This book is truly exceptional. Applying science to the problems of human relationships, the perils of perfectionism and the pitfalls of social etiquette, Millie has written a joyous, funny and hugely insightful text for all of us – whether neurotypical or neurodiverse. This ‘outsiders guide to the human race’ is warm, witty and a joy to read.’ Prof Gina Rippon, Cognitive neuroscientist/autism researcher and author of The Gendered Brain.
Diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder at the age of eight, Camilla Pang struggled to understand the world around her and the way people worked. Desperate for a solution, Camilla asked her mother if there was an instruction manual for humans that she could consult. But, without the blueprint to life she was hoping for, Camilla began to create her own. Now armed with a PhD in biochemistry, Camilla dismantles our obscure social customs and identifies what it really means to be human using her unique expertise and a language she knows best: science.
Through a set of scientific principles, this book examines life’s everyday interactions including:
– Decisions and the route we take to make them; – Conflict and how we can avoid it; – Relationships and how we establish them; – Etiquette and how we conform to it.
Explaining Humans is an original and incisive exploration of human nature and the strangeness of social norms, written from the outside looking in. Camilla’s unique perspective of the world, in turn, tells us so much about ourselves – about who we are and why we do it – and is a fascinating guide on how to lead a more connected, happier life.
I treat myself to a book subscription, the SFF Fellowship from Goldsboro Books. Goldilocks, by Laura Lam was the April book. It arrived yesterday. I was a bit distracted by a crochet project yesterday afternoon and this morning, but once I got myself organised, I sat down and read my new book.
The Earth is in environmental collapse. The future of humanity hangs in the balance. But a team of women are preparing to save it. Even if they’ll need to steal a spaceship to do it.
Despite increasing restrictions on the freedoms of women on Earth, Valerie Black is spearheading the first all-female mission to a planet in the Goldilocks Zone, where conditions are just right for human habitation.
The team is humanity’s last hope for survival, and Valerie has gathered the best women for the mission: an ace pilot who is one of the only astronauts ever to have gone to Mars; a brilliant engineer tasked with keeping the ship fully operational; and an experienced doctor to keep the crew alive. And then there’s Naomi Lovelace, Valerie’s surrogate daughter and the ship’s botanist, who has been waiting her whole life for an opportunity to step out of Valerie’s shadow and make a difference.
The problem is that they’re not the authorized crew, even if Valerie was the one to fully plan the voyage. When their mission is stolen from them, they steal the ship bound for the new planet.
But when things start going wrong on board, Naomi begins to suspect that someone is concealing a terrible secret — and realizes time for life on Earth may be running out faster than they feared . . .
My Review
This was a slow burner. Narrated by the main character’s daughter, Iris, in 2063, we learn of events in 2033. A group of women scientists and engineers steal a shuttle to get to Atalanta, a ship they helped design and build but from which they had been booted by a misogynist government.
Led by Dr Valerie Black, CEO of Hawthorn, the company originally tasked with designing the Atalanta and planning the trip, and adoptive mother of main character, Naomi Lovelace, an astrobiologist, Dr Hart (ship’s surgeon), her wife Jakkie Hixson, pilot, and Lebedeva, the engineer, steal a shuttle and then the Atalanta and head for Mars to make the jump to Cavendish, an Earth-like exoplanet, around Epsilon Eridani, now renamed Ran. But things aren’t quite going as expected and when a new infection appears on Earth that kills fast, secrets come to light that make the four subordinates question Dr Valerie Black.
I sat and read this in 6.5 hours, I couldn’t put it down. The slow build of tension as Naomi realises things aren’t quite what they ought to be and she loses her hero-worship of the woman who raised her is the main drive of tension, while the science in the science fiction is enough to keep a science buff interested without bogging down a non-science geek.
Valerie was a really vivid character, who was fully realised, while the others had flashes of life but were often in the background. I have seen other readers say they felt the characters were a bit flat, but I think that it might be deliberate. We are reading from the point of view of Iris Lovelace Kan, the second daughter of Naomi, and Dr Black’s son, Evan Kan; for her the most important people are obviously her mother and grandmother. They loom large in her psyche and so they are more realised in her story. I felt like I was reading a biography written by someone a little too close to the people involved, in that sense, with the characterisation.
The plot is taut and breathtaking, or at least I struggled to remember to breathe while I was reading. I really enjoyed the book, although I’d have liked some more background on how the world got from here to there. It’s hinted at, a gradual erasing of rights, a rise in right-wing ideology, ignored until it smacked people in the face.
We can see this happening already. It’s a warning, but there’s also hope. After the disaster changes were made, and although it wasn’t enough early enough, people survived.
Given it’s VE Day here in the UK and our precious government are using it to whip up nationalist fervour, again, and the dodgy lot they have running her native U.S., I think it’s entirely prescient for Lam to write about changes 13 years from now, where the world is a mess, people still don’t believe climate change is real despite the refugees and wildfires, and rights are eroded for anyone not a rich, white man. The dream of utopia, espoused by Dr Black isn’t an option, nor is running away to another planet. We just have this one, this one chance, to sort things out, to change.
We’re at a turning point. Which way do you want to go?
Fiction/historical Paperback: 198 x 129 Print RRP: £9.99 Print ISBN: 978-1-9164671-8-7 Extent: 336 E-book ISBN: 978-1-913109-06-6 Publication: 30 April 2020
Its spring 1920 in the small military town of Nandagiri in south-east India. Colonel Aylmer, commander of the Royal Irish Kildare Rangers, is in charge. A distance away, decently hidden from view, lies the native part of Nandagiri with its heaving bazaar, reeking streets and brothels. Everyone in Nandagiri knows their place and the part they were born to play – with one exception. The local Anglo-Indians, tainted by their mixed blood, belong . . . nowhere.
When news of the Black and Tans’ atrocities back in Ireland reaches the troops in India, even their priest cannot cool the men’s hot-headed rage. Politics vie with passion as Private Michael Flaherty pays court to Rose, Mrs Aylmer’s Anglo-Indian maid . . . but mutiny brings heroism and heartbreak in equal measure. Only the arrival of Colonel Aylmer’s grandson Richard, some 60 years later, will set off the reckoning, when those who were parted will be reunited, and those who were lost will be found again.
It is a little known fact that one immigrant Italian family ran London’s thriving vice trade unchecked from the mid-1930s for some twenty years.
The five Messina brothers imported prostitutes from the Continent on an industrial scale, acquiring the women British citizenship by phoney marriages. Demanding 80% of earnings, the Messina became fabulously wealthy, purchasing expensive properties, cars and influence.
As this revealing and absorbing account describes, the brothers ruled with a ruthless combination of charm, blackmail and all too credible threats of disfigurement and death.
It took a sensational Sunday newspaper exposé to get the authorities to act. A series of dramatic arrests and trials followed and one by one the brothers were imprisoned and deported for crimes including immoral earnings, attempted bribery and firearms offences.
Such was their fortune that numerous potential beneficiaries came forward, most recently in 2012.
The author, a much published former Metropolitan police officer, has researched the remarkable criminal careers of the five Messina’s and the result is a riveting and shocking read.
Have you ever found yourself watching a show or reading a novel and wondering what life was really like in the Civil War? Did the war really split families? Was Charles I just too stupid to be King? Did Cromwell really hate the monarchy and did Parliament actually ban Christmas?
In The English Civil War: Fact and Fiction, you’ll find fast and fun answers to all your secret questions about this remarkable period of British history. Find out about people’s lives and how the Civil War affected them. Learn about the role of women and if they merely stayed at home and suffered, and if Cromwell really was always miserable.
James Hobson brings to life the tumultuous and unprecedented period of history that is known as the Civil War. An unfussy yet accurate history, each chapter presents a controversy in itself and sets about dispelling commonly held myths about the Civil War.
Published March 31st 2020 by HQ Young Adult ISBN:1848457707 (ISBN13: 9781848457706)
Master storyteller Julie Kagawa concludes the enthralling journey into the heart of the fantastical Empire of Iwagoto in the third book of the Shadow of the Fox trilogy. As darkness rises and chaos reigns, a fierce kitsune and her shadowy protector will face down the greatest evil of all. A captivating fantasy for fans of Sabaa Tahir, Sarah J. Maas and Marie Lu.
Kitsune shapeshifter Yumeko has given up the final piece of the Scroll of a Thousand Prayers in order to save everyone she loves from imminent death. Now she and her ragtag band of companions must journey to the wild sea cliffs of Iwagoto in a desperate last-chance effort to stop the Master of Demons from calling upon the Great Kami dragon and making the wish that will plunge the empire into destruction and darkness.
Shadow clan assassin Kage Tatsumi has regained control of his body and agreed to a true deal with the devil—the demon inside him, Hakaimono. They will share his body and work with Yumeko and their companions to stop a madman and separate Hakaimono from Tatsumi and the cursed sword that had trapped the demon for nearly a millennium.
But even with their combined skills and powers, this most unlikely team of heroes knows the forces of evil may be impossible to overcome. And there is another player in the battle for the scroll, a player who has been watching, waiting for the right moment to pull strings that no one even realized existed…until now.
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.
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…Continue reading “Review: Mexico Street, by Simone Buchholz, translated by Rachel Ward”
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.
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…Continue reading “Review: Containment, by Vanda Symon”
Everything Is Better With Dragons 