The Gift by Louise Jensen 'Nearly six months ago, someone died so I can live.' After suffering a virus infection that damaged the muscles of her heart, Jenna needed a transplant. Now she is recovering. She ditches her boyfriend Sam and, against the advice of her doctors and her friends, is planning to visit the …
Category: Book Review
The Devil's in the Detail
Rather Be The Devil by Ian Rankin 'Darryl Christie's closed eyes were puffy and bruised, his nose swollen with dried blood caking the nostrils. A foam head brace had been rigged up with further support around his neck.' Set in Edinburgh like most of Rankin's stories, Rather Be The Devil brings together all of the …
Elinor and Marianne
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen A Review In Austen's (probably) first full-length novel, the Dashwood family are happy in their home at Norland Park. However, the property is entailed to a son of Mr Dashwood's first marriage and when he dies, Mrs Dashwood and their daughters, Elinor and Marianne are obliged to leave. Elinor …
The Travelling Companion
A Short Story by Ian Rankin I picked this little book up in a shop in Australia; I hadn't seen it for sale in the UK [though I see it's been mentioned on Goodreads]. It's not an Inspector Rebus story of course, but if you have a few minutes to spare it's a good read. …
Mind Games
Chains of Blood and Steel by Karen Gray A Review Chains of Blood and Steel is the second book in Karen Gray's Saga of Thistle and Roses. Based loosely on the Anglo-Scottish feuding of the late Middle Ages, the stories are however set in a futuristic imaginary world of the 27th century. The world we …
A Wrinkle in Time
by Madeleine L'Engle 'It was a dark and stormy night ...' With the first sentence of her junior sci-fi novel A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L'Engle dares to challenge the publishing establishment. Even in 1960, when she wrote it, and 1962, when it was published, L'Engle must have known the extent to which the sentence …
Hag-Seed
by Margaret Atwood 'Hag-seed, hence! Fetch us in fuel. And be quick, thou'rt best to answer other business.' [Prospero to Caliban, The Tempest] From the off, we suspect that Hag-Seed might be be Atwood at her most provocatively outrageous. However, post-prologue, the novel settles down to a semblance of normality. Felix is sacked as artistic …
Building a Foundation
Foundation's Edge & Foundation and Earth by Isaac Asimov Asimov's Foundation Trilogy, published in novel form in 1951-53 was first conceived as a series of short stories in the 1940s. [See https://bookheathen.wordpress.com/2016/09/15/history-of-the-future/%5D Complete in themselves and as a unit, the three novels did not need a follow-up. Asimov turned his attention to other matters. Apart …
Childhood's End
by Arthur C Clarke A Review You may have noticed that I've been spending the past few weeks reading science "stuff", and that includes both fact and fiction. Today, I'd like to share with you a book by one of my favourite sci-fi authors. Arthur C Clarke, like Isaac Asimov (another favourite), was a scientist. …
A Reality Check
Review: Reality Is Not What It Seems by Carlo Rovelli 'The only true infinite thing is our ignorance.' Carlo Rovelli is a professional scientist, a theoretical physicist who specialises in the study of quantum gravity. In this book he traces the developments in scientific thought that have led to our present knowledge of the cosmos. …
Magda Green Books 