General Chat

thanks you all, will sort out the vote thread now.

ann
Glos

Hi everyone!

Sorry I'm late but I've been away.

Ann....I will pm you shortly


The Plantagenet Prelude - Jean Plaidy

When William X dies, the duchy of Aquitaine is left to his fifteen year-old daughter, Eleanor. But such a position for an unmarried woman puts the whole kingdom at risk. So on his deathbed William made a will that would ensure his daughter's protection: he promised her hand in marriage to the future King of France. Eleanor grows into a romantic and beautiful queen, but she has inherited the will of a king, and is determined to rule Aquitaine using her husband's power as King of France. Her resolve knows no limit and, in the years to follow she was to become one of history's most scandalous queens.

Lifeless - Mark Billingham

In Lifeless, Mark Billingham's Tom Thorne reaches something like the nadir of his police career, broken by the death--possibly the murder--of his demented father and shuffled off to a desk job of infinite tedium. When someone starts kicking the London homeless to death, he suggests going undercover, and those of his friends who care about him worry that he is looking for his own destruction as much as for the killer. Certainly Thorne finds compensations on the street for danger, cold, hunger and squalor--his friendship with two young addicts is nonetheless real for his deceit and their pragmatic ruthlessness. Yet the secret of the deaths he is investigating lies only partly in London's dark alleys and corners; it lies as well fourteen years in the past on the road to Baghdad...

n

nudging back up
x Jill

SHAME written by Jasvinder Sanghera
Is a true story of her life after leaving home to avoid an arranged marriage. It highlights what still happens in this country in the 21st century.
A compelling read.


DAMAGED written by Cathy Glass
True story by a long term foster carer. It focuses on the horrid abuse a child has endured, and her carers determination to help her where other carers have failed. Great read.

Sorry to have kept you waiting everyone.

My suggestions are_

1. The Villa in Italy - Elizabeth Edmondon
4 strangers are summoned to Villa Dante each being named in the will of Beatrice Malaspina although none of them know who she is. As the villa comes back to life the 4 visit the medieval tower close to the house and find themselves face to face with their troubled pasts in a way they never could have forseen. The villa works its' magic and slowly they are changed - now they can receive their unexpected inheritance and, as devastating secrets are finally revealed, get on with their lives.

2. Sheltering rain - Jojo Moyes
On Coronation Night in 1953 teh ex pat community in Hong Kong gathers for a celebration party. While thye strain yo listed ot the proceedings on a faulty wireless 21 year old Joy falls in love. She is engaged within 24 hours but will not see her fiance again for a year.
In 1980 Kate's rebellion is to run away from County Wexford with her illegitimate child.
15 yrs later Sabine leaves trendy Hackney to visit the grandparents she has never known and finds that time in Wexford seems to have stood still. When Sabine, her mother and gran are brought together a deeply buried family secret is discovered as well as fundamental truths about conflict between love and duty, about women's choices and about mothers and daughters.

Kate

n

Sorry for the delay, not been on here much since I've been away!
I know these are both by the same author, but she is one of my favourites and these have been on my shelf unread for a while.

The Apprentice - Tess Gerritson
The Surgeon has been locked up for a year, but his chilling legacy still haunts the city, and especially Boston homicide detective Jane Rizzoli. For a new killer is at work and Rizzoli senses something horryfyingly familiar about his modu operandi. Then the unthinkable happens: the surgeon escapes. And suddenly there are two brilliant, twisted killers on the loose, master and apprentice, united in their hunt for the most challenging prey of all:the very woman whi is hunting them...

In Their Footsteps - Tess Gerritson
The quit scandal surrounding her parent's death twenty years ago has always haunted Beryl Tavistock. Now she's decided that the only way to exorcise the ghosts of the past is to search for the truth.
Caught in a world of international espionage, Beryl turns to an ex-CIA agent for help. But in a world where trust is a double edged sword, friends become enemies and enemies become killers.

Dawn

And again, although we have enough now for a reasonable vote.

Ann
Glos

nudging up

x Jill

Thanks, that is a few more, anyone seen Jeanette?

Ann
Glos

Ann, sorry but added a nudge to the classic and message thinking it was for the general.

Sarum by Edward Rutherfurd

In a novel of extraordinary richness, the whole sweep of British civilization unfolds through the story of one place, Salisbury, from beyond recorded time to the present day. The landscape - as old as time itself - shapes the destinies of the five families. The Wilsons and the Shockleys, locked in a cycle of revenge and rivalry for more than 400 years. The Masons, who pour their inspired love of stone into the creation of Stonehenge and Salisbury Cathedral. The Porters, descended from a young Roman soldier in exile. And the aristocratic Norman Godefrois, who will fall to the very bottom of the social ladder before their fortunes revive.


Four Fires by Bryce Courteney

Synopsis
Four fires: passion, religion, warfare and fire itself. Along with love - perhaps the brightest flame of all - these four fires drive the human spirit. In a small town much like any other around Australia live the Maloneys. They are a fifth-generation Australian family of Irish Catholic descent, struggling to reach the first rung of the social ladder. The Maloneys are a family you won't forget: a strong mother, a father broken by war, three boys and two girls, one with an illegitimate daughter. Each of their lives is changed forever by the four fires. Four Fires is unashamedly a story of the power of love and the triumph of the human spirit against the odds.


xx Jill

n

Can I suggest the following:

Innocent Traitor by Alison Weir

Lady Jane Grey was born into times of extreme danger. Child of a scheming father and a ruthless mother, for whom she was merely a pawn in a dynastic power game with the highest stakes, she lived a life in thrall to political machinations and lethal religious fervour.


My Forbidden Face by Latifa (true story)

Latifa was born in Kabul in 1980, into an educated middleclass Afghan family, at once liberal and religious. As a teenager she was interested in fashion & cinema and going out with her friends. Then, in 1996 the Taliban seized power. From that moment Latifa 16 yrs old, became a prisoner in her own home...The simplest and most basic freedoms - walking down the street, looking out of a window - were no longer hers. She was forced to cover herself entirely with a burqa.

AL

Ps - sorry it's late, but I have just suffered a bereavement, so haven't been on here much.

thanks Daff, now where is everyone else?

Ann
Glos

Sorry this is late, Ann

Book 1

The Villa by Nora Roberts

Sophia is the pride of the Giambelli family and excels as PR executive at the family winery. But changes are afoot, and when sabotage threatens the family business and the family itself, Sophia's quest will be not only for dominance, but also for survival.


2nd choice:-

The Divide, by Nicholas Evans

For many anguished months, Ben and Sarah Cooper's daughter has been on the run from the FBI, wanted for murder and acts of eco-terrorism. But when Abbie's body is found embedded in the ice of a remote mountain creek, the family's devastation deepens into mystery. How did she die? And what was the trail of events that led this golden child of a loving family so tragically astray?


Hope that is ok, Ann?

Love

Daff xxx

I am getting disenchanted now. Thank you Susan, Michelle and Maisie (& Dee who does it through me now).

I am getting a bit cross at having to chase people up. gill has dropped out, I wonder if the others are going to join us. last month we had:
jeanette,
Kate
Alfie (who i believe is on holiday)
Susan
Michelle
Dee
A Lover
Dawn Dainton
Daff
Sam
Helen S
Gill and Georgina

Where are they all now????

My suggestions are :-

ON THE WESTERN FRONT
John LAFFIN

Official histories of the First World War are accounts of strategy and tactics, political and logistical considerations and after reading them many might ask why soldiers are rarely mentioned except in terms of military units. Even regimental histories devote more space to the plans and concepts than to the men used to implement the plans.

But at it’s lowest level the History of the ‘Great War’ is made up of millions of trivial incidents, for something happened each day to each man- something that made him laugh, cry or sigh. This collection of stories reflects the real war. Most were for consumption within the army so they were only heard by the men in trenches, behind the lines, at at base hospitals and at the estaminets and billets during rest periods.

This book was the first serious attempt to illustrate the humanity of the soldier on the Western Front, revealing the conditions, attitudes and practices of 1914-18, revealing the soldiers war as they saw it from first shot to last.



Gone Baby Gone

Dennis LEHANE


Boston private investigators, Patrick Kenzie and Angela Genaro are hired to find four-year old Amanda McCready, abducted from her home without leaving a trace.

Despite extensive news coverage and dogged investigation, the police enquiry has uncovered nothing. The case is rife with oddities: Amanda’s indifferent Mother, a couple with a history of paedophilia and a shadowy police unit. As the Indian summer fades, Amanda stays gone – vanished so completely that she seems never to have existed.

When a second child disappears, Kenzie and Genaro face a local media more interested in sensationalizing the abductions than helping to solve them, a local police force seething with lethal secrets, and a faceless power determined to obstruct their efforts. Caught in a deadly tangle of lies, and determined to unravel a riddle that is anything but child’s play, they soon discover that those who go looking for the missing may not come back alive.

Thank goodness Maisie, I thought everyone had absconded.

Ann
Glos

Every woman knows a secret. by Rosie Thomas.
In the aftermath of a family tragedy, Jess Arrowsmith is powerless to resist her attraction to Rob, twenty years her junior, and the person she has reason to hate most in the world. As their love affair threatens to blow her family apart, Jess finds herself in a desperate struggle to defuse a crisis that puts at risk all she holds dear....
The Breaker by Minette Walters.
12 hours after a womans broken body is washed up on a deserted shore, her traumatized 3 yr old daughter is discovered 20 miles away wandering the streets of Poole.
But why was Kate killed and her daughter, a witness, allowed to live? And why weren't they together? More curiously, why, had Kate willingly boarded a boat when she had a terror of drowning at sea?
Police suspicion centres on both a young actor, who's salining boat is moored just yards from where the toddler was found, and also the womans husband. Was he really in Liverpool the night she died? And why does their daughter scream in terror every time he tries to pick her up.