I did intend to read Eric Ambler’s Uncommon Danger for the 1937 Club, but it’s been so busy I’ve not managed to get started really, so instead I offer you a revamped review of a novel from that year that I read pre-blog and not previously featured. Azerbaijan in the early 20th century was at the crossroads of civilisations, cultures and religions. Set against this backdrop at the start of WWI is this love story of Ali, a desert loving-Muslim, and Nino, a Christian Georgian princess who yearns to be more European. Theirs is a childhood romance that eventually blossoms fully and they marry despi ..read more

I am delighted to have been able to read this amazing book and review it for the blogtour. Whereas I’m by no means a Beatles completist, I am a huge fan having grown up with them. And yes, I watched all 8 hrs of Peter Jackson’s documentary, Get Back, which compiled the hours and hours of documentary footage filmed during the making of Let It Be, and included the legendary rooftop concert at Apple Corps HQ in 1970. It really caught the tensions in the band, with George threatening to walk, Paul being the peacemaker, but also sergeant major to actually get things done, and Yoko just being there ..read more

You know me, I never say no to a spy novel, and this one, the second to feature spyrunner Eli Amiram. I’ve not read the first, but didn’t feel I missed out on much, so was able to get into Honour Among Spies without worrying about Eli’s backstory. Given that in this novel, Eli is Israeli intelligence agency Mossad’s London Head of Station, I was glad to see an author’s note at the front of the book acknowledging the current political situation. The novel was written and set before the events of October 2023. In order to keep his job as Head of London operations, Eli needs to put the past behin ..read more

The Antelope Wife by Louise Erdrich – book group report. Our ‘A is for… flora/fauna’ book via our new book picking theme was my suggestion and our whole group’s first encounter with Louise Erdrich, who is of half German-American and half Chippewa descent. Most of her many novels, including The Antelope Wife, concern Native American life. She has written children’s books and poetry also and owns a bookshop in Minnesota. The Antelope Wife was first published in 1998, but we later found out that Erdrich published a totally revised and extended version as The Antelope Woman in 2016, after wanting ..read more

I’d started seeing a lot of love for this novel on X. It looked a little cosy with the crow picking at the milk-bottle tops on the cover. But on opening the book, I was convinced I had to read it; Godfrey has based her debut novel on her own childhood in Yorkshire in the 1970s during which the Yorkshire Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe, waged his murderous campaign. It looms large in the novel, for the story opens with an author’s note in which Jennie Godfrey says: One of my most vivid early memories is of the day that he [Sutcliffe] was captured, when it became clear my dad knew him. I can still feel ..read more

First Saturday of the month and new year too, time for the super monthly tag Six Degrees of Separation, which is hosted by Kate at Booksaremyfavouriteandbest, Six Degrees of Separation #6degrees picks a starting book for participants to go wherever it takes them in six more steps. Links to my reviews are in the titles of the books chosen. This month our starting book is… a travel book and for me that is: Frommer’s Italy Day by Day I haven’t been to Italy for too long! The Frommer’s guides are American so prices are all in $, however, this one from 2010 is excellent, if too heavy ..read more

I’m delighted to be one of those leading off this blogtour for such an fascinating book. Subtitled “…from someone who lost everything”, Lost & Found drew me like a magnet. I can remember that when we moved to where we now live, we had three months in a furnished rental first with all of our furniture and belongings in storage. Thankfully, everything was delivered back to us in tact – phew! But this wasn’t the case for journalist Helen Chandler-Wilde, who had stowed her worldly goods in a storage unit and moved back in with her parents after a break-up. Sadly, everything was lost in a fire ..read more

I finally got my act together for this year’s Reading Ireland Month, hosted by Cathy and read a pair of novels with throwaway titles – Nothing Special, and Ordinary Human Failings. They may have different settings, but both involve a teenager who has grown out of school, and both have broken families. However, I loved one and wasn’t very bothered by the other, but which was which? Nothing Special by Nicole Flattery This debut novel’s two-tone cover called to me, and once I discovered it was set in 1967 in New York, largely at Andy Warhol’s Factory, I couldn’t not get a copy, although it’s had ..read more

When Hotel Arcadia was first published by Quartet in 2015, I found it unputdownable, reading it in one session (which is perfectly doable given its length of 224 pages). Now it has finally got a paperback release through Magpie/Point Blank Books, and I was delighted to revisit it for the new blogtour. Think of hotel and office sieges and most likely, ‘Nakatomi Plaza’, the skyscraper in the film Die Hard will come to mind, with Bruce Willis single-handedly saving the day. You might also recall the 2022 BBC series Crossfire which starred Keeley Hawes as a former police officer on holiday when he ..read more

Anna O has been asleep for four years now. A known somnambulist, the experts think it was her body’s response to having committed a terrible double murder while sleepwalking. Now it’s time to wake her up, and the man to do it is Dr Benedict Prince, a forensic psychologist based at a sleep clinic in London’s Harley Street, he’s followed the case since she supposedly murdered two friends at the Farm in Oxfordshire, and now the Ministry of Justice want to put an end to not knowing… She will be secretly transferred from Rampton secure hospital to the clinic where only Virginia the clinic’s directo ..read more