I’m so pleased to be helping to celebrate What The Raven Brings by John Owen Theobald. What The Raven Brings is the second in the Ravenmaster trilogy after These Dark Wings.

What The Raven Brings is published by Head of Zeus and is available for purchase here.

What The Raven Brings

London, 1942: the Blitz is over but the war rages on. With the country still fighting for its existence, a young girl takes to the skies…

After her mother was killed in an air raid, Anna Cooper was sent to live with her uncle, the Ravenmaster at the Tower of London. Now, he too is dead. His dying wish was for Anna to be the next Ravenmaster, keeper of the birds who, according to legend, guard the fate of the kingdom. But the Tower authorities won’t stand for a female Ravenmaster, let alone one who is not yet sixteen years old.

Denied her destiny, Anna is desperate to escape the Tower and join the war effort. She bluffs her way into the glamorous – and dangerous – world of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force.

But no matter how high she flies, Anna can’t escape her past… nor the secret that it conceals. A secret that could change the course of the war.

An Extract from What The Raven Brings

1

Saturday, 16 May 1942

My run of luck is over. During the Blitz, luck’s the only thing that keeps you alive. Every bomb that falls next door, every fire that whips up just as you reach the shelter, every scrap of food you find before someone else – that’s your luck, draining away. After a year, it’s flat gone. And you’re left trapped in the belly of a cement monster with the most annoying person in the world.

‘Squire. You asleep over there?’

I turn to face the grinning voice. ‘Working hard as you are, Lightwood.’

‘I’ll be the judge of that.’ From above comes the quartermaster’s voice. My head is down, focused on tying together the steel bars with wire. I don’t need to peek over my shoulder to know that Lightwood’s done the same.

‘Timothy Squire and Arthur Lightwood. I should not have to remind you that one word from me and neither of you will ever wear a uniform.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Yes, sir.’

I grit my teeth. Three months of demolition training to become a sapper – a Royal Engineer in His Majesty’s armed forces – and here I am reinforcing concrete down at the docks. Tie the steel bars together with a figure-eight knot, cut the wire free with pliers. Repeat until death.

Lightwood and I work together, apart. As far apart as you can be in a ten-foot cell. Even in the shadows cast by the walls, sweat drips into my eyes. We’re in a giant hollow concrete box, with twenty compartments, sunk into the earth. All that’s needed is a top, and we’re as good as in a coffin. If we were truly dead and buried, at least we wouldn’t notice these bloody midges.

It’s hard to imagine a smaller space to work with another human. I could well do with some light, or air. The river is so close, but the dry dock blocks it. Seagulls cry out, mocking us.

My luck has run to empty.

I keep working, not daring to check if the quartermaster is still atop the ladder, watching like a riled hawk. Crabby little apple, that one.

The armed forces have taken over the docks, and brought their discipline with them. I suppose I should be happy to be here. As long as I’m close to these sappers, I can find another chance to become one myself. Truth is, I’d rather be anywhere else.

Finally, I glance up and risk turning full around. Cranes on tracks swing and swoop high above, intent on their own work. The walkway that runs down the centre is clear. He is gone. Long gone, I’ll bet, smirking as he left.

Pressing a hand against the small of my back, I watch Lightwood working away, furious, tying the wire, yanking it firm. Did I look that stupid?

‘Lightwood.’

He stops, panting, and turns to me, face bright as a cherry. ‘He gone? Thank Christ.’

Letting the pliers fall to the concrete, he leans his back against the wall, closing his eyes. I watch him with a smile. Arthur Lightwood – sounds like he rides a white horse in some poem from school. Looks a bit like it, too. The horse, that is.

‘You know what I should be doing right now?’ I turn and spit in the opposite corner. ‘Learning about mines. But some fool – some blighter – added a Type 70 fuse instead of a 67.’

His eyes still closed, he looks almost relaxed. ‘I reckon another day in Aberdeen and you’d have been dead as a doornail. Can’t keep your sticky fingers out of TNT for five minutes at a time. One of ’em was bound to go off eventually. Fag?’

Lightwood’s eyes blink open, and he’s rummaging in his pockets.

‘Bleeding liar.’ I wave the offered cigarette away, casting a look up at the walkway. ‘Better get back to it. This bloody Phoenix isn’t going to build itself.’

Who knows, maybe it will. No one here’s got the first clue what a Phoenix is, and no one is allowed to ask.

The armed forces brought that with them, too – no questions, just make sure the concrete is reinforced.

Not even Lightwood knows, and he knows everything.  Doesn’t stop him from guessing, of course.

‘Think about it, Squire. There’s a ton of sappers down here. Obviously it’s vital to the war. So what could it be?’

I almost guess a battleship, but the thought of Lightwood’s horsey laugh makes me want to clobber him. And we really should get back to work.

‘Massive old block of concrete,’ he says after I fail to respond, then snorts when I don’t understand him. Man’s a bleeding talking horse. ‘You sink it, you’ve got a foundation underwater.’

‘A foundation for what?’

‘Harbours. Roads. Whatever you want.’

I shake my head. ‘You were wrong about the clockwork fuse.’

‘That was your fault, Squire.’

Lightwood is full of it. No one knows what anyone is building. At least three other Phoenix units are under construction here, and similar work’s going on at the other docks. And the clockwork fuse was partly my fault, that’s the worst bit. How could I get the fuses mixed up?

‘The Germans hold all the ports, right? If we’re going to land over there, we’ll need to bring our own—’

A voice booms from above. ‘Another peep out of either of you, and you’re both gone. Final warning.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Don’t lose your wool, mate. Didn’t think it would be possible to miss the training, but two ticks and I’d go back and start it all over again. Who’d have thought I’d ever miss the endless buckles and buttons of the uniform. The marching drills were the worst, of course. The day my blistered feet finally burst, flooding my boots with blood, I thought I was done. But I learned a few tricks – get your boots one size too small, urinate on them, and never wear socks – worked a treat.

Lot of good marching tricks and rifle drills will do me stuck down here. At least when we spent hours in a bomb hole, we’d wonder what would happen if the bomb went off. Here we know nothing is going to happen. Ever.

Only two weeks away from completing sapper training; written tests, live demolitions, working with time-fused and magnetic response bombs – I’d finished it all. All I needed to do was blow the fake bridge. A single bloody bridge.

I was better than all those Kensington boys.

A whistle cracks the air. For what seems like the first time in hours, I look up. The sun has dropped behind the wall. Workers are hurrying across the wooden walkway.

Another hellish long day. Midges cloud around me.

‘Lightwood.’

He looks over, eyes wide. I already have my hand on the ladder.

‘Let’s close up shop, yeah?’

He nods, adds the final touches to some work, drops his pliers. We climb up to the light. I slide off my cap, take in as much sun as I can.

About John Owen Theobald

Born and raised in Eastern Canada, John moved to the UK to study the poetry of Keats, and in 2009 received a PhD from the University of St. Andrews. He lives in London, England.

You can follow John on Twitter, find him on Facebook and visit his website.

There’s more with these other bloggers too:

I’m incredibly grateful to Olivia Mead for my copy of The Last Act of Hattie Hoffman by Mindy Mejia and I’m delighted to be part of the launch celebrations for this exciting new writer.

The Last Act of Hattie Hoffman is published by Quercus on 9th March 2017 and is available for purchase here.

The Last Act of Hattie Hoffman

Eighteen-year-old Hattie Hoffman is a talented actress, loved by everyone in her Minnesotan hometown. When she’s found stabbed to death on the opening night of her school play, the tragedy rips through the fabric of the community.

Sheriff Del Goodman, a close friend of Hattie’s dad, vows to find her killer, but the investigation yields more secrets than answers: it turns out Hattie played as many parts offstage as on. Told from three perspectives, Del’s, Hattie’s high school English teacher and Hattie herself, The Last Act of Hattie Hoffman tells the story of the Hattie behind the masks, and what happened in that final year of her life.

My Review of The Last Act of Hattie Hoffman

When perfect high school student and budding actress Hattie Hoffman is found murdered, the community of Pine Valley will be left reeling.

I loved this book. Firstly, I’d like to praise the title The Last Act of Hattie Hoffman as it has multiple meanings, from Hattie’s roles in life to her actions and death but to say too much would spoil the plot.

The Last Act of Hattie Hoffman is the perfect blend of police procedural, crime and psychological thriller in a unique genre all of its own. Mindy Mejia has created a narrative that had me guessing from the first page to the last and I must have suspected just about every major character of having murdered Hattie at some point. There’s such a brilliant quality of writing here. I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a crime book style quite like it and I was completely absorbed every moment I was reading. I could feel the claustrophobic atmosphere of small town America almost oozing from the pages.

Sometimes I find multiple perspectives irritating or repetitive but Hattie, Sheriff Del and teacher Peter have such compelling and individual voices that I thoroughly enjoyed and believed the story told from their perspectives. I liked the way the events were anchored by the dates in each section too as we move towards Hattie’s last act.

However, the absolute triumph aside from a brilliant plot and wonderful settings, is the incredible characterisation; of Hattie particularly. With the conceit of drama, especially the curse of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, running through the story in an intelligent and captivating way, Hattie is the female equivalent of Everyman as she plays the different roles of daughter, student, friend, worker and girlfriend. So skilled is she in putting on an act that she is not entirely sure of her own true identity and as the events are revealed and we move towards her last act and action, it becomes clear that Hattie is as complex, human and flawed an individual as it is possible to meet. I thought she was an outstanding creation.

The Last Act of Hattie Hoffman is fresh in style, unique and utterly, captivatingly, entertaining. I can’t praise it highly enough. I’m desperate to read more from Mindy Mejia as soon as possible.

About Mindy Mejia

Mindy Mejia is a fiction writer, finance manager, weekend jogger, wife, and mother of two. She writes what she likes to read-contemporary, plot driven novels that deliver both entertainment and substance. She lives in the Twin Cities and is currently working on a project that might or might not be a trilogy.

You can follow Mindy on Twitter and visit her website. You’ll find her on Facebook too. There’s more with these other bloggers:

I adored A Year of Marvellous Ways by Sarah Winman, my review of which you can read here, so that when a surprise parcel dropped through my letterbox and revealed itself to be Tin Man, the next Sarah Winman novel, I actually gasped aloud with delight.

My grateful thanks to Vicky Palmer and Katie Brown at Headline for my advanced reader copy of Tin Man in return for an honest review.

Tin Man will be published by Tinder Press on 27th July 2017 and is available for pre-order here.

Tin Man

It begins with a painting won in a raffle: fifteen sunflowers, hung on the wall by a woman who believes that men and boys are capable of beautiful things.

And then there are two boys, Ellis and Michael, who are inseparable.

And the boys become men, and then Annie walks into their lives, and it changes nothing and everything.

My Review of Tin Man

Ellis lives a solitary life, but it is a life peppered with memories of the past.

I’ve been staring at a blank screen and wondering what I can say about Sarah Winman’s Tin Man that will be adequate enough to convey what a beautiful read it is.

Sarah Winman has a unique style. Direct speech is presented without punctuation so that the reader hears it naturally at the same time as the characters. The appeal to the senses is so strong that the writing is visual, auditory and both sensuous and sensual in a kaleidoscope of pattern and refraction. There’s a poetry to the language that left me heartbroken at times. The beauty of the language belies the prosaic brutality of some of the events, like Ellis’s ‘boxing’ moment so that they are all the more impactful.

The plot is quite simple and almost fragmented as the past slides in to colour the present, so that not a great deal of action takes place and yet there are whole lives laid bare and raw. I feel devastated that I’ve finished reading Tin Man. I don’t even want to pick up another book yet as I feel it will spoil this moment.

Tin Man is about hurt and longing, desire and loneliness, love and regret. There’s anger and fear too. Sarah Winman has the ability to write a sentence that attaches itself to your heart and that keeps reverberating with a wistful intensity of what might have been long after the read is finished. I cared deeply about every character, even those mentioned almost in passing. I found it hauntingly sad.

And Ellis, Dora, Annie, Mabel and Michael are not actually characters. They are real people. They are the embodiment of emotions that every one of us has experienced at some point in our lives so that to read Tin Man is not just to read about humanity, but it is also to experience it.

I don’t think Tin Man will necessarily appeal to all readers, but for those it touches as it has touched me, it will be a book they will not easily forget. I thought it was wonderful.

About Sarah Winman

Sarah Winman grew up in Essex and now lives in London. She attended the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art and went on to act in theatre, film and television. She has written two novels, When God Was A Rabbit and A Year Of Marvellous Ways.

You can find Sarah on Facebook.

With well over 800 books on the TBR, I haven’t had time to read Catflap by Ian Jarvis, but I was so intrigued by the concept of a modern take on Sherlock Holmes that I asked Ian to tell me a bit more about it. Catflap is published by M X Publishing and is available for purchase here.

Cat Flap

A contemporary Sherlock Holmes, the eccentric Bernie Quist is a consultant detective in the city of York. Christmas is days away and once again the reclusive sleuth will be quietly celebrating alone. His assistant Watson, a teenager from the Grimpen housing estate, has other ideas, mostly involving parties, girls and beer.

Yuletide plans are halted when three chemists die and the fiancé of one hires them to look into her apparent suicide. After discovering the chemist wasn’t engaged, they’re drawn into the mystery when their employer is killed.

Added to this, Watson has a puzzle of his own – Quist is clearly hiding something and he’s curious to know what.

The investigation leads to a shady cartel of northern businessmen, a forgotten Egyptian cult and an ancient evil lurking in the medieval alleyways of York. Quist’s secret is also revealed, and Watson doesn’t know what terrifies him the most.

Channelling Holmes

A Guest Post by Ian Jarvis

Hello Linda. I’m so pleased that you like the concept of Cat Flap – a humorous urban fantasy inspired by the Sherlock Holmes stories. You asked why Holmes and Watson are still relevant today and how a supernatural element might give the concept a freshness for a modern readership. Hopefully, the following might answer this and some of your other questions.

Sherlock Holmes appeared in 1887 in the book A Study in Scarlet and the world has been fascinated by Arthur Conan Doyle’s creation ever since. William Gillette was the first actor to play him, incredibly over 1300 times on stage, and he firmly cemented the image of deerstalker hat, magnifying glass, violin and calabash pipe. In the books, Holmes smoked a simple briar pipe, but the actor felt this obscured his mouth and adopted the elaborate curved pipe instead. Later actors maintained this image on film through the decades, including the superb Jeremy Brett, Peter Cushing and my personal favourite Basil Rathbone. It’s a tribute to the enduring fascination with Holmes that he’s been portrayed on screen over 250 times, with around 100 actors having now played him.

We also see Holmes in many other incarnations. Maverick cops dispense with police procedure and, quite often, the law itself, and instead use intelligence, deduction and observation to solve complex crimes. There are many fictional private detectives like this and other screen characters such as the Mentalist. Holmes has recently been updated, of course, in the amazing Sherlock series with Benedict Cumberbatch. This show constantly pulls in record viewing figures which proves that, well over a century later, everyone still has a huge love for Holmes.

With all this in mind, I decided to try a new take on the character with Bernie Quist – a different and original approach and hopefully both urban fantasy readers and Holmes fans will enjoy the idea. Quist, his assistant, and the other protagonists are likable and quirky, and the stories are humorous without being outright comedy. A contemporary Holmes, Quist is a consultant detective operating from Baker Avenue in the city of York. His eccentric personality and deductive methods resemble the celebrated sleuth and his assistant is named Watson, although this Watson is a black youth from a notorious housing estate and he’s definitely no doctor. The mismatched duo take on bizarre cases which invariably lead to the realms of the supernatural, a shadowy world Quist is all too familiar with. Reclusive and very much a loner, the consultant detective has a dark secret which eventually comes to light in the first novel Cat Flap.

It’s easy to see why the Hound of the Baskervilles is the most famous and best loved of the Conan Doyle stories. It’s a truly fantastic novel. Many readers love the supernatural, and here they get their favourite detective involved in a seemingly paranormal mystery of ancient legends, misty moorlands and a terrifying spectral beast. A similar atmosphere permeates the Quist novels, but where the Baskerville hound turns out to be a real dog, similar to the ones owned by drug dealers on estates, the eerie situations Quist faces are genuinely paranormal.

You asked how easy or difficult it was not to be derivative whilst still retaining an affection for Holmes? It was actually quite easy and I’ve included many tributes and nods to the Conan Doyle stories; hardcore fans should enjoy spotting these. Watson, for example, lives on the infamous Grimpen housing estate – named after the Grimpen Mire in Hound of the Baskervilles and described there as one of the most awful places in Britain. Because of the modern setting, my main task was to keep this a million miles away from the feel of the Sherlock television series. With the humour, the supernatural slant and various other factors, I’ve managed that.

Cat Flap begins days before Christmas and once again, Quist is quietly celebrating alone. His new assistant has other ideas, mostly involving parties, girls and beer, but Yuletide plans are halted when three York chemists die and the fiancé of one hires the pair to look into her apparent suicide. After discovering the chemist wasn’t engaged, they’re drawn into the mystery when their employer is killed. Added to this, Watson has a puzzle of his own – Quist is clearly hiding something and he’s curious to know what. The investigation leads to a shady cartel of northern businessmen, a forgotten Egyptian cult and an ancient evil lurking in the alleyways of York. Quist’s secret is also revealed, and Watson doesn’t  know what terrifies him the most.

Beginning as a murder investigation, Cat Flap soon develops into an urban fantasy, set against a backdrop of Manchester and York, a beautiful city of historic buildings and medieval fortifications that has seldom been used by mystery writers. The novel was published on the first of February by MX Publishing, the world’s largest publisher of Holmes stories, and it’s the start of a series. Assuming, of course, that Quist and Watson survive their first adventure, the second book, the Music of Sound, revolves around the British music industry, an enigmatic pop star and her management team of mercenary soldiers.

Thank you for reading. The game is afoot, or quite possibly thirteen inches, and you can find out more about me below.

About Ian Jarvis

Ian was born in the north of England, where he worked for three hectic decades as an operational firefighter with West Yorkshire Fire and Rescue.

He’s spent the past twenty something years in a village near Selby, where he writes urban fantasy, humour and supernatural thrillers.

He travels regularly, usually though Asia and the Americas, and his interests include walking the North York Moors and Yorkshire Dales, natural history, with an emphasis on birds, real ale, and ridding the world of all known evils.

You can follow Ian on Twitter, visit his website and find him on Facebook.

I love a good twisty thriller so I’m delighted to be helping reveal the cover to Obsession by Amanda Robson.

Obsession is to be published by Avon Books and is available for pre-order here.

Obsession

One evening, a wife asks her husband a question: who else would you go for, if you could?

It is a simple question – a little game – that will destroy her life.

Carly and Rob are a perfect couple. They share happy lives with their children and their close friends Craig and Jenny. They’re lucky. But beneath the surface, no relationship is simple: can another woman’s husband and another man’s wife ever just be good friends?

Little by little, Carly’s question sends her life spiralling out of control, as she begins to doubt everything she thought was true. Who can she trust? The man she has promised to stick by forever, or the best friend she has known for years? And is Carly being entirely honest with either of them?

Obsession is a dark, twisting thriller about how quickly our lives can fall apart when we act on our desires.

‘Thrilling, unputdownable, a fabulous rollercoaster of a read – I was obsessed by this book’ B A Paris, bestselling author of Behind Closed Doors.

‘Compelling and thoroughly addictive’ Katerina Diamond, No,1 bestselling author of The Teacher and The Secret.

About Amanda Robson

After graduating, Amanda Robson worked in medical research at The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and at the Poisons Unit at Guy’s Hospital where she became a co-author of a book on cyanide poisoning – and this book makes terrifying use of poison throughout…
Amanda attended the Faber novel writing course and writes full-time. Obsession is her debut novel.

You can follow Amanda on Twitter and find her on Facebook.

Yesterday I was lucky enough to head off to Waterstones in Nottingham for their wonderful Oceans of Words event where authors Ruth Dugdall, Louise Beech, Holly Bidgood, Tracey Scott-Townsend and Cassandra Parkin introduced themselves, telling us why they write and reading from their books.

With apologies for the quality of my phone’s photos, here’s a little bit about the event.

After we’d all grabbed a hot drink, a soft drink or a glass of wine we settled down to hear from our authors.

Ruth Dugdall

First was Ruth Dugdall who explained all about how her background as a probation officer had led to her dark themes in her writing and how she’s interested not in the so-called evil of the crime, but in the mind of the criminal and how they have become who they are. Ruth read from Humber Boy. 

You can follow Ruth on Twitter and find all her books here.

Tracey Scott-Townsend

Tracey Scott-Townsend then held us all in thrall as she described delivering a letter to her dead sister. Tracey is an artist as well as a writer and finds parts of her life and personality seep into her writing. Tracey is particularly interested in creating empathy through storytelling. Tracey read from Of His Bones.

You can follow Tracey on Twitter and find her books here.

Cassandra Parkin

It was then down to Cassandra Parkin to explain how she comes from a family of essentially bossy women and wants to explore their matriarchal and often almost supernatural influences. Cass read from the enchanting Lily’s House. You can read my review of Lily’s House here.

You can follow Cassandra on Twitter and find her books here.

Louise Beech

It’s always a pleasure to hear Louise Beech speak and each time there is something new to find out. Yesterday Louise told us how she writes to find her own story, as she has had an unsettled background like Connor in her latest book. Louise read from The Mountain In My Shoe.

You can follow Louise on Twitter and find her books here. You’ll also find my review of Louise’s How to be Brave here.

Holly Bidgood

Last, but by no means least, was debut novelist Holly Bidgood. Holly is fascinated by landscape, and atmosphere and place are most important elements to her as a writer. That focus certainly came through when Holly read to us from The Eagle and the Oystercatcher.

You can follow Holly on Twitter and her book is available here.

Once the readings had taken place there was a lively question and answer session where we discovered that being a writer is certainly not a ‘get rich quick’ scheme, that all five ladies cannot help writing – it’s something they feel totally compelled to do and that the essential aspect for those wanting to write is to ask themselves, ‘How can I make a life that has writing in it?’

The afternoon concluded with the opportunity to speak with the authors and get books signed and I was disappointed I had to dash off quite so soon to get my train. I really enjoyed every moment and would like to thank all five authors and Waterstones in Nottingham for a fabulous free event. When shall we do it again?

I’m delighted to be helping to celebrate the launch of The Abattoir of Dreams by Mark Tilbury.

The Abattoir of Dreams was published by Bloodhound on 28th February 2017 and is available for purchase here.

The Abattoir of Dreams

The past is never far away.

Michael Tate has not had an easy life. With his father in prison, and his mother dead, Michael was sent to Woodside Children’s Home.

Now an adult, Michael wakes up in hospital from a coma suffering from amnesia and paralysis. Confused and terrified, he is charged with the fatal stabbing of his girlfriend, Becky. He also learns he attempted to end his own life.

Detective Inspector John Carver is determined that Michael is sent to prison. With no way of defending himself, Michael is left in his hospital bed awaiting transfer to remand.

But then strange things begin to happen and his childhood comes back to haunt him.

Can Michael ever escape the past?

Will he ever discover the truth about Becky’s murder? And why is DI Carver so eager to make him suffer?

The Abattoir of Dreams is a bitter sweet story of murder, innocence and abuse.

My Review of The Abattoir of Dreams

When Michael Tate wakes in hospital without memory, he finds himself accused of his girlfriend Becky’s murder.

Let me just say, that had I not been asked to be part of the launch celebrations for The Abattoir of Dreams I would never have read it because it’s so far out of my comfort zone even the Hubble telescope wouldn’t be able to find it!

Abattoir of Dreams was so brilliantly written I could hardly bear to read it. Covering terrible themes of sexual, physical, emotional and verbal abuse The Abattoir of Dreams makes for very uncomfortable and sometimes disturbing reading. Having worked in education and inspected child protection, I know just how realistic the scenarios Mark Tilbury presents really are, despite their truly horrific nature. So, regardless of not wanting to read on, I found I couldn’t tear myself away as Mikey’s memories gradually began to reappear.

If you’re easily offended by bad language and disquieting themes then perhaps this isn’t the read for you, but The Abattoir of Dreams was written so effectively and realistically that I found these elements added to the atmosphere and never felt gratuitous. I believe not reading The Abattoir of Dreams would have left me a poorer individual. There’s quite considerable violence too that I found far more affecting than any film I might watch. At times my heart rate was elevated as I read, especially in the denouement which is, ironically, one of the less graphic parts of the story.

The characterisation is so effective. As the layers are peeled back and we find out what happened to put Mikey in hospital, we also understand his background as a child and how he has developed into the young man he is. There are villains aplenty who are startlingly depicted, but it is the victims, like Liam, who impact most on the reader. In fact, one of the characters that appealed to me most was the dog, Oxo.

However, despite the gritty, disturbing and frequently horrifying aspects of Abattoir of Dreams, it is not entirely bleak and unremitting. There is real love and friendship exemplified and the supernatural element gives us all hope too.

I can’t say I enjoyed reading The Abattoir of Dreams because it disturbed me, but it’s a book I won’t forget in a hurry as it engendered a range of emotions in me from rage to horror, sadness to hope and pity to murderous thoughts. I thought it was brilliant.

About Mark Tilbury

Mark lives in a small village in the lovely county of Cumbria, although his books are set in Oxfordshire where he was born and raised.

After serving in the Royal Navy and raising his two daughters after being widowed, Mark finally took the plunge and self-published two books on Amazon, The Revelation Room and The Eyes of the Accused.

When he’s not writing, Mark can be found trying and failing to master blues guitar, and taking walks around the beautiful county of Cumbria.

You can follow Mark on Twitter, visit his website and find him on Facebook.

There’s more with these other bloggers too:

My enormous thanks to Georgina Moore for a copy of The Stranger In My Home by Adele Parks in return for an honest review.

Published by Headline Review The Stranger In My Home is available for purchase here.

The Stranger In My Home

Alison is lucky and she knows it. She has the life she always craved, including a happy home with Jeff and their brilliant, vivacious teenage daughter, Katherine – the absolute centre of Alison’s world.

Then a knock at the door ends life as they know it.

Fifteen years ago, someone else took Alison’s baby from the hospital. And now Alison is facing the unthinkable.

The daughter she brought home doesn’t belong to her.

When you have everything you dreamed of, there is everything to lose.

My Review of The Stranger In My Home

When Tom arrives on Jeff and Alison’s doorstep with the announcement that their daughter Katherine isn’t really their child, but his, the fallout reverberates far and wide.

Ooo. I so enjoyed The Stranger In My Home. Adele Parks has the ability to get right inside a character’s psyche and present them in fabulous detail. In this case it is Alison who is so distinct and well presented. I absolutely loathed her to begin with as she is such a controlling person, but as the narrative progressed and her frailties and background were uncovered she began to gain my sympathy and my empathy until I could fully understand her. By the end of The Stranger In My Home I was very firmly on her side. The first person aspect convinced me completely that I was almost inside Alison’s head listening to her thoughts rather than reading about her. The extra touch of the third person background added layers to Alison’s personality that helped to understand her further. I thought she was fantastically well portrayed.

All the other characters are also realistic creations so that this is a story about actual people to the reader and not fabrications in a book. I loved the title too. The Stranger In My Home could really be applied to anyone crossing the threshold into Alison and Jeff’s home as people are revealed to the reader. Even Alison is a stranger in her own home as dynamics shift and fluctuate.

I can’t say too much about the plot, as that would spoil the read, but I will say that my heart was thumping towards the end and not all of the plot was what I was expecting! The themes of identity and what actually constitutes parenthood are explored in a highly intelligent manner with writing that is such a joy to read. Adele Parks knows exactly how to tip a perspective with small phrase after more lengthy passages so that the reader experiences not only Alison’s emotions, but has shocks and discoveries of their own. I found myself exclaiming aloud at the perceptions of humanity at times.

If you want a narrative that is compelling, absorbing, intelligently written and entertaining on all levels, then look no further than Adele Parks’ The Stranger In My Home. It’s a corker!

About Adele Parks

Adele Parks worked in advertising until she published her first novel, Playing Away, in 2000, which was the debut bestseller of that year. All of Adele’s novels have been top ten bestsellers and her work has been translated into twenty-five different languages.

Adele has spent her adult life in Italy, Botswana and London until 2005 when she moved to Guildford, where she now lives with her husband and son.

Adele believes reading is a basic human right, so she works closely with the Reading Agency as an Ambassador of the Six Book Challenge, a programme designed to encourage adult literacy. In 2011 she was a judge for the Costa Book Awards.

You can follow Adele on Twitter, visit her website and find her on Facebook.

Having studied Machiavelli in my university days I so wish I’d had time to read In the Name of the Family by Sarah Dunant ready for these launch celebrations. However, as a treat for us all I do have an extract from In the Name of the Family to share with you today.

Published by Virago, In the Name of the Family is available for purchase here.

In the Name of the Family

In the Name of the Family – as Blood and Beauty did before – holds up a mirror to a turbulent moment of history, sweeping aside the myths to bring alive the real Borgia family; complicated, brutal, passionate and glorious. Here is a thrilling exploration of the House of Borgia’s doomed years, in the company of a young diplomat named Niccolo Machiavelli.

It is 1502 and Rodrigo Borgia, a self-confessed womaniser and master of political corruption is now on the Papal throne as Alexander VI. His daughter Lucrezia, aged twenty-two, already thrice married and a pawn in her father’s plans, is discovering her own power. And then there is Cesare Borgia: brilliant, ruthless and increasingly unstable; it is his relationship with the diplomat Machiavelli which offers a master class on the dark arts of power and politics. What Machiavelli learns will go on to inform his great work of modern politics, The Prince.

But while the pope rails against old age and his son’s increasing maverick behavior it is Lucrezia who will become the Borgia survivor: taking on her enemies and creating her own place in history.

Conjuring up the past in all its complexity, horror and pleasures, In The Name of the Family confirms Sarah Dunant’s place as the leading novelist of the Renaissance and one of the most acclaimed historical fiction writers of our age.

An Extract from In The Name of the Family

PROLOGUE

Florence, January 1502

You couldn’t call him tall; he was barely an inch bigger than her, and wiry in stature. His soot-black hair was cut unfashionably close to his head and his face, broad at the eyes, tapered via a thin nose to a sharp clean-shaven chin. The word weasel had come to mind when they first met. But strangely it hadn’t put her off. Marietta Corsini had known already that her future husband was clever (he had a job in government, and everyone knew men like that needed a wheelbarrow to carry their thoughts), and within a few minutes he had made her laugh. He had also made her blush, for there had been something in his bright-eyed concentration, his almost animal quiver energy, that seemed to be half undressing her. By the time they had said their goodbyes she was smitten, and six months of marriage has done nothing to change that.

He leaves for work each day at dawn. In the beginning she had hoped that her nest-ripe body might tempt him to linger a while. Florence is rife with stories of married men who use early risings as excuses to visit their mistresses, and he had come with a reputation for enjoying life. But even if that were the case, there’s nothing she can do about it, not least because wherever he is going, this husband of hers has already ‘gone’ from her long before he gets out of the door.

In fact, Niccolò Machiavelli doesn’t leave the warmth of his marriage bed for any other woman (he can do that easily enough on his way home), but because the day’s dispatches arrive at the Palazzo della Signoria early and it is his greatest pleasure as well as his duty to be among the first to read them.

His journey takes him down Via Guicciardini on the south side of the city and across the river Arno via the Ponte Vecchio. A maverick winter snowfall has turned into a grimy frost and the ground cracks like small animal bones under his feet. On the bridge fresh carcasses are being unloaded into the butchers’ shops. Through the open shutters he catches glimpses of the river, its surface a silvery apricot under the rising sun. A feral dog streaks across his path, going for a gobbet of offal near the wheel of a cart. It earns him a kick in the ribs for his daring but his jaws remain firmly clenched over the prize. Scavenging opportunist, Niccolò thinks, not without a certain admiration. Stick a feathered hat on him and give him a sword and you’ve got half the country. How long ago was that business in the city of Fermo? Christmas, yes? He’d opened the dispatch himself: the Duke’s ‘loving’ nephew had invited his uncle to a seasonal dinner, then locked the doors and slaughtered him and his entire council, taking the title for himself. In the chancery, his staff was laying bets on how long till the next murderous dinner invitation, but Niccolò’s money is on the usurper. While the man may be a thug, he’s also a mercenary leader in Cesare Borgia’s army, which makes him a thug with powerful allies.

Across the bridge, he passes by the side of San Pier Scheraggio church, out into the open space of the Piazza della Signoria, dominated by the handsome crenellated palace of government. To the left of the main doors is a weathered bronze statue; the figure of Judith, calm, concentrated, a raised sword in her right hand poised to slice through the neck of Holofernes, who sits painfully twisted at her feet. Niccolò gives her a silent salute. He knows men in government who find it unnerving to be greeted daily by the sight of a woman administering justice to a man, but they are missing the point. Donatello’s statue, plundered from the Medici palace and placed here eight years before, stands as a deliberate reminder to the republic of Florence that she would never again allow the dictatorship of a single family.

Alas, the gap between the ideal and reality in politics is enough to give most men vertigo. If Judith were to lift up her eyes now, she would be looking at the place in the piazza where they had burned the Dominican friar Savonarola, whose fanatical devotion to God’s laws had made him another kind of tyrant. Every time Niccolò passes a tavern where some idiot cook has burned a carcass on a spit, the sick-sweet smell of caramelised fat and flesh has him back inside the crowd, straining to see the stake over the shoulders of bigger men. He had never witnessed a public burning before—Florence has little fondness for such barbarity—and Savonarola had been garroted before the faggots were lit to stop his cries. The crowd too had been eerily silent. He’d forced himself to stay to the bitter end, watching the soldiers gather up every scrap of bone and ash and throw it into the river so nothing was left as a relic.

He’d known then that Florence had a challenge ahead of her, re-establishing a working republic after so much madness. And if he is confident in public – for that is his job – in private he has grave doubts.

He slips into the palazzo through a side entrance, exchanging a joke with a sleepy guard, before climbing a spiral staircase that takes him through the great central hall, up a further flight into the council rooms and offices above. His desk is in a small antechamber set off from the main salon, with its gilded wooden ceiling and patterned fleur-de-lis walls. The temperature is almost as cold inside as out. When the elected members gather there will be braziers and fires lit, but as a hired hand he has his own clay bottle and must send out for regular refills to stop his feet from turning to ice. He will do it later: once the seals on the day’s dispatches are broken he won’t feel the cold.

It is Niccolò’s business, as head of the second chancery and secretary to the Council of Ten for Liberty and Peace, to keep abreast of every shift and change in the political landscape of the country. For as long as he can remember, such things have fascinated him. He was barely thirteen years old when his father had placed a newly printed copy of Livy’s History of Rome in front of him, and like every first great love affair, it has coloured the way he sees the world ever since.

‘This is the most treasured possession this house now holds, you hear me?’ Such dry humour his father practised. ‘In a fire you had better look to yourself, for this will be the man I save first.’

He wonders sometimes what the great Livy would make of this modern Italy. In his own mind he sees the peninsula as a great ragged boot hanging off the Alps, the leather mottled and discoloured by the vicissitudes of history. In the north, for the second time in a decade, a French army is in occupation, ruling Milan and overshadowing a dozen smaller states close by. On the Adriatic coast, Venice is puffed up with her own wealth and battles with the Turks, while the wild lands of the south are under the control of the Spanish, with a few old French strongholds inside.

But it is what is happening in the middle that would have surely fascinated Livy the most.

The speed and ferocity of the rise of the Borgia family have taken everyone by surprise. Of course Rome has had unscrupulous popes before, men who quietly favoured the fortunes of their ‘nephews’ or ‘nieces’. But this, this is different. Here is a Pope, Alexander VI, who openly acknowledges and uses his illegitimate children as weapons to create a new dynastic power block; his eldest son Cesare, once a cardinal, marches at the head of a mercenary army conquering a line of city-states historically owned by the Church, while his daughter, Lucrezia, is the family’s prize marriage pawn.

Two of the day’s dispatches bring further news of the Borgia project. Lucrezia is now halfway across Italy with an entourage the size of a small army, en route to her third husband, the Duke elect of Ferrara. Meanwhile, the Pope and his son, on a lap of honour to celebrate their latest conquests, the state of Piombino and the island of Elba, are making an early departure by boat back to Rome. How long till they arrive? If the wind obliges, the water will carry them faster than any road in winter, though it’s not a journey that he himself would choose to make. At least the rest of Tuscany will breathe easily for a while; a soldier at sea cannot be a duke leading an army on land.

He is filleting the dispatches ready for the council morning briefing when he hears the sounds of the great bells from the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore marking the starting hour of the day. His thoughts move briefly to the cathedral workshop where the Florentine sculptor Michelangelo has spent the last nine months chiselling into a block of flawed marble, commissioned by the state to produce a great statue of David to be placed on the façade of the cathedral. No one has been allowed near the work, but the leaked gossip talks more of its emerging size than its beauty. It remains to be seen whether it will be powerful enough to shield the city from the Borgia Goliath.

As the last chimes die away, a series of contorted male shrieks rise up from somewhere nearby; a late coupling between the sheets or a few early knife thrusts into a belly? He smiles. Such are the sounds of his beloved city, the sounds indeed of the whole of Italy.

About Sarah Dunant

Sarah Dunant is the author of the international bestseller The Birth of Venus, which has received major worldwide acclaim and In the Company of the Courtesan. With the publication of Sacred Hearts, she rounds out a Renaissance trilogy bringing voice to the lives of three different women in three different historical contexts.

Sarah Dunant has two daughters, and lives in London and Florence.

You can follow Sarah on Twitter, visit her website and find her on Facebook.

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Some books are special and, as The Song of the Stork by Stephan Collishaw is one such book, I’m thrilled to be sharing my review as part of its launch celebrations. The Song of the Stork was published on 1st March 2017 by Legend Press and is available for purchase here.

The Song of the Stork

Fifteen-year-old Yael is on the run. The Jewish girl seeks shelter from the Germans on the farm of the village outcast. Aleksei is mute and solitary, but as the brutal winter advances, he reluctantly takes her in and a delicate relationship develops.

As her feelings towards Aleksei change, the war intrudes and Yael is forced to join a Jewish partisan group fighting in the woods.

Torn apart and fighting for her life, The Song of the Stork is Yael’s story of love, hope and survival. It is the story of one woman finding a voice as the voices around her are extinguished.

My Review of The Song of the Stork

On the run from the Germans, Jewish Yael can’t begin to know what else life can throw at her.

I’m not sure I know where to begin to review The Song of the Stork. It’s a relatively short book with quite a bit of white space to its pages and yet it took me a couple of days to read because I wanted to savour every word and nuance. Equally, the intensity of the story is so overwhelming I needed to come up for air as I found I was holding my breath as I read and wondered what reverberating emotion would hit me next. The Song of the Stork is an outstanding read.

What struck me most was the quality of the language. It is simple and often quite matter of fact in the telling of the story, but that is such a finely tuned counterpoint to the horrors that Yael has witnessed that it stunned me as I read. This pared down style weaves a magical spell on the reader.

The metaphor of the stork is incredibly well handled. It’s impossible to explain without spoiling the read, but the name, the symbolism, the practicalities of a stork’s song all serve to bind this almost claustrophobic read into a unity that is almost overwhelming. I loved the literature and poetry behind the narrative too. I couldn’t understand the Hebrew and Yiddish words, but that didn’t affect my enjoyment at all. Indeed, they added to the sense of bewilderment of a world in melt down and gave me the sense of otherness that Jewish Yael and mute Aleksei must have felt in this Second World War setting.

The characterisation is beautiful. The relationship between Aleksei and Yael is depicted with a delicay of touch so that there is a real sense of calm and beauty as well as intensity. It felt almost voyeuristic to read about them at times.

The Song of the Stork is a terrifying portrait of what humanity has been and what we might still become. It should be depressing and yet it is like a beacon of hope in a dysfunctional world. I think that, in a world of noise, The Song of the Stork is quiet perfection. I truly loved it.

About Stephan Collishaw

Stephan Collishaw was brought up on a Nottingham council estate and failed all of his O’levels. His first novel The Last Girl (2003) was chosen by the Independent on Sunday as one of its Novels of the Year. In 2004 Stephan was selected as one of the British Council’s 20 best young British novelists. His brother is the renowned artist, Mat Collishaw. After a 10-year writing hiatus, The Song of the Stork is Stephan’s highly anticipated third novel. Stephan now works as a teacher in Nottingham, having also lived and worked abroad in Lithuania and Mallorca, where his son Lukas was born.

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