep of her family - a dreamer and a drifter, unlike her over-achieving elder sisters. She's tried making a name for herself as an actress, a photographer and a singer, but nothing has ever worked out. Now she's stuck in temp hell, with a sensible, pension-planning boyfriend. Somehow life seems to be passing her by. Then her beloved aunt Jo dies suddenly in a car crash, leaving Evie an unusual legacy - her precious beach cafe in Cornwall. Determined to make a success of something for the first time in her life, Evie heads off to Cornwall to get the cafe and her life back on track - and gets more than she bargained for, both in work and in love...

Sorry, have been out with my grandsons. Their dad has just gone to work a 24 hour shift. So wish me luck. Have just insisted that it is MY turn on the computer!

First suggestion.

East of the Sun by Julia Gregson.

("When she woke up, she went to the window and watched the sun go down over the sea, and felt homesickness for the first time since she had arrived, a sense of the vastness of India all around her .....")

Autumn 1928. Three young women are on their way to India, each with a new life in mind.
Rose, a beautiful but naive bride-to-be, is anxious about leaving her family - and marrying a man she hardly knows.
Victoria, her bridesmaid, couldn't be happier to get away from her overbearing mother, and is determined to find a husband, (and new life,) for herself.
And Viva, thrie inexperienced chaperone, is in search of the india of her childhood, ghosts from the past - and freedom.

Each of them has their own reason for leaving their homeland - but the hopes and secrets they carry can do little to prepare them for what lies ahead in India.

------------------------------------------------------

Second suggestion.

Buckingham Palace Gardens by Anne Perry.

(An Inspector Thomas Pitt Novel).


The message arrives in the early hours of the morming: Pitt and his superior, Narraway, are to attend Buckingham Palace, immeadiatley. A prostitute has been brutally murdered in the palace and a panicked Prince of Wales needs the Special Branch's help. They must apprehend the culprit before Queen Victoria's imminent return.

As Pitt narrows the suspects down to a group of wealthy entreneurs seeking royal approval for the Cape to Cairo railway, he soon realises that he will have to navigate the upper echelons of soiety to catch a killer who thinks that he is above the law.

For amongst the ruling elite, ancestry and power are all that matters and it is


a courageous man that dares to stand against it.

Can Pitt find the killer stalking the palace corridors. ?


Tess
:-)

*sigh nudge

nudge

The Detective's Daughter by Lesley Thomson

Kate Rokesmith's decision to go to the river changed the lives of many.
Her murder shocked the nation. Her husband, never charged, moved abroad under a cloud of suspicion. Her son, just four years old, grew up in a loveless boarding school. And Detective Inspector Darnell, vowing to leave no stone unturned in the search for her killer, began to lose his only daughter. The young Stella Darnell grew to resent the dead Kate Rokesmith. Her dad had never vowed to leave no stone unturned for her.
Now, thirty years later, Stella is dutifully sorting through her father's attic after his sudden death. The Rokesmith case papers are in a corner, gathering dust: the case was never solved. Stella knows she should destroy them. Instead, she opens the box, and starts to read.

Always You by Erin Kaye

A pair of star-crossed lovers offer each other a second chance at life and love. But will they have the courage to take it?
An emotive and uplifting tale, guaranteed to pull at the heart strings. Perfect for fans of Jo Jo Moyes and Hilary Boyd’s Thursdays In The Park.
If only they could rewrite their past…
It’s 1992 and Sarah is in love with Cahal, a boy from the wrong side of the tracks. As they plan to graduate from university, all seems set for their happily ever after.
Fast forward to 2012 and something’s gone wrong. Cahal is out of the picture and Sarah is divorced from Ian by whom she’s had two children. What happened? As Cahal walks back into Sarah’s life, can they do things differently this time?

Off to have a think!

Back later.

Tess

Apple Tree Yard by Louise Doughty

Part courtroom drama, part psychological thriller. A 52-year-old geneticist, wife and mother, Yvonne, leads a blameless and quiet life in London while having a fairly prestigious career, then embarks on an affair. She is picked up by a mysterious man as she is leaving a select committee. He leads her to a little-known underground chapel at the House of Commons, where they have sex. "Sex with you is like being eaten by a wolf." she writes in one of her series of letters to X, the mystery lover. She writes these letters on her computer and hides them in files within files. They are meant never to be read. The book opens with Yvonne in the dock at the Old Bailey. It will take most of the book to discover what she is on trial for - and it's worth the wait.

I was in the library and there on the shelf was The Lonely Desert by Sarah Challis

I though yer what and opened it and it is the sequel to Footprints in the Sand.

so

The Lonely Desert by Sarah Challis

Emily and Clemmie's lives changed for ever when they took their great aunt's ashes to rest in a strange and exotic land. Clemmie stayed behind to begin a new life in the Mali desert, but now Emily fears for her cousin's safety. Returning to Africa with her new husband and two friends, she is determined to find out why Clemmie seems so desperately to need her help. Divinity is travelling to Mali to satisfy her curiosity about the land her father came from, and to source new materials for her design company. She doesn't expect the chaos and adventure she finds - nor the danger that seems to grow as her little group begin to make its way across the desert towards Clemmie.

Robert Goddard FAULT LINE


Was it your average suicide, man dead in a car at the end of a lonely track..or was there more to it....and what about the 7 yr old boy still alive in the boot! For Jonathan Kellaway it is the truth he has to. find, confronting secrets which have consume his life and which may well consume him.

Jo Nesbo NEMESIS.

after a man is caught on CCTV shooting a bank cashier, Harry Hole begins his investigation. But following a dinner with an old flame, he wakes up with no memory of the past 12 hours, then she is found dead, is he responsible or is someone trying to frame him....as Harry fights to clear his name the bank robberies continue out of control.

I'll be back !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

jan

Sorry don't want this to sink

Nudge

Some day I'll find you by Richard Madely

Full of the atmosphere and imponderables of war, the novel is written in two parts. In the first half of the story, we witness the blossoming of a love affair. The second half has the hallmark of a psychological thriller. Neither a Sebastian Faulks nor a Barbara Taylor Bradford but written in his own distinctive style, this novel is surely a blockbusting film: the ultimate love story, a tale of contrasts: innocence, intrigue and deception.

It is 1938, Wartime England, when we watch James Blackwell, the sexy, `dream pilot' walking into Diana's life: a buddy of her pilot brother John, he has lots with which to woo the ladies: a velvet tongue, and adonis good looks.
Lovely Diana, is 19 years old. She is very beautiful, a high flyer at Girton College Cambridge and born into a family of wealth and repute is the preverbial `good catch': so we are hooked, drawn in to their steamy romance. Through the touching weave of the story, we see the downside, the complications, the insecurities that `privilege' can bring, and feel protective of Diana's naivety and the scheming mind of James. We are never left in any doubt about the darker side of his character, his cold manipulative ways, but the crispness of those early, short sharp chapters in Madeley's style of writing is so refreshingly `unoppressive', we are whisked on a breath of fresh air into our own thinking and good intentions for the engaging couple that they'll be alright in the end!
Tragically by the close of their magical wedding day Diana is on her own again and carrying James's child.

10 years later: the second part of the novel starts, with its lengthening chapters, and quickening of pace.
It is the 1950"s and we find ourselves in the comforting bosom of Southern France. What a contrast of cultures!
YET as in all brilliantly crafted psychological thrillers, we are poised, in suspense, danger is just round that corner, increasingly we know it..
`Some day I'll find you' once romantic, now foreboding, what do those six words mean? And why do I hear humming in my head
`We'll meet again, don't know where, ... when?'

Suddenly with goose bumping speed, the ultimate bombshell happens to
rip apart Diana Stella and Douglas's world forever.

The Sunflower Forest by Torey Hayden

Seventeen year old Lesley is a typical teenage girl, living in America: Her worries revolve around boys, choosing the right college and bickering with her sister Megan who is 8 years younger. She adores her mother Mara, who tells evocative stories of her childhood in Hungary and Germany before the war. However Mara has one memory of the past that she can never share.
As Lesley begins to uncover the horror of her mother’s secret, their idyllic family life shatters around them, and Lesley realizes that her mother is not the person she thought she knew.
From Hitler’s Germany, Ravensbruck, Lebensborn and the master race to Murder. Secrets a mother cannot keep from her children.