Book Reviews – Page 43 – Everything Is Better With Dragons

Review: Two Lives, by A Yi

Fiction: Crime & mystery fiction
Product format: Paperback
Price: £9.95; $14.95
ISBN: 978-1-78758-277-4

Seven stories, seven whispers into the ears of life: A Yi’s unexpected twists of crime burst from the everyday, with glimpses of romance distorted by the weaknesses of human motive. A Yi employs his forensic skills to offer a series of portraits of modern life, both uniquely Chinese, and universal in their themes.

FLAME TREE PRESS is the new fiction imprint of Flame Tree Publishing.
Launched recently in 2018 the list brings together brilliant new authors and
the more established; the award winners, and exciting, original voices.

Review: Arrowood and the Thames Corpses, by Mick Finlay

49688528. sx318 sy475 — Paperback, 400 pages
Expected publication: April 2nd 2020 by HQ
ISBN:0008324522 (ISBN13: 9780008324520)

South London, 1896.

William Arrowood, Victorian London’s less salubrious private detective, is paid a visit by Captain Moon, the owner of a pleasure steamer moored on the Thames. He complains that someone has been damaging his boat, putting his business in jeopardy.

Arrowood and his trusty sidekick Barnett suspect professional jealousy, but when a string of skulls is retrieved from the river, it seems like even fouler play is afoot.

It’s up to Arrowood and his trusty sidekick Barnett to solve the case, before any more corpses end up in the watery depths . . .

Review: Blackwood, by Michael Farris Smith

Pub. Date: 19 March 2020
Price: £12.99
ISBN: 978-0-85730-390-5
Binding: Paperback

The small town of Red Bluff, Mississippi, has seen better days, but now seems stuck in a black-and-white photograph from days gone by. Unknowing, the town and its people are about to come alive again, awakening to nightmares, as ghostly whispers have begun to fill the night from the kudzu-covered valley that sits on the edge of town.
When a vagabond family appears on the outskirts, when twin boys and a woman go missing, disappearing beneath the vines, a man with his own twisted past struggles to untangle the secrets in the midst of the town trauma.

This is a landscape of fear and ghosts, of regret and violence. It is a landscape transformed by the kudzu vines that have enveloped the hills around it, swallowing homes, cars, rivers, and hiding terrible secrets deeper still. Blackwood is the evil in the woods, the wickedness that lurks in all of us

Pen & Sword Review: Life in Medieval Europe: Fact and Fiction, by Daniele Cybulskie

Imprint: Pen & Sword History
ISBN: 9781526733450
Published: 30th September 2019

Price:£12.00 was ~~£14.99~~

Have you ever found yourself watching a show or reading a novel and wondering what life was really like in the Middle Ages? What did people actually eat? Were they really filthy? And did they ever get to marry for love?

In Life in Medieval Europe: Fact and Fiction, you’ll find fast and fun answer to all your secret questions, from eating and drinking to sex and love. Find out whether people bathed, what they did when they got sick, and what actually happened to people accused of crimes. Learn about medieval table manners, tournaments, and toothpaste, and find out if people really did poop in the moat.

Review: A Prison In The Sun, by Isobel Blackthorn

A Prison in the Sun

After millennial ghostwriter Trevor Moore rents an old farmhouse in Fuerteventura, he moves in to find his muse.

Instead, he discovers a rucksack filled with cash. Who does it belong to – and should he hand it in… or keep it?

Struggling to make up his mind, Trevor unravels the harrowing true story of a little-known concentration camp that incarcerated gay men in the 1950s and 60s.

Purchase Link: http://mybook.to/prisonsun

Review: Mexico Street, by Simone Buchholz, translated by Rachel Ward

PUBLICATION DATE: 5 MARCH 2020 | PAPERBACK ORIGINAL | £8.99 | ORENDA BOOKS

Hamburg state prosecutor Chastity Riley investigates a series
of arson attacks on cars across the city, which leads her to a
startling and life-threatening discovery involving criminal gangs
and a very illicit love story…
Night after night, cars are set alight across the German city
of Hamburg, with no obvious pattern, no explanation and no
suspect.
Until, one night, on Mexico Street, a ghetto of high-rise blocks in
the north of the city, a Fiat is torched. Only this car isn’t empty.
The body of Nouri Saroukhan – prodigal son of the Bremen clan –
is soon discovered, and the case becomes a homicide.
Public prosecutor Chastity Riley is handed the investigation,
which takes her deep into a criminal underground that snakes
beneath the whole of Germany. And as details of Nouri’s
background, including an illicit relationship with the mysterious
Aliza, emerge, it becomes clear that these are not random
attacks, and there are more on the cards…

Review: Black River, by Will Dean

Published by POINT BLANK
12 March 2020 Hardback £14.99
**FEAR**
Tuva has been living clean in southern Sweden for four months when she receives horrifying
news. Her best friend Tammy has gone missing.
**SECRETS**
Racing back to Gavrik at the height of Midsommar, Tuva fears for Tammy’s life. Who has
taken her, and why? And who is sabotaging the small-town search efforts?
**LIES**
Surrounded by dark pine forest, the sinister residents of Snake River are suspicious of
outsiders. Unfortunately, they also hold all the answers. On the shortest night of the year,
Tuva must fight to save her friend. But who will be there to save Tuva?

It may be Midsommar in Gavrik, but this is the most chilling episode yet in the acclaimed
Scandi thriller series from British writer Will Dean.

Review: Containment, by Vanda Symon

Pub date: 5 March 2020
ISBN: 978-1-913193-19-5
EPUB: 978-1-913193-20-1
Price: £8.99
Dunedin’s favourite young police officer Sam Shephard is drawn into a
perplexing investigation when a series of shipping containers wash up on
a sleepy New Zealand beach, and a spate of unexplained deaths
ensues…
Chaos reigns in the sleepy village of Aramoana on the New Zealand
coast, when a series of shipping containers wash up on the beach and
looting begins.
Detective Constable Sam Shephard experiences the desperation of the
scavengers first-hand, and ends up in an ambulance, nursing her wounds
and puzzling over an assault that left her assailant for dead.
What appears to be a clear-cut case of a cargo ship running aground
soon takes a more sinister turn when a skull is found in the sand, and the
body of a diver is pulled from the sea … a diver who didn’t die of
drowning…
As first officer at the scene, Sam is handed the case, much to the
displeasure of her superiors, and she must put together an increasingly
confusing series of clues to get to the bottom of a mystery that may still
have more victims…

Review: Helene, by Karl Drinkwater

Helene

Dr Helene Vermalle is shaping the conscience of a goddess-level AI.

As a leading civilian expert in Emergent AI Socialisation, she has been invited to assist in a secret military project.

Her role? Helping ViraUHX, the most advanced AI in the universe, to pass through four theoretical development stages. But it’s not easy training a mind that surpasses her in raw intellect. And the developing AI is capable of killing her with a single tantrum.

On top of this, she must prove her loyalty to the oppressive government hovering over her shoulder. They want a weapon. She wants to instil an overriding sense of morality.

Can she teach the AI right and wrong without being categorised as disloyal?

Lost Tales of Solace are short side-stories set in the Lost Solace universe.

Purchase Link – https://books2read.com/b/Helene

Children’s Book Review: Sully’s Glow, by Simi Godagama, illustrated by Nicole Bartlett

Information about the Book

Title: Sully’s Glow

Authors: Simi Godagama

Illustrator: Nicole Bartlett

Release Date: 5^th March 2020

Genre: Picture Book

Page Count: 294

Publisher: Clink Street Publishing

Summary:

Harpi the eagle discovers her inner voice that guides her to Sully, a boy with a glow. Sully is unaware of his glow until he discovers he has the capacity to help someone in need. After he meets Harpi, together they meet more friends who each in turn have their own issues that heal and transform through their encounters with one another. Eventually with their combined energy, they transform the world they live in. Sad Sully becomes Smiling Sully, Hopeless Harp becomes Hopeful Harpi, Perfect Parrot becomes Pitch Perfect Parrot, Greedy Giraffe becomes Grateful Giraffe and Cranky Croc turns into Courageous Croc.

Goodreads Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52044366-sully-s-glow Amazon Link:https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sullys-Glow-Simi-Godagama/dp/191285094X