Category Archives: Reviews

Review: ‘The Gondola Maker’ by Laura Morelli

31st March 2013
IBPA

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Set I Venice in the late 16th century, this historical novel tells the story of Luca Vianello, accidental and reluctant heir to the best gondola maker in the city. His life is mapped out in detail; who he’ll marry, where he’ll live, what he’ll spend his days doing are all decided for him by his distant, aggressive father.

When Luca’s mother dies from the complications of childbirth everything changes. Luca is finally free to make his own destiny.

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Review: ‘Back to Creative Writing School’ by Bridget Whelan

2013

Bridget Whelan is an author and creative writing lecturer. In this book she sets out to provide ’30 practical and witty exercises’ to help readers start writing. She covers a lot of ground – poetry, prose, humour, horror, cliches and description.

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Review: ‘Double Happiness’ by Tony Brasunas

Double Happiness Book Cover

At 22 Tony Brasunas had never left the US, but fascinated by China he embarked on a post-University year teaching English in a Chinese high school. The school year over he the travelled to Beijing to see the hand over of Hong Kong before venturing west to through China to Tibet and then south east back go Hong Kong and finally home to America.

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Review: ‘A God-Blasted Land: The Bastard Cadre # 1’ by Lee Carlon

Clockwork Samurai
Originally published 2011, this edition published October 2013

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http://clockworksamurai.com/

The first of three e-books published so far (the forth is in progress) about a group of young people bound from birth by magic to a gods Chosen representative. Set on a ravaged planet where cities have fallen into ruin, technology and magic co-exist, and the decimated population is ruled by a small group of Chosen and policed by the Bondsmen.

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Review: ‘The House on Blackstone Moor’

Carole Gill
Creativia
2013

When nineteen year old Rose Baines returns home from visiting a dying aunt and finds her Mother, sister, and brother massacred by her mad, abusive ex-barrister and now dead Father, her life falls apart.

First she’s shipped off to Bedlam and then, through the intervention of a suspiciously understanding doctor, to Marsh Lunatic Asylum in Yorkshire. Through the good offices of a patroness of the asylum she gets a position as governess to two children at a house on the moors.

Not everything is as it seems; Miss Baines must defeat the ultimate evil and suffer terribly before she takes a final decision and finds love and a measure of peace.

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