My grateful thanks to Alainna Georgiou at Hodder for sending me a very welcome surprise copy of Hope Street by Mike Gayle. I’m delighted to share my review of Hope Street today. 

I love Mike Gayle’s writing and you’ll find my review of Mike’s The Museum of Ordinary People here and of A Song of You and Me here.

Hope Street was published by Hodder and Stoughton on 6th February 2025 and is available for purchase through the publisher links here. 

Hope Street

 

The greatest adventure is coming back home.

Lila Metcalfe is a trainee journalist in Derby and she’s very used to being given the stories that no one else wants. So, when her editor tells her that the city’s Cossington Park development is being held up by a solitary resident on Hope Street who is refusing to leave, she knows she is going to be the one sent to find out more. And that’s how she meets Connor.

Twenty-something Connor is the sole resident of Hope Street and he is not at all what Lila is expecting. And he has a very clear reason not to move: he is waiting for his mum to come home.

The uplifting and heartfelt new novel from the author of A Song of Me and You.

My Review of Hope Street

Local journalist Lila Metcalfe has a new story to follow up.

Hope Street is simply fabulous. Through this sensitive, heart-felt, narrative about Connor and his missing mother, Mike Gayle provides a deep and emotional insight into all aspects of community. His skill at showing real life for real people in challenging circumstances is outstanding. This is a story that engenders a wide range of emotion from fury to joy because the reader is so invested in Connor’s life.

The premise of enforced development and compulsory purchase that affects individuals feels pertinent and realistic. The gradual erosion of the Hope Street community as residents are persuaded out of their homes is something that could happen to any one of us and I found my anger at Connor’s treatment both frustrating and enraging. Hope Street is a story that truly impacts the reader. 

The characters are wonderful. Connor’s mum Bernie might have been missing for three years, providing an added layer of mystery, but she drives the narrative. This feels glorious because what we discover about her shows a strong, independent woman who has survived her struggles through her courage and love. Lila too, is depicted with absolute clarity and her strand of the story is every bit as engaging as Connor’s. I loved the romantic element of her story too. As Connor and Lila both deliver first person accounts, Hope Street feels intimate and compelling. These people resonate with the reader. Mike Gayle ensures we know them thoroughly and he makes us care about them completely. What I think works so brilliantly is the intensity of a smallish cast, but the breadth of character. There’s a hugely satisfying balance of good and bad people, of male and female characters and of the flaws and perfections they display. This story could realistically occur in any of our communities so that the reader is invested in the outcomes even without the emotional and heart-breaking reasons Connor has to want to remain in Hope Street.

Equally varied and impactful are the themes. There’s not only the range of relationships from work colleagues to lovers, or families to friends, but there’s insight into those who are socially different like Connor, with the responses from loyalty to betrayal, protection to exploitation that such individuals inspire in others. Concepts such as trust and belief, true friendship and grief, loss and belonging all meld into the most captivating narrative. There were several moments when Mike Gayle brought a tear to my eye and I ended the book feeling I had read something very special.

Through this lovely narrative Mike Gayle shows us, quite beautifully, that we all need to live on our own metaphorical Hope Street in order to thrive. I loved this story and cannot recommend it highly enough. 

About Mike Gayle

 

Mike Gayle was born and raised in Birmingham. After graduating from Salford University with a degree in Sociology, he moved to London to pursue a career in journalism and worked as a features editor and agony uncle. He has written for a variety of publications including The Sunday Times, the Guardian and Cosmopolitan. Mike became a full-time novelist in 1997 following the publication of his Sunday Times top ten bestseller My Legendary Girlfriend, which was hailed by the Independent as ‘full of belly laughs and painfully acute observations’, and by The Times as ‘a funny, frank account of a hopeless romantic’. Since then he has written sixteen novels, including The Man I Think I Know, selected as a World Book Night title, and Half A World Away, selected for the Richard and Judy Book Club. His books have been translated into more than thirty languages. In 2021, Mike was the recipient of the Outstanding Achievement Award from the Romantic Novelists’ Association. 

For more information, find Mike on Instagram or Facebook, visit his website or follow him on Twitter/X @mikegayle.

Once again I’m wishing I could read every book I’m offered or that drops into my post box as I love the sound of this latest one from John Ironmonger. I think once you’ve seen what John told me when we stayed in together, you’ll realise why!

Let’s find out more:

Staying in with John Ironmonger

Welcome to Linda’s Book Bag John. Thank you so much for agreeing to stay in with me.

Thank you so much for having me. And congratulations on a remarkable book blog. I’m a big fan.

That’s very kind of you. Tell me, which of your books have you brought along to share this evening and why have you chosen it? 

So I’ve brought The Wager and the Bear. It’s my new novel.

That’s a fabulous cover! What can we expect from an evening in with The Wager and the Bear?

Aha. Apart from a simply gorgeous cover by the amazing Ed Bettison, you should expect some drama, some romance, and a rollicking good yarn. And plenty of jeopardy too.

Sounds brilliant. Tell me more.

Two sworn enemies lost on a frozen ocean, marooned on an iceberg with a hungry polar bear. This isn’t your ordinary boy-meets-girl story. But it is a love story nonetheless, a story of loss, and resilience, and it’s a story I know readers will engage with.

Those sound universal themes. How is The Wager and the Bear being received by early readers?

‘This book is magical and gritty all at once. I love it,’ wrote Radio 4’s Anna Freeman. Essie Fox called it ‘a novel full of warmth, wit, and wisdom,’ and novelist Stephen May wrote, ‘The Wager and the Bear is a joy to read.’ 

You must be delighted by those comments! I understand it is a book that delves into the climate crisis. Can you tell us more about that?

Yes of course. This is a story that centres on a dangerous wager about our changing climate. Once you’ve read it, you may never look at the world in the same way again. That’s the pact you make with this book. It is the story of an eager young activist, Thomas Horsmith, and it takes us from a dangerous confrontation in a Cornish inn on the night of his twentieth birthday to a deadly outcome fifty years later.

The Wager and the Bear sounds both important and unsettling John.

It may shake your confidence in humanity’s willingness to fix our planet. I hope it does. It may make you anxious about the future we are building for our grandchildren. I hope it does this too. Shelley Harris, author of ‘Jubilee’ wrote, I was completely invested and utterly gripped. This is what good storytellers do in the face of the climate crisis: choreograph a dance between the vast and the tiny, between the global and the human.’ 

To be honest John, I think we may have left it too late to fix the planet!

The book is primarily set in Cornwall. Is this somewhere that is special for you?

My mother was a Cornish girl. She grew up in Mevagissey which is an ancient fishing port on the Atlantic coast. I grew up in Nairobi, but when I was a teenager, my parents moved back to Mevagissey to run the village shop and I had to reconcile my truculent teenage attitudes and my love of big cities and bright lights with this sleepy, strange seaside community. I hated it. And then suddenly I loved it. I wrote about it (or a village like it) in my novel Not Forgetting the Whale which became an international bestseller. It seemed like a good place to go back to for Thomas and his nemesis Monty. So, yes. Cornwall is always a special place for me. I close my eyes and I’m back there.

It’s such a beautiful part of the world.

What else have you brought along and why have you brought it?

I’ve brought along a snowman but I’m already beginning to wonder if this might have been a bad choice. Oh dear!

He does seem a little bit ‘damp’!

I can only apologise. He does seem to be dripping all over your carpet. I didn’t expect him to melt so fast. There is quite a lot of snow and ice in The Wager and the Bear so I thought if I brought Otto along it might be a light-hearted way to illustrate the rather obvious truth that snow and ice do melt rather quickly when it gets warm. I was hoping to use it to introduce the point that three quarters of a billion tonnes of ice melts from our planetary ice caps every single minute – equivalent to filling up Windermere three times a day. It was a silly idea and I’m so sorry.

I think you have made your point only too well!

Oops! There goes the carrot. I don’t suppose you have a mop. 

Never mind John. Shall we just take what’s left of him outside?

Excellent idea. And this could remind us that once the ice is gone, it’s gone. At least for a few million years.

Thank you John. That’s actually a really important point. Although next time you drop by, might I suggest that you bring a snow-globe? Thanks so much for staying in with me to chat all about The Wager and the Bear. I think it sounds wonderful.

Thank you Linda. Oh, and can I mention that The Wager and the Bear is out in paperback on 21st February?

You can indeed! In fact, I’ll just give Linda’s Book Bag readers a few more details:

The Wager and the Bear

When young idealist Tom publicly humiliates politician Monty in a Cornish pub, it sparks a simmering feud that cascades through their intertwined lives. The consequences of their argument, and the deadly wager they strike, will cascade down the decades. Years later, they find themselves a long way from St Piran onto a colossal iceberg drifting south away from Greenland, their only companion a starving polar bear.

A heart-stopping tale of anger, tragedy, and enduring love, cast against the long unfolding backdrop of climate catastrophe.

Published by Fly on the Wall on 21st February 2025, The Wager and the Bear is available for purchase here.

About John Ironmonger

John Ironmonger is a British novelist born in 1954, in Nairobi, Kenya. He studied Zoology at the University of Nottingham and later completed a PhD in environmental science at the University of Liverpool. Before becoming a full-time writer, he worked in healthcare computing and lectured at the University of Ilorin in Nigeria.

John’s debut novel, The Notable Brain of Maximilian Ponder, was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award in 2012. His other notable works include The Coincidence Authority and Not Forgetting the Whale (also known as The Whale at the End of the World), which became an international bestseller. His novels have been translated into multiple languages.

For further information, visit John’s website and follow him on Twitter/X @jwironmonger, or find John on Bluesky and Instagram.

I’m not quite sure how it happened, but today marks exactly ten years since I began blogging. What a decade it’s been and my goodness hasn’t the world changed for the worst since 2015? 

But throughout that decade books have been a constant presence and joy.  

Thank You

I cannot begin to thank all the authors, publicists and publishers who have trusted me with their books over the years. It really is an honour to receive books for review. I’m so grateful for every single one.

I’m not sure my postie is quite so grateful… the first full week of 2025 he brought me 22 books and has delivered 63 in January in total. Unfortunately, I’m unable to read ebooks as I have weird bendy sight that needs to flex pages – conflicting astigmatisms, -12.5 in my left eye with a tilted retinal disk, a tiny hole in the retina and macular pucker from an epiretinal membrane caused by PVD. Screens tend to be inflexible! Reading screens for more than a few pages gives me vertigo and nausea. It’s a great pity as I’d have room on my Kindle for more books than the house can accommodate. 

Sorry

I owe apologies to those who’ve sent books and are still waiting for me to get to them. I sometimes think blogging must be a road to Hell as it seems to be paved with good intentions. Sadly it transpires that my best intentions simply aren’t good enough in getting to review all the books I’ve promised to read. I think the longest anyone has waited so far is six years. Oops.

Regular Linda’s Book Bag visitors may have noticed fewer posts in recent months. On occasion, real life gets in the way. I used to read four or five books a week, but life has become somewhat challenging in the last 18 months and this has reduced considerably. If I say that in January alone this year we have already lost four friends and family, you’ll understand. I’ve also had to take on far fewer blog tours and guest slots as setting up posts still takes time. I know my fellow bloggers understand exactly what I mean!

Of course, there are times when blogging feels overwhelming. During Covid when I was receiving well over 200 emails a day with requests to feature on the blog I simply had to give up trying to respond. Even now I spend a lot of time not reading, but replying to emails – usually around 40-50 a day. I always try to share any books I’m sent on social media to say thank you and to bring them to the attention of other potential readers. As both my photography and typing skills are execrable, this takes quite a lot of time – about 20 minutes per book to take photographs, check publication dates, find publisher, publicist and author handles and then add the books to X, Threads, Instagram and Bluesky. The greatest number of unsolicited books I’ve received in one day is 31. 

 Opportunities

That aside, over the last ten years blogging has brought me so many opportunities. Not only have I received literally thousands of books, but I’ve made real life friends with authors, other bloggers and publicists. I’ve been involved in festivals like our local Deepings Literary Festival where I’ve interviewed and hosted many wonderful authors. I’ve been invited to more events than I can count, have been featured in magazines like Women’s Own and have even won awards for my blogging. 

One of the biggest joys has been being invited to review online for My Weekly (see here) and in print (and once or twice online here) for The People’s Friend. I’ve also been a judge in book awards for the Sunday Times – something that I’m doing again this year for the Bookbrunch Selfies and I have been lucky to take part in events like Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour where I was interviewed and Radio 4’s Book Club where I got the chance to ask questions of Rachel Joyce and Eimear McBride.

I’m approached a lot about accepting books for my magazine reviews. I thought I might clarify that process here. I can make suggestions for books to My Weekly, but the final say isn’t mine. I review 3 or 4 books on average a month for them. I have autonomy over The People’s Friend, but these books must be paperback releases and nothing too sweary, violent or upsetting. My deadline for The People’s Friend is two months before magazine publication, so I need to have received the book, read it and sent in my review very early. April’s choices are on their way to the magazine right now. I can only choose five books a month for The People’s Friend so I can’t accommodate all those I’m asked to consider. It feels such a privilege to be able to contribute to these two magazines. 

Stats

I rarely look at my blog stats but I think it’s interesting that my first (truly, truly dreadful) blog post back on 7th February 2015 has had six views in ten years and my review of my book of the year for 2024, Christ Whitaker’s All the Colours of the Dark, has had 18,849 views in 7 months as I write this post. 

So, it’s been an interesting and exciting decade of books and blogging. I might not have loved EVERY moment (after all, there are only so many fake Keanu Reeves, American generals and Elon Musks a person can block on social media), but I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

Giveaway

As a thank you to all those who’ve supported me over the last decade, I have a small giveaway, so please do enter. 

For your chance to win a £25 National Book Token or Bookshop.org voucher please click HERE.

Please note that I’ll need an email address to send the prize, but I promise not to share it with anyone else or to retain it after the end of the giveaway. 

Giveaway closes at UK 11.59PM on Thursday 13th February 2025.

PLEASE NOTE – should anyone ask you for personal details or money in relation to this, they are NOT me and should be ignored.

Oh dear. I have a huge apology to give to writer Steve Orme. Steve contacted me last October and I promised a feature on Linda’s Book Bag to celebrate Steve’s most recent novel, Storm Bodies. Steve kindly wrote a guest post for me and I promptly forgot all about it!

I do have a good excuse – I had just returned from a family funeral at the time and four deaths of family and friends in January alone this year have been very distracting, but I do feel awful. I’m hoping to make amends to Steve today by finally getting round to sharing his excellent piece on another fascinating aspect of his writing – the irony being it has distraction at its heart too!

First though, let’s find out more about Steve’s thrillers:

Storm Deaths

A reporter is murdered, a television weather presenter inexplicably disappears. Are the cases linked? Detective Inspector Miles Davies has to find out.

His attempts are continually thwarted by his boss who seems intent on ensuring that Davies doesn’t discover the truth.

But why is Davies reluctant to investigate whether any members of a local basketball team are involved?

Davies knows he has to weather the storm and find answers – before more bodies are discovered.

Storm Deaths is available for purchase here.

Storm Bodies

A grisly discovery by binmen on their round. A woman leaves her place of work but fails to arrive home.

Is there a serial killer on the loose? Detective Inspector Miles Davies and his team need to find out.

But with the Chief Constable urging Davies to come up with a way to get bored youngsters off the streets and the media eager for headline news, time is running out.

Does a local basketball club hold the key? And how many more lives will be lost before Davies can make an arrest? The answers will leave you on the edge of your seat.

Storm Deaths is available for purchase here.

From Page to Stage

A Guest Post by Steve Orme

When I started to write my second crime novel Storm Bodies – a standalone thriller although it wraps up a couple of situations unresolved in its predecessor Storm Deaths – I couldn’t have envisaged how long it would take.

It would be about three years before book number two landed on the shelves. That was because an offer landed in my inbox that both staggered and excited me.

For more than a decade I’ve been trying to tell the story of a Victorian doctor, William Palmer, who was suspected of poisoning up to 14 people including his wife, mother-in-law and four of his children. I’d teamed up with a couple of colleagues I’d worked with in regional television to make a short taster programme about the man known as the Rugeley Poisoner because of where he came from in Staffordshire.

But getting a documentary commissioned can be more difficult than securing a publishing deal. We took the programme to the History channel who said it was crime. So we took it to the Crime channel who said it was history!

I’d been thinking for some time about writing a play but was struggling to come up with a suitable subject. Then I realised it was staring me in the face: a stage play about the Rugeley Poisoner.

I wrote the first draft of What’s Your Poison? and sent it to a friend of mine, John Goodrum, who runs a touring theatre company, Rumpus.

His verdict? “It’s okay but I can’t do anything with it. It would need too many actors. Rewrite it for three actors and I’ll have another look at it.”

What started off as a major production with eight actors sharing 20 roles between them had to take on another life.

The main consideration when writing a play nowadays is cost: it’s no good coming up with the most amazing play ever if a theatre or producer can’t afford to stage it.

So how could only three actors tell the story of William Palmer convincingly? I decided to have a couple discussing Palmer in the present day, one believing he was a serial killer, the other expressing the view that Palmer could have been a victim of a miscarriage of justice. Palmer would appear in flashbacks along with characters who were integral to the story.

I sent off the next draft and forgot about it while I continued to write Storm Bodies.

Then, in November 2022 I received an email out of the blue from John: he wanted to tour What’s Your Poison?

My elation and exhilaration were tempered by fear about how the play would look when it actually appeared on stage during its 14-date tour of England and Wales.

When I attended the first rehearsal, I was blown away. John Goodrum who directed the play decided to play Palmer himself. He cast two actors, Pavan Maru and Jodie Garnish, as the couple debating Palmer in the present. Pav also played John Parsons Cook, the man Palmer was convicted of murdering, while Jodie also took the role of Palmer’s wife Annie.

Right from the start all three bought into the play and got the characters spot-on. It was so much better than I’d imagined.

The play premièred at the Rose Theatre, Kidderminster. It went down amazingly well; it was one of the most exciting nights of my career.

Had I gone down the traditional route of writing a play and sending it to a theatre, I doubt whether it would have got into production, even  though I have a number of contacts in regional theatres.

What’s Your Poison? is now available for amateur as well as professional companies to produce. It has also led to the directors from a different theatre company contacting me about writing a play for them to stage in 2026.

The first one I’m offering them is a stage version of Storm Deaths. Theatre audiences love a crime story; take Peter James, for instance. Six of his books have been turned into stage shows and have grossed more than £17 million at the box office. So I’m endeavouring to introduce theatregoers to my main character, basketball-playing Detective Inspector Miles Davies.

Of course there are major differences between writing for the page and writing for the stage: apart from again reducing the number of characters, the basketball scenes have had to be changed because I don’t know any 6ft 10in actors!

If this new company doesn’t want to produce Storm Deaths, I should be able to bounce back with another idea we’re discussing.

There’s an old saying which states if you want to be a writer, you have to be a reader first. I obviously agree. And if you want to write for the theatre, you need to see as many plays as possible so you know what will work on stage and what won’t. I’ve got an advantage there: I’m the Midlands editor of the British Theatre Guide website, so I get to review all sorts of shows on my patch.

There’s little doubt that the main challenge facing writers today is getting their work out to a wide audience. I feel blessed that I’ve been able to write not only two novels which are available to the public but also a play which has been on a national tour. That’s driving me on each day to tell more stories no matter what the medium.

****

Thanks so much Steve and apologies once again for taking so long to share this. At least it only took three months and not three years!

About Steve Orme

Steve Orme is an award-winning journalist who has written for television, radio, newspapers, magazines and online websites.

He has written for national, international and local publications as well as becoming a valued member of the production teams for television and radio shows’ news and sports programmes. He has been writing about basketball for more than 35 years.

Steve is a fan of crime writing and has published Storm Deaths, and Storm Bodies in a series about basketball-playing police detective Miles Davies.

For further information about Steve, visit his website , follow Steve on Twitter/X @SteveOrmewriter and find him on Facebook and Instagram.

It’s just over a year since I was privileged to share an extract from Davis McCloskey’s Moscow X in a post you’ll find here. It’s my pleasure today to join the blog tour for David’s brand new book The Seventh Floor and, thanks to Rachel Nobilo, to be able to give away a copy of The Seventh Floor to a lucky UK reader.

Published by Swift Press on 30th January 2025, The Seventh Floor is available for purchase through the publisher links here where you’ll also be able to take a look at the opening of the book!

The Seventh Floor

ALL YOUR LIFE YOU’RE CIA.
THEN YOU’RE NOT.

A Russian arrives in Singapore with a secret to sell. When the Russian is killed and Sam Joseph, the CIA officer dispatched for the meet, goes missing, Artemis Procter is made a scapegoat and run out of the service. Traded back in a spy swap, Sam appears at Procter’s central Florida doorstep months later with an explosive secret: there is a Russian mole hidden deep within the upper reaches of CIA.

As Procter and Sam investigate, they arrive at a shortlist of suspects made up of both Procter’s closest friends and fiercest enemies. The hunt soon requires Procter to dredge up her own checkered past in service of CIA, placing her and Sam into the sights of a savvy Russian spymaster who will protect Moscow’s mole in Langley at all costs, even if it means wreaking bloody havoc across the United States.

Bouncing between the corridors of Langley and the Kremlin, the thrilling new novel by David McCloskey explores the nature of friendship in a faithless business, and what it means to love a place that does not love you back.

Giveaway

UK Only: A Hardback Copy of The Seventh Floor

For your chance to win a copy of The Seventh Floor by David McCloskey, click HERE.

UK Only and the giveaway closes at 11.59 PM UK time on Sunday 9th February 2025.

Please note that I will need a UK address to pass to the publisher for the randomly chosen winner’s prize, but will not retain any personal details once the prize has been sent.

About David McCloskey

David McCloskey is a former CIA analyst and consultant at McKinsey & Company. While at the CIA, he wrote regularly for the President’s Daily Brief, delivered classified testimony to Congressional oversight committees, and briefed senior White House officials, Ambassadors, military officials, and Arab royalty. He worked in CIA field stations across the Middle East. During his time at McKinsey, David advised national security, aerospace, and transportation clients on a range of strategic and operational issues. David holds an M.A. from the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies, where he specialized in energy policy and the Middle East. He lives in Texas with his wife and three children.

For further information about David, visit his website, follow him on Twitter/X @mccloskeybooks and find David on Instagram and Facebook.

There’s more with these other bloggers too:

My enormous thanks to Elizabeth Masters and Ana McLaughlin at Quercus for sending me a surprise copy of Life Hacks for a Little Alien by Alice Franklin. I’m delighted to share my review today.

Published by Riverrun on 13th February 2025, Life Hacks for a Little Alien is available for purchase through the links here.  

Life Hacks for a Little Alien

‘Climb up here, Little Alien. Sit next to me. I will tell you about life on this planet. I will tell you how it goes’

From her first words to her first day at school, Little Alien can’t help but get things wrong. She doesn’t understand the world the way others seem to, and the world doesn’t seem to understand her either. Her anxious mum and meticulous dad, while well-intentioned, are of little help.

But when Little Alien sees a documentary about the Voynich Manuscript – a mediaeval codex written in an unknown language and script – she begins to suspect that there are other people who feel just like her. Convinced that translating this manuscript will offer the answers she needs, she sets out on a journey that will show her a delicious taste of freedom.

So begins this charming, witty, and profoundly moving novel about the power of language, the wonder of libraries – and how to find a path that fits, when you yourself do not.

My Review of Life Hacks for a Little Alien

A neurodivergent child tries to make sense of the world. 

Life Hacks for a Little Alien is such a brilliant read. There are so many elements here that, despite being relatively brief, Life Hacks for a Little Alien would reward being read several times over. The presentation of language – its diachronic and synchronic development, its capacity for misinterpretation and confusion, and its key to understanding and our sense of who we are – is stunning. That might make the book sound dry or inaccessible, but not a bit of it. There are witty footnotes, definitions, and warmly humorous further reading suggestions that make this story zing with interest and engagement. I found myself laughing aloud throughout my reading. 

I loved the fact that Little Alien is gender ambiguous in appearance and is never referred to by a proper name other than the endearments from her parents. This means that the character feels relatable and universal. Whilst Little Alien is possibly far more neurodivergent than the majority of readers, how she thinks and feels is exactly how we’ve all thought and felt at some points in our lives. She could be any or all of us. This makes the story incredibly impactful and moving. The representation of authority from school teachers to the police, for example, is so deftly handled that the lack of understanding towards Little Alien feels terrifyingly realistic even as it is funny and entertaining.

I also loved Little Alien’s obsession with the Voynich Manuscript. I had never heard of it previously but was so convinced by Alice Franklin’s writing that I had to find out if it is real. It is! The inability to define and fully understand the manuscript echoes to perfection the manner in which society fails to have the key to neurodivergent individuals. It shows how children like Little Alien may have skills, intelligence and understanding encoded in their own personalities that others cannot appreciate.

With themes of intelligence, linguistics, integration, difference, the power of reading and, above all, the humane and sensitive exploration of who we are as individuals, I thought Life Hacks for a Little Alien was superb.

A love letter to language, to difference and to all those who’ve ever simply wondered about life. Life Hacks for a Little Alien is a witty, humorous and affecting story that deserves to be read far and wide. It provides the reader with understanding and a sense of belonging. It’s really quite wonderful.

About Alice Franklin

Alice Franklin lives and works in London. She has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia. Life Hacks for a Little Alien is her debut novel.

I’m delighted that my latest My Weekly magazine online review is of the cracking thriller Black Tag by Simon Mayo.

Published by Penguin imprint Bantam on 30th January 2025, Black Tag is available for purchase through the links here.

Black Tag

Your house is on fire. What do you save?
You have seconds to decide.
If everything is about to burn, what do you rescue first?

When the West End Gallery in London’s fashionable Coal Drops Yard is set alight, the fire service must use the list of paintings lodged with it – a grab list – to snatch the key pieces of art from the flames.

But something has been altered. It’s the wrong list.

Then the ashes reveal another tragedy: an unidentified dead body. Someone who shouldn’t have been in the gallery. Crusading journalist Famie Madden wants to know who it is and why they were there. Soon it becomes apparent that the ashes are hiding much more than they should be – and that this is much more than a casual act of arson…

Bestselling author and legendary broadcaster Simon Mayo has created a spellbinding contemporary thriller. He weaves a story ripped from today’s newspapers that will take Famie far from the pages of her website into a murderous family saga stretching back over centuries.

My Review of Black Tag

My full review of Black Tag can be found on the My Weekly website here.

However, here I can say that Black Tag is a fast paced thriller that is totally absorbing and entertaining. It’s multi-layered and filled with intrigue that had me gripped. I thought it was fresh, modern and, actually, quite brilliant.

Do visit My Weekly to read my full review here.

About Simon Mayo

Simon Mayo MBE is a writer and broadcaster. His previous books include the Sunday Times bestseller Knife Edge, Mad Blood Stirring, Blame and the Itch trilogy, filmed for TV by the ABC. He hosts Drivetime on Greatest Hits Radio and hosts the ‘The Take’ film-review podcast with Professor Mark Kermode.

I’m delighted to share details today of my latest My Weekly magazine online review which is of Beautiful Ugly by Alice Feeney.

Published by Pan Macmillan on 30th January 2025, Beautiful Ugly is available for purchase through the publisher links here.

Beautiful Ugly

Author Grady Green is having the worst best day of his life.

Grady calls his wife as she’s driving home to share some exciting news. He hears Abby slam on the brakes, get out of the car, then nothing. When he eventually finds her car by a cliff edge, the headlights are on, the driver door is open, her phone is still there . . . but his wife has disappeared.

A year later, Grady is still overcome with grief and desperate to know what happened to Abby. He can’t sleep, and he can’t write, so he travels to a tiny Scottish island to try to get his life back on track. Then he sees the impossible: a woman who looks exactly like his missing wife.

Wives think their husbands will change, but they don’t.
Husbands think their wives won’t change, but they do.

My Review of Beautiful Ugly

My full review of Beautiful Ugly can be found on the My Weekly website here.

However, here I can say that Beautiful Ugly is mind-blowingly fabulous, being twisty, creepy and totally compelling. Not to be missed!

Do visit My Weekly to read my full review here.

About Alice Feeney

Alice Feeney is a New York Times million-copy bestselling author of novels including His & Hers, Sometimes I Lie, Rock Paper Scissors and Daisy Darker. Her books have been translated into over thirty-five languages, and have been optioned for major screen adaptations, with His & Hers currently in production for Netflix, produced by Jessica Chastain, and starring Tessa Thompson and Jon Bernthal.

Alice was a BBC journalist for fifteen years. Her seventh novel, Beautiful Ugly, will be published around the world in January 2025.

For further information, visit Alice’s website or follow Alice on Instagram, Facebook, Bluesky and Twitter/X @alicewriterland.

There’s an irony to this blog post. 

When Victoria Purcell at Simon and Schuster kindly sent me a copy of A Second Act by Dr Matt Morgan I was completely intrigued. You see, my father-in-law suffered a cardiac arrest and was resuscitated, but was declared brain dead. He was in America on holiday at the time. My husband and I were told he’d be kept on life support for 24 hours but then we would need to give permission to turn the machines off. 

When we rang the hospital the next day, reluctantly prepared to give that permission, we were told he was sitting up in bed asking, ‘Linda. Steve. Yes. No.’ He was alive and actually not much worse than he had been prior to the cardiac arrest, living with the effects of two previous heart attacks and a disabling stroke. It appeared it was previous stroke damage that led to the ‘brain dead’ diagnosis. His response, once we’d managed to return him to the UK via air ambulance, was to continue to travel and to make the most of life.

All this meant I was really interested in reading A Second Act. 

And here’s the irony. I had hoped to post this review earlier, but four deaths of family and friends so far in 2025 have made life tricky…

A Second Act was published by Simon and Schuster on 16th January 2025 and is available for purchase through the publisher links here. 

A Second Act

I’ve worked as a doctor for over twenty years, caring for patients who are in the thick fog between life and death. I’ve met hundreds of people who have died, were resuscitated and lived. I’ve long thought that these are the people that we should be listening to, not influencers or business gurus. They know what really matters.

Dr Matt Morgan has met hundreds of people who’ve come back from the dead. Their hearts stopped, their bodies unresponsive, rescued from the brink of death by the modern intensive care techniques he specialises in.

People like Ed, who was walking through a park when there was a bang, a bright light and then nothing. Ed had been hit by a bolt of lightning – 300 million volts, enough to power a city for a day, coursed through his body, short-circuiting his heart. Ed was given life-saving CPR and he survived. He lives a little differently now, every day knowing the thin margins that separate life and death.

In A Second Act, Morgan introduces us to patients who’ve experienced hypothermia, overdoses, heart attacks and transplants to see how their lives have been transformed by the second chance they’ve been given. He shares the lessons they’ve learned, along with his own realisations about life and how to make the most of it. Life shouldn’t be wasted on the living.

My Review of A Second Act

An insight into, and provided by, those who have clinically died but have had a second chance at life. 

Written in a highly accessible style which hooks in the reader from Prologue to Epilogue, A Second Act is a fascinating book. There’s an intimacy as Dr Matt Morgan uses the first person to frame his case studies, but it’s so much more than that. There’s a real feeling that this is a man who has truly listened to those he’s spoken to about dying and being resuscitated. We learn about the author as well as about those whose stories he is relating.

A Second Act transcends any macabre interest in, or fear of, death so that it provides comfort and positivity as well as interest, making it hugely impactful. Indeed, I found so much here that I could take personally from the writing. Filled with sentences and comments that feel as if they have distilled philosophical thinking and advice into portable slogans, A Second Act entirely avoids truism and is a powerful reminder of appreciating who we are and what we have in our lives. It reminds us to look, to listen and to understand what is really important. At the same time Dr Matt Morgan doesn’t shy away from the challenges and difficulties some experience after their clinical deaths. This makes the book so realistic and important.

I’m not able to say too much about those who’ve experienced death here as it would spoil the discovery of their stories for other readers, but I wept for some and rejoiced for others. I loved every moment of their company and felt privileged to have met them vicariously through A Second Act.

A Second Act is a fascinating, moving and life affirming read that is also realistic and informative whilst managing to be both personal and universal. It’s a book about death that gives readers the permission to live life to the full. Wise, motivational and hugely important, it might even have you hosting your own funeral. I thought it was excellent and cannot recommend it highly enough.

About Dr Matt Morgan 

Image courtesy of Jake Morley

Dr Matt Morgan is a British intensive care doctor. His open letter addressed to patients during the 2020 COVID pandemic has been read by over half a million people worldwide and viewed by over two million times after featuring on the Channel 4 news. His articles have featured in the Guardian, the Telegraph, the Daily Mail, the Sunday Mirror and Huffington Post. A regular writer for the internationally acclaimed British Medical Journal, his article ‘A letter from the ICU’ is one of their most popular ever opinion article, read by over 130,000 people in 2020. His first book, Critical, has been translated into four languages. He lives in Cardiff with his family, enjoys long dog walks, photography, cold beer and even colder ice cream.

For further information follow Matt on Twitter/X @dr_mattmorgan and find him on Facebook, Instagram and Bluesky. 

It’s my absolute pleasure today to welcome debut author Catherine Airey to Linda’s Book Bag to celebrate her brand new novel which is out today. My huge thanks to Marie-Louise Patton and Laura Dermody at Penguin Random House for putting us in touch with one another.

Staying in with Catherine Airey

Welcome to Linda’s Book Bag Catherine and thank you for agreeing to stay in with me. Tell me, which of your books have you brought along to share this evening and why have you chosen it?

Hi Linda. I’ve brought along my first novel, Confessions.

I understand that Confessions is out today Catherine so happy publication day! I also hear that it is absolutely fantastic so congratulations. Tell me, what can we expect from an evening in with Confessions? 

There are multiple female perspectives in Confessions (and one male one). As the title suggests, these characters each have their secrets, things they are ashamed of, and Irish Catholicism is a thread throughout the novel. These characters’ stories brush up against real-world events and issues – from 9/11 to the legalisation of abortion in Ireland in 2018. So there’s lots of intrigue.

So would you call Confessions historical?

In some ways, it’s a historical novel, but with a focus on what it means to be young and not feel in control of your own story, which I’d argue is pretty universal.

I think you’re absolutely right – though I might add that getting older doesn’t always make one feel any more in control. 

What else have you brought along and why have you brought it? 

I’ve brought along a Twix bar, which appears a few times in the  novel, almost like an easter egg.

Anyone who brings chocolate is always welcome!

I’d also like to listen to the album ‘Mistaken Identity’ by Kim Carnes, which came out from 1981. The song ‘Bette Davis Eyes’ is featured in the book. It was also the song I listened to right after I’d finished the first draft of Confessions. I’ll also share the chorus lyrics to ‘Hit and Run’, which I love as a piece of poetry: 

         Love will tear and do you in

         Turn you inside out and when

         All you got is less than dim

         You know, you’re grabbing at straws

        And you’d do it again

What perfect accompaniments to both Confessions and publication day. Thanks so much for staying in with me to chat about the book Catherine. I’m thrilled to have a copy waiting for me on my TBR! You put the album on and I’ll give readers a few more details about Confessions:

Confessions

‘I was at a time in my life where I got to thinking more about people’s choices – how everything would be different if just the slightest decision changed…’

It is late September in 2001 and the walls of New York are papered over with photos of the missing. Cora Brady’s father is there, the poster she made taped to columns and bridges. Her mother died long ago and now, orphaned on the cusp of adulthood, Cora is adrift and alone. Soon, a letter will arrive with the offer of a new life: far out on the ragged edge of Ireland, in the town where her parents were young, an estranged aunt can provide a home and fulfil a long-forgotten promise. There the story of Cora’s family is hidden, and in her presence will begin to unspool…

An essential, immersive debut from an astonishing new voice, Confessions traces the arc of three generations of women as they experience in their own time the irresistible gravity of the past: its love and tragedy, its mystery and redemption, and, in all things intended and accidental, the beauty and terrible shade of the things we do.

Published today, 23rd January 2025, by Penguin imprint Viking, Confessions is available for purchase through the publisher links here.

About Catherine Airey

Catherine Airey grew up in England in a family of mixed English-Irish descent, and now lives in Bristol. Confessions is her first novel. Confessions was acquired in a twenty-four hour, six figure pre-empt in the UK and a hotly contested six-figure auction in the US.

For further information, follow Catherine on Twitter/X @catherineairey and find her on Instagram.