Today I’m reviewing both Girl in the Gallery and Death in Dulwich, by Alice Castle. Thanks to Rachel at Rachel’s Random Resources for sending me the ebook files and arranging this blog tour. It’s a long post because there are two books, plus the author’s information and, if you like what you hear, at the end there’s a chance to win copies of the books.
Category Archives: Fiction
Review: ‘Love Me, Love Me Not’, by Katherine Debona
Thanks to the publisher for sending me an ebook copy of this book as part of their blog tour.
Published By: HQ Digital
Publication Date: 1st September 2018
Format: E-book
I.SB.N.: 9780008304065
Price: 99p
Blurb
Today isn’t the first time I’ve thought about killing my best friend, but it is the first time I’ve done something about it.
Since they were teenagers, Jane and Elle had been inseparable.
Until the day that Elle stole the love of Jane’s life.
Now everything has changed. Jane wants him back, and with a little help from her horticultural obsession, she may just have found the perfect solution…
A psychological suspense novel that you will not be able to put down. Perfect for fans of Louise Jensen and Clare Boyd.
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Review: ‘Tubing’, by K.A.McKeagney
Published By: Red Door Books
Publication Date: 31st May 2018
I.S.B.N.: 9781910453568
Format: Paperback
Price: £8.99
Blurb
Polly, 28, lives in London with her ‘perfect-on-paper’ boyfriend. She works a dead-end job on a free London paper. . . life as she knows it is dull. But her banal existence is turned upside down late one drunken night on her way home, after a chance encounter with a man on a packed tube train. The chemistry between them is electric and on impulse, they kiss, giving in to their carnal desires. But it’s over in an instant, and Polly is left shell-shocked as he walks away without even telling her his name.
Now obsessed with this beautiful stranger, Polly begins a frantic online search, and finally discovers more about tubing, an underground phenomenon in which total strangers set up illicit, silent, sexual meetings on busy commuter tube trains. In the process, she manages to track him down and he slowly lures her into his murky world, setting up encounters with different men via Twitter.
At first she thinks she can keep it separate from the rest of her life, but things soon spiral out of control.
By chance she spots him on a packed tube train with a young, pretty blonde. Seething with jealousy, she watches them together. But something isn’t right and a horrific turn of events makes Polly realise not only how foolish she has been, but how much danger she is in…
Can she get out before it’s too late?
Book Review: ‘The Warrior with the Pierced Heart’, by Chris Bishop
Published By: Red Door Publishing
Publication Date: 5th July 2018
Format: Paperback
I.S.B.N.: 9781910453599
Price: £8.99
Blurb
In the second book in the exciting and atmospheric Shadow of the Raven series we rejoin novice monk turned warrior, Matthew as he marches ahead of King Alfred, to Exeter to herald the King’s triumphant return to the city, marking his great victory at Edington.
It should have been a journey of just five or perhaps six days but, as Matthew is to find to his cost, in life the road you’re given to travel is seldom what you wish for and never what you expect.
In this much-anticipated sequel Chris Bishop again deposits the reader slap-bang into the middle of Saxon Britain, where battles rage and life is cheap. An early confrontation leaves Matthew wounded, but found and tended by a woodland-dwelling healer he survives, albeit with the warning that the damage to his heart will eventually take his life.
Matthew faces many challenges as he battles to make his way back to Chippenham to be reunited with King Alfred and also with the woman he wants to make his wife. This is an epic tale of triumph over adversity as we will the warrior with the pierced heart to make it back to those he loves, before it is too late.
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June Bonus Review #2: ‘The Gaslight Stalker’, by David Field
Published By: Sapere Books
Publication Date: 16th February 2018
I.S.B.N.: 9781912546039
Format: Paperback
Price: £6.50
Blurb
Jack the Ripper is stalking the streets of London. Can anyone stop the serial killer before more women are murdered?
London, 1888
Whitechapel is full of the noise of August Bank Holiday celebrations. Everyone is in high spirits until a woman – Martha Turner – is discovered brutally murdered.
Her friend, Esther, a lowly seamstress turned female sleuth, is determined to find the killer.
A young police officer, Jack Enright, takes the lead on the case, and he and Esther soon embark on a professional – and personal – relationship.
When another murder is committed and whispers of a slasher calling himself Jack the Ripper start flowing through the London streets, the search becomes even more desperate.
The police are on the wrong track and the young couple take matters into their own hands, and soon find themselves navigating through London’s dark underbelly.
Can they find the murderer before he kills again? Will anyone listen to their suspicions?
Or will this dark presence continue to haunt Whitechapel…?
THE GASLIGHT STALKER is the first crime thriller in an exciting new historical series, the Esther and Jack Enright Mysteries, a traditional British detective series set in Victorian London and packed full of suspense
Continue reading “June Bonus Review #2: ‘The Gaslight Stalker’, by David Field”
Review: ‘When the Waters Recede’, by Graham Smith
Published By: Caffeine Nights Publishing
Publication Date: 31st May 2018
Format: Paperback
I.S.B.N.: 978-1910720967
Price: £8.49
Blurb
When a car is pulled from raging floodwaters with a dead man in the front and the decapitated body of an evil woman in the boot, Cumbria’s Major Crimes Team are handed the investigation.
The woman is soon recognised, but the man cannot be identified and this leads the team and their former leader, Harry Evans, into areas none of them want to visit.
Before they know it, they’re dealing with protection scams and looking for answers to questions they didn’t know needed to be asked.
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Bonus Review #5: ‘Redemption’, by Jussi Adler-Olsen
This edition
Published By: Penguin
Publication Date: 18th July 2013
I.S.B.N.: 9780141399997
Format: Paperback
Originally published in Danish as
Flaskepost fra P, (1st January 2009)
Blurb
Detective Carl Mørck holds in his hands a bottle that contains old and decayed message, written in blood. It is a cry for help from two young brothers, tied and bound in a boathouse by the sea. Could it be real? Who are these boys, and why weren’t they reported missing? Could they possibly still be alive?
Carl’s investigation will force him to cross paths with a woman stuck in a desperate marriage- her husband refuses to tell her where he goes, what he does, how long he will be away. For days on end she waits, and when he returns she must endure his wants, his moods, his threats. But enough is enough. She will find out the truth, no matter the cost to her husband—or to herself.
Carl and his colleagues Assad and Rose must use all of their resources to uncover the horrifying truth in this heart-pounding Nordic thriller from the #1 international bestselling author Jussi Adler-Olsen
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Bonus Review #4: ‘Children of Time’, by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Published by: Pan Macmillan
Publication Date: 21st April 2016 (First published June 2015)
I.S.B.N.: 9781447273301
Format: Paperback
Price: 8.99
Blurb
The last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home among the stars. Following in the footsteps of their ancestors, they discover the greatest treasure of the past age—a world terraformed and prepared for human life. But all is not right in this new Eden. In the long years since the planet was abandoned, the work of its architects has borne disastrous fruit. The planet is not waiting for them, pristine and unoccupied. New masters have turned it from a refuge into mankind’s worst nightmare. Now two civilizations are on a collision course, both testing the boundaries of what they will do to survive. As the fate of humanity hangs in the balance, who are the true heirs of this new Earth?
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Alex’s Review: ‘The Planetsider’, by G.J. Ogden
Published By: CreateSpace Independent Publishing
Publication Date: 18th February 2018
I.S.B.N.: 978-1983716720
Format: Paperback
Price: £8.99
Available from Amazon
Blurb
Several generations after ‘The Fall’, the scattered clusters of civilisation that grew in its wake live in ignorance of the past. No-one wants to know what caused such devastation or why. No-one, except Ethan. Ethan used to believe in the guardians; mysterious lights in the sky that, according to folklore, protect the survivors, so long as you believe in them. But the death of his parents shattered his faith and forged within him a hunger to know more. One night, a light grows brighter in the sky and crashes to the planet’s surface. Ethan then embarks on a heartbreaking journey in which harrowing discoveries unveil the secrets of the past, and place him at the centre of a deadly conflict. Powerful, thought-provoking and emotionally absorbing, The Planetsider is a gripping, post-apocalyptic thriller that will keep you hooked until the very end.
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Review schedule – May to September 2018
Hola peeps, it’s the end of April and this time for me to write the reviewing schedule for May. Except I’m starting my dissertation in a few days, so reviewing is taking a back seat. That doesn’t mean there won’t be reviews. Even I need a break from writing occasionally.
Which reminds me, Charley’s War is on to chapter 30 and is only half done. I’ll get there eventually.
So, what have I got booked in for the next few months?
Edit: It’s npw mid-July and some significant progress has been made with the dissertation so I’ve added some reviews to the schedule.
May
- 6th
- The Planetsider, by GJ Ogden
- Alex is reviewing this one. since it’s a YA novel.
June
- 1st
- When The Water’s Recede, by Graham Smith
- Crime novel
- 20th
- Tubing, by K.A. McKeagney
- Crime thriller
July
- 13th
- The London Mysteries, books 1 & 2, by Alice Castle
- Cosy crime set in modern London
- 19th
- Wrecker, by Noel O’Reilly
- Historical fiction set in Cornwall
- 27th
- Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, by Gina Kirkham
- Humour
August
- 3rd
- Duck Egg Blues, by Martin Ungless
- Crime/sci-fi
- 8th
- The Cheesemaker’s House, by Jane Cable
- This is to celebrate the novel’s fifth birthday
- Mystery/women’s fiction (maybe, I’m not too sure)
- 18th
- Implant, by Ray Clark
- Crime
- 23rd
- Love you Stationary
- A children’s picture book
- 24th
- Tommy Twigtree
- Also a picture book
- There will also be a couple of promo posts this month:
- 12th
- Q&A about ‘The Bespokest Society Guide To London’
- 14th
- Promo post for ‘The Camberwell Calamity’, by Alice Castle
- The London Mysteries #3 – Beth’s adventures continue…
September – Nothing booked in so far.
It’s a bit spartan, I know and mostly crime, but I need to focus on my writing for a few months. As I said, there will be other, unscheduled reviews, because I have a pile of books waiting to be read.
Everything Is Better With Dragons 