by N.V. Peacock Cherrie Forrester seems a normal young woman. She lives in Northamptonshire with her partner Leo and eight-year-old son Robin. She works in a supermarket, has some good friends and enjoys watching back episodes of Greys Anatomy. But Cherrie has a past, one she doesn't want Leo or her friends to know about. …
Strike Five
Troubled Blood by Robert Galbraith (a JK Rowling pen name) 'She stopped moving before they had finished with her. She'd have screamed, of course, she couldn't have failed to scream, but there was no soundtrack.' The mystery at the centre of Troubled Blood, the latest novel by the creator of Harry Potter, is a forty-year-old …
Stormbird
by Conn Iggulden (Wars of the Roses) Set in England and France during the years after 1443, Stormbird is best described as an historical thriller. It has a large cast of characters, most of them real people, though the author, by his own admission, takes the odd liberty with them. The novel's main historical theme …
The Road to Bosworth Field
The Red Queen by Philippa Gregory A Review ' "You are a girl; girls have no choice. You could never choose your own husband; you are of the royal family .... It is forbidden for one of royal blood to marry their own choice." ' Margaret Beaufort knows she is chosen by God for a …
How long is long?
Just One Evil Act by Elizabeth George A Review Once upon a time, when I was reading lots of crime fiction, detective stories were relatively short. The crime, the investigation and the solution were wrapped up in two to three hundred pages. Much has changed. Compared to the works of Agatha Christie or Dorothy L. …
Saintly Con in Santa Cruz
Revisiting the favourite literature of our childhood and youth can often bring disappointment. There may be several reasons why this is so. For one thing, reading tastes change as we grow older. The world changes too; ideas about what is acceptable, amusing, moral, and so on, do not remain fixed. That is not to say …
It isn’t all tinsel and lights
Cold Christmas A short story collection by Reggie Walton I suspect that most of us view Christmas as a happy season, with lots of food, drink, fir trees, decorations and good company. Even when we are not moved by its religious significance, Christmas is a time for reflecting on the past year, and for looking …
A Good Hanging
A Short Story Collection by Ian Rankin 'To be honest, if you were going to see Christ anywhere in Edinburgh, the Hermitage was perfect.' [from 'Seeing Things'] It's been a while since I read one of Ian Rankin's detective stories - Westwind isn't a detective story! - so I enjoyed dipping into these tales from …
Summer Shorts
Over the past couple of weeks, I have been dabbling in short stories, something I don't often do. The first collection which grabbed my attention was Short Stories from the Strand, published in 1992 by The Folio Society. The Strand Magazine came into being in 1891, a collaboration between the publisher George Newnes, literary editor …
The Thinking Tank
by Jae De Wylde The Thinking Tank is a novel I enjoyed reading a few years ago. I have just finished it for the second time. Set partly in Rutland, England's smallest county, in the present day (well, 2003), it is a story of relationships and family secrets. The principle character, Sarah, suffers from …
