What’s not to love about an inquisitive elderly lady playing Miss Marple? A House To Let, a collaboration between some of the greatest classic British authors Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Elizabeth Gaskell and Adelaide Anne Proctor, is your quintessential cosy mystery. It comes from a time where deception and intrigue were enough to underpin a compelling story – no blood or murder were necessary.
Gripping. The second instalment of Stieg Larsson’s Millenium Trilogy, The Girl Who Played With Fire, is not just a worthy successor to the first, it is even better!
Why is it better? This novel is where the reader is properly introduced to the feisty heroine Lisbeth Salander.
BOOK REVIEW: Exquisite minimalism. I’ve always been a believer that good things come in small packages and this novel by Ogawa is a perfect example. The characters, a mathematics professor with special needs, his housekeeper and her son, are developed in an understated manner, through their actions. The mathematical concepts are explained with artful simplicity and woven into the telling of the story to great effect. I found Ogawa’s writing style refreshing – words are not squandered but chosen carefully to extract maximum value
Elizabeth Kostova’s The Swan Thieves is an engrossing novel with deep, intertwining storylines and thought-provoking and elegant prose.
Book 4 in Kerry Greenwood’s Corinna Chapman’s Murder Mysteries Series Trick or Treat Synopsis: Corinna Chapman, amateur sleuth, baker extraordinaire and proprietor of the Earthly Delights Bakery, returns for her fourth criminally entertaining and delicious adventure. When a cut-price franchise…
BOOK RATING: The Story 4 / 5 ; The Writing 4 / 5 BOOK REVIEW: Captivating. This story was originally written as a play, and perhaps because of that has a succinctness that I found very enjoyable. At only 134 pages (PDF)…
Matthew Reilly’s Hell Island was originally released in 2005 for the Australian Books Alive initiative. The novella was given free with the purchase of any novel or book that was part the extensive Books Alive range, selected specifically to encourage reading…
Extraordinary. Stieg Larsson’s thrilling novel, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo really does deserve the praise it has been given and its place atop the bestseller lists. It is different to any other crime novel I have read. Larsson tells…
BOOK REVIEW : Having read this book, my first ever from Cornwell, I’m somewhat perplexed. I’d heard great things about this author, and this wasn’t at all what I had expected. To begin with, this is the shortest book I…
The Joanna Hines’ novels, Surface Tension and Improving Carla, are highly compelling reads that are worth looking out for at second-hand bookstores. Genre: Drama, Mystery, Thriller Surface Tension Synopsis In the scorching summer of 1976, six friends enjoy a blissful time…
BOOK REVIEW : This story just was not as interesting as I expected from the blurb. The best thing about the book was Doolittle’s leading man, Tom Bethany – an appealing character, part hired gun with a shady past, part…
BOOK REVIEW : In Specimen Days Michael Cunningham has created a masterpiece. Okay, I’ll admit I just love novels and movies with multiple stories all woven together, the ones that really make you think. The story framework is similar to one…
Brief reviews of The Secret Sun by Fred Hiatt (1992) and Last Year in Hong Kong by Robert Elegant (1997). The Secret Sun Synopsis When a young American journalist working in Toyko comes across long-hidden information indicating that Japan was…
