General Chat

Greaders, please suggest your two books for September/October 2009. Books will be voted for Sunday 6 September pm if everyone has suggested. Books to be reviewed Tuesday 20th October

A Time like no other by Audrey Howard
Widowed at only 20, with 2 young sons to raise and little more than debts to live on, Lally Frazer seeks comfort with dashing Yorkshire mill owner Roly Sinclair. Then Roly goes off to America and she discovers she is pregnant: She turns to Roly’s sensible reliable older brother Harry for help.
Harry marries her to save her from life as an outcast. But a marriage founded on lies can only lead to heartbreak. Roly returns – changed from Lally’s careless lover to her worst enemy, determined to wrest the family’s woollen mills from Harry. And Harry cannot believe that his beautiful young wife is faithful to him.
Disaster will overtake them before Lally and Harry find a way to love one another as they w ere always meant to.

Bloodline by Fiona Mountain

‘Cinderella is in the bluebell woods at Poachers Dell'
The anonymous note means nothing to ancestor detective Natasha Blake. Then one of her clients, an enigmatic old man who had commissioned a family tree of his granddaughter’s boyfriend, is shot dead at his isolated farm, just as shocking facts about the past are brought to light. Is there a link?
Unconnected yet haunting stories begin to emerge from the ancient paper trails: two young soldiers playing football in no man’s land on Christmas day 1914; Second World War land girls, inseparable friends, until a fatal mistake tore them apart; and the eerie echo of a child in an English country home……
Despite Natasha’s reluctance to delve deeper, she knows that family histories hide many secrets……

n

My suggestions are
The Loop by Nicholas Evans

Things aren't going too well for wolf biologist Helen Ross. At 29, she's unemployed (recently retired dishwasher), single (boyfriend of two years left her for Africa), and has just learned that her father is marrying someone younger, richer, and prettier than herself (completely accurate). Back in her lonely log cabin in Cape Cod, frantically chain-smoking, she receives a message from her former lover Dan Prior. Prior, also a biologist, works for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service wolf-recovery program. In return for helping him track the lupine posse, Prior will provide her with a cabin, truck, and a snowmobile for good measure in a rustic little town called Hope, just outside Helena, Montana. Apparently, Ross has never heard the proverb "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is," and happily skips off to Big Sky Country.
Within moments of her arrival, she finds out what she's up against: a small town with a long history of wolf fear and loathing, no resources (big surprise), and a powerful rancher who will do whatever it takes to eliminate the wolves. The rancher, testosterone-saturated Buck Calder, has got the community riled up after a wolf stalked his daughter's home and killed the family dog. He won't stop until every last endangered wolf is dead, which proves problematic for Ross when she decides to romance his 18-year-old son, Luke. Cynics be warned: their love affair spawns a treasure-trove of gooey pillow talk and syrupy prose. Even so, Evans has made impressive strides as a writer since his debut novel, The Horse Whisperer, and his storytelling has reached a noticeably new level of sophistication: the plot is tight, the characterization is realistic, and the dialogue is crisp.

Beneath these stones by Ann Granger

Twelve-year-old Tammy Franklin has learned too much about death, too quickly. Two years ago she lost her mother to a long, lingering illness and now the body of the woman her father married in an attempt to replace his wife has been found on a railway embankment close to the Franklin farm. This time the death is murder.

As Superintendent Markby, one of the first on the scene, well knows, Tammy now stands to have her father taken from her, for Hugh Franklin is suspect number one in the mind of the inspector to whom Markby has delegated the case. But, despite his need to distance himself from the murder, Markby begins to realise that the truth is destined to be far more complex than he ever envisaged ...

x Jill

n

Thanks Jill, good to see you back on here.

Portobello - by Ruth Rendell
On a shopping trip one day, Eugene, quite by chance, came across an envelope containing money. He picked it up. For some reason, rather than report the matter to the police, he wrote a note and stuck it up on a lamp post near his house.

Burn - by Linda Howard
Jenner must co-operate in a cloak and dagger scheme, or else. But as her panic gives way to exhilaration, and fear of her captor turns to fascination, Jenner rediscovers feelings she hasn't had in years and realises she's found a life worth living - if she survives.

Have seen this. Will be back tomorrow.

Tess

The Monsters of Templeton by Laura Groff

On the very morning Willie Upton slinks home to Templeton, New York (after a calamitous affair with her archaeology professor), the 50-foot-long body of a monster floats from the depths of the town's lake. This unsettling coincidence sets the stage for one of the most original debut novels. With a clue to the mysterious identity of her father in hand, Willie turns her research skills to unearthing the secrets of the town in letters and pictures (which, "reproduced" in the book along with increasingly complete family trees, lend an air of historical authenticity).

Antony and Cleopatra by Colleen McCullough

A chronicle of one of history's most infamous love affairs. After the death of Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, Caesar's ambitious and brash cousin, and Octavian, Caesar's adopted son and designated heir, agree to jointly administer the far-flung empire: Antony in the East and Octavian in the West. It's not a happy arrangement, though, and their rivalry to rule Rome is the overarching theme of this sprawling, captivating saga. After a disastrous campaign to subdue the Parthians, Antony turns to Cleopatra, the enigmatic and fabulously wealthy queen of Egypt, to replenish his war chest. Determined to make Caesarion, her son by Julius Caesar, ruler of Rome, Cleopatra seduces Antony and soon has him as soft as a mushy pudding. Meanwhile, with the aid of his wife and Marcus Agrippa, Octavian secures his position in Rome and Italia. Prodded by Cleopatra, Antony gathers his forces in Greece for an invasion of Italia.

Did Colleen McCullough write Thornbirds?

Yes she did Ann

I thought so, also read another of hers but can's remember the name of it. Not many suggestions so far.

The Blackest Streets by Sarah Wise

Old Nichol is an area in London just off Shoredich high street that in 1891, when Charles Booth drew his ‘poverty maps’, he described as a district of ‘almost solid poverty’. Sarah Wise animates the horrors in fascinating detail.

Shores of Darkness by Diana Norman

Martin Millet of the dragoons returned from the French wars to find his Aunt murdered and himself inheritor of her lodging house. Soon he is involved in searching for Anne Bard whose last known address was the lodging house and the mystery of whether she is of royal descent, all set against the background of the last days of Queen Anne

I've no idea what books have been suggested in the past so apologies if I duplicate any previous suggestions. Mine are:

The Bridges of Madison County by Robert James Waller

"A man. A woman. The heat of an Iowa summer. And the brief encounter whose passion will last a lifetime." A really heart-warming story.

The Shipping News by Annie Proulx

"Annie Proulx's highly acclaimed, international bestseller and Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Quoyle is a hapless, hopeless hack journalist living and working in New York. When his no-good wife is killed in a spectacular road accident, Quoyle heads for the land of his forefathers -- the remotest corner of far-flung Newfoundland. With 'the aunt' and his delinquent daughters -- Bunny and Sunshine -- in tow, Quoyle finds himself part of an unfolding, exhilarating Atlantic drama. 'The Shipping News' is an irresistible comedy of human life and possibility."

First Recommendation -
"Last Lullaby" by Denise Hamilton

LA Times reporter Eve Diamond is at the airport, shadowing a customes supervisor who's got his eye on an incoming flight from Bancock. The flight is packed with the usual mass of humanity, ranging from an elegent woman in a raspberry silk suit, who emerges from first class carrying a tired toddler, to the scruffy students who have spent the flight in economy.

Suddenly a shot rings out. Three people are dead, including the silk-clad woman. The man booked on the flight as her husband is missing. And the toddler has been left behind. Who is the child? And why does Customs immeadiately whisk her into hiding?

Eve Diamond is determined to find out.
T

Second Recommendation is-

Pearl by Mary Gordon

(from book cover)
On Christmas night of 1998, Maria Meyers learns that her twenty-year-old daughter, Pearl, has chained herself outside the American Embassy in Dublin, where she intends to starve herself to death. Although Maria was once a student radical and still proudly lives by her beliefs, gentle book-loving pearl has never been interested in politics- nor in the Catholicism her mother rejected years before. What, then, is driving her to martyr herself?

Shaken by this mystry, Maria and her childhood friend (and Pearl's surrogate father). Josehp kaspermann, both rush to Pearl's side.
As Mary Gordon tells the stiry of the bonds amoung them, she takes us deep into the labyrinths of maternal love, religious faith, and Ireland's tragic history. "Pearl" ia a grand and emotionally daring novel of ideas, told with the tension of a thriller.

T

Only one suggestion as I don't have much time to read.

'Don't Forget to write' by Pamela Hobbs

In June 1940, ten year old Pam Hobbs took the long journey from her council home in Leigh-on-Sea to faraway rural Derbyshire.
An evacuee, Pam describes a time that is full of overwhelming hardship and devastation; yet also of kindness and humour, resilience and courage.

Just passed the book onto my Mum who was 13 in June 1940. I enjoyed it; I hope she will.
Joan

n

Are there any more? We seem a bit thin on the ground.