The Lunchtime Book Review

I have to say that for some reason all the publicity and hype about ' The Passage ' by Justin Cronin managed to pass me by and I only became aware of the book when I found it on the shelves of the Horror section of my local library. Cronin had started to write his epic novel telling the story of a virus induced vampire apocalypse in 2007 and says that he put together the story on afternoon jogs around his local streets with his young daughter Iris on her bicycle. What happened after that is...

What would you do if you were interviewing a shaggy, Australian psychic who predicted the future by gazing into a bucket of seawater and one of the first things that he said was that the two of you would get married by the following summer? Local Brighton reporter Katie Pickard is sent to interview Jim Gabriel in his cubbyhole at the back of a crystal and psychic shop, when she is given this piece of news about her future, along with a whole raft of global predictions for the years to come....

'The Sugar Queen' is certainly a romance, but it is a romance with a difference, where the supernatural weaves gently with the mundane to form a satisfying whole. The story kicks off when lonely Josey Cirrini, who still lives with her mother at the age of 27 and secretly stores chocolate, cookies and fizzy pop in the back of her closet for lonely binges, comes home to find a strange women hiding in her closet. Much to Josey's consternation the woman, Della Lee Baker, seems to be in no hurry...

Vampires stand aside, as it seems to be the year of the Zombie both in literature and on the small screen. After hiding behind my hands during much of ' The Walking Dead ' (I don't do gore very well - that poor horse!), I was surprised at how many Zombie books now inhabited the horror shelves at the book shop. So I made my choice, paid my money and took home Zombie Apocalypse by Stephen Jones. Well, actually it is not by Stephen Jones, but was written by a collaboration of different writers...

Are you a David Icke fan? Then you will probably love 2012 A Conspiracy Tale by Bryan Collier, as this book has all the elements of reptilian aliens, secret government agendas and treating the general population like cattle. It kicks off with Mitchell Webb, CEO of technology company IDSys, landing a huge government contract to produce Radio Frequency Identification Devices. However, Mitchell doesn't realise what a Pandora's box he has opened by accepting the contract and soon comes to fear...

It might seem a bit strange to buy a book about vacation packing, but as all the airlines are getting tighter and tighter on their luggage allowances and are charging more and more for excess baggage (yes Ryanair I am talking about you!), then maybe we do need all the help that we can get! Personally I have never got farther than roll your clothes don't fold them, and have never managed to not take far too many clothes that I don't get to wear. Happily for us hopeless packers, one of my...

That Captain John Emmett had been one of the few young men lucky enough to return from the carnage of the Great War only made it even more incomprehensible to his family and friends that he had apparently taken his own life. Although her brother had returned from the fighting of World War I mentally fragile and suffering from shell shock and was placed in a nursing home to recover, he had seemed to be slowly improving in the weeks before his lifeless body was shockingly discovered lying in a...

Kristi Bentz is the daughter of a homicide cop in New Orleans and is a rather unfortunate young woman, as she has already survived vicious encounters with two serial killers. You would think that this would have bred a bit of caution into the girl but no, after her convalescence from her last adventure she heads off to to study at All Saints College in Baton Rouge, a campus where four young girls has disappeared in mysterious circumstances in the past year. Kristi wants to solve the case and...

If you love books that are a bit scary, have a historical twist and throw in a bit of romance too, then Barbara Erskine is the writer for you. House of Echoes introduces us to Joss Grant, her husband Luke and their toddler son Tom. Their lives have just been nearly destroyed by the dirty dealings of Luke's business partner, when fate throws them a curve ball as Joss discovers she has inherited a large, dilapidated house called Belheddon Hall from a mother that she had never met. Joss had...

This is not a book to read if you have a snake phobia! In Awakening by S J Bolton, Clara Benning is a young woman who has always sought to hide herself away from people after a tragic childhood accident left one side of her face badly scarred. She moved to a remote cottage in an isolated, rural English village to be on her own as much as possible, working as a vet at the local animal rescue hospital. Not much happens in this sleepy village, aside from a group of rowdy teenagers making noise...

I have just crawled out from under the dome! One of the great qualities of Stephen King's epic novels is that you really find yourself living in the world that he has created, and in the case of 'Under The Dome' it is a claustrophobic world that gets smaller and smaller as the book progresses. Another great talent of King's is his ability to describe in minute detail a perfectly ordinary day, with people going around their business, and to then bring that day crashing down with the sure...

Jacob Logan left his home in the town of Maryfield in rural Carolina many years ago to build a new life in the big city, hardening his heart to his parent's pleas to come back and make his life in the old place. It was only now that his parent's were dead that he found himself drawn back there after his business collapsed. The old house looked very much the same, but was it welcoming him back or trying to drive him away? The furniture van than was transporting his stuff was in a bad accident,...

Tina the Snowflake ’. Hello, hello. As you may have guessed Hello, hello is none other than Maria Hardy, who has graciously agreed to answer my questions today. So Maria, what led you to start writing? What was your inspiration for Tina the Snowflake? How long did it take to write Tina the Snowflake and were there any obstacles that you had to overcome along the way ? Did you find it difficult to decide where to publish? How difficult was it to put an ebook together? with Lulu. Everybody...

Do you like secrets? Well, if you are a fan of secrets, then you will love Ghost Song by Sarah Rayne as it is a book much more about the secrets people keep and how they can shape and corrode people's lives than it is a ghost story. Set both in the present day and in the feverish weeks that led up to the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Ghost Story is set around a mysterious old music hall and theatre called the Tarleton. The Tarleton has been closed down since the first days of the...


 
 
 
 Jacob Logan left his home in the town of Maryfield in rural Carolina many years ago to build a new life in the big city, hardening his heart to his parent's pleas to come back and make his life in the old place. It was only now that his parent's were dead that he found himself drawn back there after his business collapsed. The old house looked very much the same, but was it welcoming him back or trying to drive him away?
 The furniture van than was transporting his stuff was in a bad accident, destroying all his possessions and then his car was stolen from the drive and vanished ...