General Chat

Please suggest 2 ordinary books, the vote will take place on 12/13th November.

There will be 7 weeks to read these as Christmas is in the middle Review date will be 2 January - unless you would prefer an extra week making it the 9th, please say if that is what you want.

Ann
Glos

Dee's choice

The Night Watch – Sarah Walters

Tender and tragic, set against the turbulent backdrop of wartime Britain. This is an extraordinary story of four Londoners: Kay, who wanders the streets in mannish clothes, restless and searching…..Helen, who harbours a troubling secret…..Viv, glamour girl, recklessly loyal to her soldier lover….. and Duncan, an apparent innocent, struggling with demons of his own

Searching for Tilly – Susan Sallis

Three women come to a remote Cornish village for the summer: Jenna, only 26 and grieving for the loss of her life; her mother Caro, whose husband Steve has also died; and Laura, who had been married to Caro’s beloved brother Geoff. They are staying in a house called Widdowe’s Cottage – a poignantly suitable name

In that tine Cornish community they discover many strange memories of their forbears, and especially of Tilly, Caro’s mother, whose family history seemed to mirror so much of their own. They become swept up in the dramatic story of Tilly and her family, a story which takes them on an epic journey across the West Country and to the solution of an amazing family mystery

Is it November already? Here are my suggestions before I head off to bed.

Break No Bones by Kathy Reichs

Forensic anthropologist Tempe Brennan is spending two weeks in May on Dewees, a barrier island north of Charleston, South Carolina, where she is leading a student excavation of a prehistoric site when one of the bodies they find isn't so ancient.

Before long, another body is found and Tempe finds herself drawn deeper into a shocking and chilling investigation.

Knights of the Cross by Tom Harper

As the First Crusaders are stuck in an interminable siege of Turk-held Antioch, Demetrios Askiates, a Greek assigned as scribe to the Byzantine peror's representative, must once again play detective. The discovery of a Norman knight with his throat slit and bearing unusual markings on his corpse threatens the shaky alliance among the varied European
armies of the First Crusade. Amid battles and political intrigues, Demetrios desperately
pursues the few clues he has, even as the late Norman knight's companions, who may have
joined him in promoting a new heretical sect, also turn up dead.

Forgot to say either 2nd or 9th is fine by me, I will go with what the majority want - Michelle

Falls the Shadow by Sharon Penman
(sequel to here be Dragons)
Amid the wars and intrigues, courtiers and crusades of Henry 111's peevish England and Llewelyn's divided Wales, Simon alone lacked the art of dissembling. (Simon De Montfort). And even for the greatest warrior in Europe, the privileged husband of the king's favourite sister that was a dangerous failing......
Sharon Penman weaves the facts and fiction, private passions and public events, of Simon's life into a rich tapestry shot through with all the colour and vigour of the medieval world. It is a story of great ambition, and greater love, brought to brilliant life.



the wise Woman Philippa Gregory

Alys joins the nunnery to escape poverty but finds herself thrown back into the outside world when Henry V111's wreckers destroy her sanctuary. With nothing but her looks, her magic and her own instinctive cunning, Alys has to tread the perilous path between the faith of her childhood and her own female power.

when she falls in love with Hugo, the feudal lord and another woman's husband, she dips into witchcraft to defeat her rival and to win her lover, only to find that magic makes a poor servant but a dominant master. Since heresy against the new church means the stake, and witchcraft the rope, alys's danger is mortal. A woman's powers are no longer safe to use....



Ann
Glos

nudge

Are you joining our Greaders group Vods, you are welcome to join but we need the authors and a synopsis of the books if you are. Thanks

Ann
Glos

Is nobody interested any more?

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.

Thank goodness Maisie, I thought everyone had absconded.

Ann
Glos

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.

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????

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

thanks Daff, now where is everyone else?

Ann
Glos

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.

n

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

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

Ann
Glos

nudging up

x Jill

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

Ann
Glos