Everything Is Better With Dragons
Book blogger, Autistic, Probably a Dragon
This tour started today, and yes, I’ve only just got around to posting the calendar. Sorry, it’s been a bad day for my mental health. However, this little book cheered me up, and is going to a very sweet child.
Earlier in the month I took part in the blog blitz for the author’s first novel, ‘The Cookoo Wood‘, and now I’m taking part in the blog tour for his second novel, ‘A Hollow Sky’. My review post will be up on the 25th.
I had planned to review this novel for the blog but I wasn’t well so I ad to turn the post into a spotlight post instead.
Blurb
Whitechapel is being gentrified. The many green spaces of the area, which typify London as a capital city, give the illusion of peace, tranquility and clean air but are also places to find drug dealers, sexual encounters and murder.
Detective Sergeant Julie Lukula doesn’t dislike Inspector Matthew Merry but he has hardly set the world of the Murder Investigation Team East alight. And, it looks as if the inspector is already putting the death of the young female jogger, found in the park with her head bashed in, down to a mugging gone wrong. The victim deserves more. However, the inspector isn’t ruling anything out – the evidence will, eventually, lead him to an answer.
Purchase Links
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fourth-Victim-John-Mead/dp/1912575361/
https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-fourth-victim/john-mead/9781912575367
Author Bio –
Born in the mid-fifties in East London, on part of the largest council estate ever built. I was the first pupil from my local secondary modern school to attend university.
I have travelled extensively during my life from America to Tibet. I enjoy going to the theatre, reading and going to the pub. It is, perhaps, no surprise that I am an avid ‘people watcher’ and love to find out about people, their lives, culture and history.
Many of the occurrences recounted and the characters found in my novels are based on real incidents and people I have come across. Although I have allowed myself a wide degree of poetic licence in writing about the main characters, their motivations and the killings that are depicted.
Social Media Links –
Amazon author profile: https://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B07B8SQ2ZH
Twitter: https://twitter.com/JohnMeadAuthor
Goodreads profile: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/17891273.John_Mead
I’m looking forward to sharing this one with you, it’s a memoir by Icelandic author Thora Karitas Arnadottir.
The swans on the pond, quite abruptly began to sing. It was a singing so loud they were almost screaming. The swans were screaming, screaming as if they saw the horror of the world.
Gudbjorg Thorisdottir has been hiding from the ghost of an ugly secret for most of her life. When she finally faces the truth of what happened throughout her childhood, the ghost floats away. Painting an evocative picture of her life in Iceland, this is the story of a little girl who didn’t know how unnatural it was to experience both heaven and hell in the same house.
Thora Karitas Arnadottir (b. 1979) studied drama in the UK, and is a producer as well as appearing on stage and television. And the Swans Began to Sing is her first published book; her mother’s story, and formed the final dissertation for her MA in Creative Writing. The book was nominated for the Icelandic Women’s Literary prize Fjoruverdlaunin in 2016.
Website: Wild Pressed Books
Blurb
A warm slice of life, funny, feel-good, yet poignant. Introducing two eccentric ladies who form an unlikely friendship.Meet Mavis and Dot – two colourful, retired ladies who live in Worthington-on-Sea, where there are charity shops galore. Apart from bargain hunting, they manage to tangle themselves in escapades involving illegal immigrants, night clubs, nude modelling, errant toupees and more. And then there’s Mal, the lovable dog who nobody else wants. A gently humorous, often side-splitting, heart-warming snapshot of two memorable characters with past secrets and passions. Escape for a couple of hours into this snapshot of a faded, British seaside town. You’ll laugh and cry but probably laugh more.”This book is quirky and individual, and has great pathos…[it] will resonate with a lot of readers.” Gill Kaye – Editor of Ingenu(e). Written with a light touch in memory of a dear friend who passed away from ovarian cancer, Angela Petch’s seaside tale is a departure from her successful Tuscan novels.
All profits from the sale of the books will go towards research into the cure for cancer.
I’m not reviewing in this tour, but I’ll have a book spotlight post on the day.
Blurb
Whitechapel is being gentrified. The many green spaces of the area, which typify London as a capital city, give the illusion of peace, tranquility and clean air but are also places to find drug dealers, sexual encounters and murder.
Detective Sergeant Julie Lukula doesn’t dislike Inspector Matthew Merry but he has hardly set the world of the Murder Investigation Team East alight. And, it looks as if the inspector is already putting the death of the young female jogger, found in the park with her head bashed in, down to a mugging gone wrong. The victim deserves more. However, the inspector isn’t ruling anything out – the evidence will, eventually, lead him to an answer.
I haven’t been able to review this book because of my full reviewing calendar, but I liked the sound of it, so I thought I’d share an extract from the novel with you.
Blurb
Daryl Wainwright is the quirky youngest child of a large family of petty thieves and criminals who calls himself ‘Thalidomide Kid’.
Celia Burkett is the new girl at the local primary school, and the daughter of the deputy head at the local comprehensive where she is bound the following September. With few friends, Celia soon becomes fascinated by ‘the boy with no arms’.
The story of a blossoming romance and sexual awakening between a lonely girl and a disabled boy, and their struggle against adversity and prejudice as they pass from primary to secondary school in 1970s Cirencester. The story deals with themes and issues that are timeless.
Purchase Links
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B008N3I904
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008N3I904
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thalidomide-Kid-Kate-Rigby/dp/1719306621 (paperback)
Continue reading “Book Extract: ‘Thalidomide Kid’, by Kate Rigby”
Alice Castle is back, with her forth novel featuring Beth Haldane – archivist, single mum and amateur sleuth. I’m reviewing on the 15th, so if you want to hear what other readers think before then , take a look at the blogs listed on the calendar.
Blurb
Beth Haldane, SE21’s premier – and only – single mum amateur sleuth, is really pleased to find a new friend at the school gates, in the shape of irrepressibly bouncy Nina. As well as a way with words, Nina has a puzzle she wants Beth to solve, centred on the solicitor’s office where Nina works in Herne Hill.
But as the mystery thickens, threatening to drag in not just Nina and her boss, but the yummy mummies of Dulwich, too, Beth is about to find out just how far some people will go to keep up appearances.
Join Beth in this fourth instalment in the London Murder Mystery series for her toughest case yet.
Due to being insanely busy with book reviews, I’m sharing an extract instead, look out for that, and a chance to win a signed copy of this book.
Everything Is Better With Dragons 