Changes

From TheBookbag
Jump to navigationJump to search
no edit summary
|summary=When Emmi sends and email to cancel a magazine subscription, she has no idea what a slight typo in the email address will lead to – a life-changing, potentially marriage-wrecking, all-consuming online love affair with the man whom she emails in error. What starts as an insignificant, casual message quickly becomes something much more important to both her and Leo as two people who have never met start to share their secrets and wishes, dreams and fears with each other, not just because they can but, it seems, because they have to.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857050958</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Alan Clark
|title=Rory's Boys
|rating=5
|genre=Humour
|summary=Rory Blaine, grandson of Lady Sybil Blaine is gay, free, single and loving it, as he tells himself a dozen times a day. He may be middle aged but he's still got it. He's a partner in a successful advertising firm and so, so over having been thrown out of home when he was a teenager; yes, over it – totally and completely. When he hears his grandmother is dying, he decides it's time to remind her (and her considerable wealth) of his existence. The tardy but intensive attention seems to pay off when he's left the ancestral pile. But the stately home wasn't left to him quite in the way that he thought. There are so many strings attached it resembles a marionette: if he wants to keep it he must transform it into the first retirement home for elderly gay gentlemen and he also seems to have acquired his first resident, whether he's wanted or not.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906413886</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Allan Hendry
|title=End Game
|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=A decade ago arms dealer Peter Rossi and Bill Rawlings, theologian, were in rough terrain two thousand feet above the Dead Sea. Rawlings was looking for something, but what, or where? It still wasn't entirely clear to Rossi when it was necessary for them to make a dramatic escape from a group of men - and the resulting carnage would be the stuff of nightmares for Rossi for many years to come. A decade later and at the other side of the world Bradley O'Connor, billionaire computer scientist, was forced to land his vintage plane on a mountain track in heavy snow and in the cold and lonely night which followed found his plane surrounded by a group of men eerily similar - had he but known it - to those Rossi and Rawlings had encountered.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848972431</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Eliza Graham
|title=The History Room
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The novel begins with a key scene from Meredith’s childhood and then springs forward to the present day and the incident in the history room. The prank sets the tone for the whole novel – sinister in many subtle ways and having several layers of meaning. The cast assemble around the fall out from the prank and each character is beautifully drawn. Hugh, Meredith’s husband, is suffering the results of horrors he experienced in Helmand. Meredith’s immediate family are also traumatised by the death of her mother. In this highly charged atmosphere, it’s hard to know whether they are taking the prank too seriously or if it does indeed imply worrying occurrences within the school. Add in the presence of strangers in the form of new pupils and new staff, and before long even the most long-held relationships begin to suffer as a result of all the suspicions that are brought out by the prank.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330509276</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Chuck Palahniuk
|title=Invisible Monsters Remix
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary='Don't expect this to be the kind of story that goes: and then, and then, and then.' And yet... Once upon a time I collected a couple of Palahniuk books, upon his first, ''Fight Club''-inspired flush of British success, and never got round to reading them. And then the book reviewing gods conspired to give me [[Pygmy by Chuck Palahniuk|Pygmy]], [[Tell-All by Chuck Palahniuk|Tell-All]] and [[Damned by Chuck Palahniuk|Damned]] to peruse. And then I still didn't go back through his past works. But then he revised Invisible Monsters, his second-written and third-published novel, and I got to look at it after all.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099575051</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Marcello Fois
|title=Memory of the Abyss
|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=We are on Sardinia, over a hundred years ago. It is a land of legend, where storytellers can see a different nature to the moon each night and convey that in their earthly stories. It's a world of wonder, where sheep can fall from the skies for more than one reason. It's a poor land, where lads are expected to be responsible shepherds by the time they are ten. As a result people look after each other - except, while returning from a Christening Samuele and his father are refused basic hospitality. Later when the boy runs away one night the land falls away beneath him - yet he finds a girl to ground him to this earth. Which is most relevant when he goes to war, and particularly when he comes back and finds himself a wronged man, and in need of vengeance...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906694001</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Francis Bennett
|title=The Crabber Stories
|rating=4
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=John White was known to everyone as Crabber - a nickname which he once earned and which then stuck - and he grew up on the shores of Long Island in the nineteen-fifties. It was a close-knit community and a time when children had more freedom than they are likely to be allowed now. We watch as Crabber grows from being a boy still suffering from the death of his elder brother when we first met him through to a time when he's old enough to go on a hunting trip on the mainland with a local family. He tells his own stories, as truthfully as he can and with the sort of insight which children have before life injects its cynicism.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B00737IKIW</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Belinda Seaward
|title=The Beautiful Truth
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=There are two parallel story lines in Belinda Seaward's ''The Beautiful Truth'': one set in the present day and one in wartime Poland. Both involve love stories and personal struggles, and there are repeating themes such as horses and the stars that effectively provide links between the two in this clearly well-researched and engrossing narrative.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0719521114</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=EL James
|title=Fifty Shades Freed
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=When the [[Fifty Shades Of Grey by EL James|first]] book in a trilogy is outstandingly awesome, and the [[Fifty Shades Darker by EL James|second]] is pretty darn excellent, to read the final instalment is a no-brainer really. And, I suspect that is why this book is selling so well, because while it’s a mildly interesting reading, in my mind it didn’t come close to the first two offerings in terms of intriguing characters, a suspense filled plot or general ''kinky-fuckery''.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099579944</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Maggie Shipstead
|title=Seating Arrangements
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Weddings are always a potential source for intrigue and drama. In Maggie Shipstead's debut novel, ''Seating Arrangements'', there's plenty of that going on. Set in a New England island called Waskeke, Winn Van Meter's eldest daughter, Daphne, who is already heavily pregnant is about to marry Greyson Duff. The problems start when Daphne's retinue of bridesmaids, who include her sister, Livia, who has had her heart broken by her first love to the son of Winn's social arch rival, and the flirtatious Agatha mix with Greyson's brothers. Add in the fact that Winn has always had a yearning for Agatha and things get decidedly messy.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>000742521X</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Tony Parsons
|title=Catching the Sun
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Tom Finn had been a builder, but bankruptcy intervened and taxi driving provided some sort of living for him, his wife, Tess and twins Rory and Keeva. And so it might have continued but for two burglars in his home. Tom 'confronted' them - and nearly went to jail, but his conviction mean that taxi driving was no longer an option. Then a chance encounter brought him the offer of another driving job - but this one was in Phuket in Thailand - and included accommodation. There's a saying that if something seems too good to be true then it probably is, but when you're as close to the bottom as Tom Finn there comes a time when you've got to take a chance and hope that this is your lucky day.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007327811</amazonuk>
}}

Navigation menu