As if the looming deadline to pay off a balloon mortgage isn’t enough to worry about, the five partners who own the small town book store The Paper Pirate find themselves menaced by a stealthy crook who systematically searches first the shop, then each of their homes.
Because he takes nothing and barely leaves traces of his presence, the police can’t be of much help, and simply promise to keep an eye on Charlie Santorelli, Lavinia “Vinnie” Holcomb, Al Rockleigh, Felicia Cocolo and Lenora Stern.
Genre: Cosy Mystery
It’s a mystery to them but the reader knows that Rick Foster, a shady rare-books dealer and his sidekick Nina Bartov are on the hunt for a particular old volume that sits unnoticed on a shelf in The Paper Pirate’s used book section. It’s an obscure early work of the not-terribly-successful author Benjamin Conway, and it’s badly defaced—but a very wealthy man is willing to pay Rick a half a million dollars for it. Seems an ancestor of his eluded the henchmen of a nineteenth-century dictator by escaping to New York, and eventually took refuge in the northeastern Pennsylvania countryside. Before he was captured and killed, he’d scribbled as much evidence of the tyrant’s sins as he could fit into the blank spaces of a copy of The Stargazer at Dawn and hid it where he hoped his comrades would find it. They never did.
The five friends also are members of a writers’ group, and each of them has a secret. One is penning an erotic novel on the sly, another hides a painful estrangement with an only child, and a deadly teenaged mistake causes a third to sabotage her every chance at happiness in the present. A partner who claims to be unpublished actually is a one-hit-wonder with a thirty-year-old best-selling novel followed by a crippling literary failure, and the last has a family with criminal connections—he’s spent half a lifetime avoiding them.
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A brilliant and poignant history of the friendship between two great war poets, Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, alongside a narrative investigation of the origins of PTSD and the literary response to World War I.
The outbreak of war across across Europe in 1914, ushered in a new and unprecedented era of modern warfare. Soldiers faced relentless machine-gun fire, incredible artillery power, flame-throwers, and gas attacks. Within the first four months of the First World War, the British Army recorded the nervous collapse of ten percent of its officers.
During the war, Craiglockhart Hospital treated around 1800 officers with shell-shock. And it was here that two of the world’s greatest war poets met — Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon. Despite differences in age, class, education, and interests, both were outsiders – soldiers unfit to fight, gay men in a homophobic country, and Britons unwilling to support the war.
But more than anything else, they shared a love of the English language and poetry. As their friendship evolved over their months as patients at Craiglockhart, each encouraged the other in their work, in their personal reckonings with the morality of war, as well as in their treatment. The friendship acted as doctor, nursing them to both health and creative achievement.
Drawing on rich source materials, as well as Glass’s own deep understanding of trauma and war, Soldiers Don’t Go Mad tells for the first time the story of the soldiers and doctors who struggled with the effects of industrial warfare on the human psyche. Writing beyond the battlefields, to the psychiatric couch of Craiglockhart but also the literary salons, halls of power, and country houses, Glass charts the experiences of Owen and Sassoon, and of their fellow soldier-poets, alongside the greater literary response to modern warfare.
Written in the midst of the pandemic, when Charles Glass was hospitalised with Covid-19, Soldier’s Don’t Go Mad provided his own literary solace. Gripping, thorough and informative, Soldier’s Don’t Go Mad is this winter’s essential read.
Extract
And it’s been proved that soldiers don’t go mad
Unless they lose control of ugly thoughts
That drive them out to jabber among the trees.
—Siegfried Sassoon,
“Repression of War Experience,” 1917
“Many of the broken men recorded their experiences in diaries, letters, illustrations, and poems. Two young officers treated for shell shock, Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, rank among the finest poets of the war. Yet much of their verse would not have been written but for their psychotherapy. Chance brought the two poets together, and chance assigned each to a psychiatrist suited to his particular needs.
“These analysts acted as midwives to their works by interpreting their nightmares, clarifying their thoughts, and encouraging them in their creations. Owen, who in another context might have been left to languish in trauma, benefited from intensive therapy under Dr. Arthur Brock. Brock’s interest in science, sociology, folklore, Greek mythology, and nature studies accorded with Owen’s. It was Brock who expanded Owen’s horizons and gave him the self-confidence to tackle sundry outside tasks and restore his mental balance. Sassoon, in contrast, enjoyed intellectual engagement with his psychiatrist, Dr. William Halse Rivers, who did not trouble him with the outside activities that Brock imposed on Owen. Had Rivers treated Owen and Brock been responsible for Sassoon, this would have been a different story. Had both young officers been sent to different hospitals, they would not have met, and the poems they wrote would have been vastly different from the masterpieces the world knows.”
About the Author
Charles Glass is an American-British author, journalist, broadcaster and publisher. He was ABC News chief Middle East correspondent from 1983 to 1993, and has worked as a correspondent for Newsweek and The Observer. He is the author of Americans in Paris, Tribes with Flags, and The Northern Front: An Iraq War Diary, among other books.
+ abuse, childhood, China, family, fiction, forgiveness, grief, love, marriage, motherhood, obsession, review, secrets
The Leftover Woman by Jean Kwok
An evocative family drama and a riveting mystery about the ferocious pull of motherhood for two very different women–from the New York Times bestselling author of Searching for Sylvie Lee and Girl in Translation.
Jasmine Yang arrives in New York City from her rural Chinese village without money or family support, fleeing a controlling husband, on a desperate search for the daughter who was taken from her at birth–another female casualty of China’s controversial One Child Policy. But with her husband on her trail, the clock is ticking, and she’s forced to make increasingly desperate decisions if she ever hopes to be reunited with her daughter.
Meanwhile, publishing executive Rebecca Whitney seems to have it all: a prestigious family name and the wealth that comes with it, a high-powered career, a beautiful home, a handsome husband, and an adopted Chinese daughter she adores. She’s even hired a Chinese nanny to help her balance the demands of being a working wife and mother. But when an industry scandal threatens to jeopardize not only Rebecca’s job but her marriage, this perfect world begins to crumble and her role in her own family is called into question.
The Leftover Woman finds these two unforgettable women on a shocking collision course. Twisting and suspenseful and surprisingly poignant, it’s a profound exploration of identity and belonging, motherhood and family. It is a story of two women in a divided city–separated by severe economic and cultural differences yet bound by a deep emotional connection to a child.
My Review
What is a leftover woman?
“in China,” says Jasmine,”I’d seen posters warning girls of the danger of becoming leftover women, women that no one wanted. Leftover like scraps on a table, uneaten food, both a sacrilege and wasteful…. I was a leftover woman, I realised. After everyone else had carved away what they wanted to see in me and taken what they desired, I was all that was left.”
But the root of this story is the one-child policy in China. For many families if the first born was a baby girl, she was given away at birth or even left abandoned to die. They could then try again for a boy, a son to pass on the family name, run the business and look after his parents in their old age. This is very hard for us in the west to comprehend. In fact the whole book is out of my field of reference, not just Jasmine, but also Rebecca.
At 14 years old, Jasmine’s parents sold her to Wen, an ‘older’ man (in his mid to late twenties), who wants a wife to bear him a son. They are not legally married, as Jasmine is under age. I cannot imagine selling my child at 14. Jasmine has a baby a few years later – a girl – but she dies almost immediately after birth. We know though, that she didn’t die, she was taken to an orphanage and ‘sold’ to an American couple – Brandon and Rebecca. Brandon, who lived in China for many years and speaks fluent Chinese, is a university lecturer and a close friend of Wen, while Rebecca is an editor at the successful publishing house set up by her late father.
Jasmine finds out that her daughter Fiona (or Fifi), is still alive and living in the Beautiful Country as they call the USA. Her mission is to escape her abusive marriage and get her daughter back. Strangely though, she loves Wen, but then she only ever knew the love of her grandmother who has now died, and the friendship of a young man called Anthony, who Wen does not permit her to see. Wen also loves her, but it’s more of an obsession than love in its truest form.
We then alternate between Jasmine as the first person narrator (the English is perfect as the narrator though her actual English is fairly limited), and Rebecca, who dotes on six-year-old Fifi, but has to work and employs a Chinese nanny. The nanny teaches FiFi to speak Chinese and also introduces her to her own culture. Rebecca is jealous of their closeness. In spite of her success as an editor, Rebecca is suspicious and lacking in confidence. She has no understanding of what it must be like to be an immigrant in a country like America.
I liked both women, with some reservations. I sympathised totally with Jasmine, though I did question her behaviour at times. She is vulnerable, and an outsider in a country that is often racist and judgmental. Rebecca, on the other hand, is also vulnerable, though in her case she appears to have everything, but success and money are not always enough.
It’s an interesting book, beautifully written, which addresses many issues including identity and women’s place in society, whether they are Chinese (or any other nationality) immigrants or white, wealthy middle class. The chapters set in the strip club are horrifying to me, or maybe I’m being naive. The women can earn a fortune, but it’s what they have to do for the money. Are they demeaning themselves or are they empowered while the men are being taken for mugs? I really don’t know the answer.
Many thanks to NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
About the Author
Jean Kwok is the award-winning, New York Times and international bestselling author of The Leftover Woman, Girl in Translation, Mambo in Chinatown, and Searching for Sylvie Lee, which was a Read with Jenna Today Show Pick. Her work has been published in twenty countries and is taught in schools across the world.
She has been selected for numerous honors, including the American Library Association Alex Award, a Goodreads Choice Awards Semi-Finalist for Mystery & Thriller, the Chinese American Librarians Association Best Book Award, an Orange New Writers title, and the Sunday Times Short Story Award international shortlist. She was one of twelve authors asked by the Agatha Christie estate to write an original, authorized Miss Marple story for the collection Marple: Twelve New Mysteries.
She immigrated from Hong Kong to Brooklyn when she was five and worked in a Chinatown clothing factory for much of her childhood. She received her bachelor’s degree from Harvard University and earned an MFA from Columbia University. She divides her time between the Netherlands and New York City.
Learn more about Jean here:
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A consummate warrior and brilliant strategist, Pino is a young Native American woman who must fight against fierce invaders to save her tribe — and spirit — from annihilation in precolonial southern New England.
The strange tale of sisterhood begins on the stormy spring morning her tribe faces imminent attack by a contingent of the mighty Pagassett Nation, infamous for destroying small tribes in its quest for land and power. Pino knows this is the moment she’s been waiting for, a chance to save her people and maybe —maybe — redeem herself for failing to rescue her beloved sister, murdered ten summers ago.
Aided by her best warrior and forbidden love, Tow, and key tribal leaders who witness Pino’s gift for camouflage, she clandestinely influences strategy in the short, but wildly intense conflict. She soon discovers her real opposition is Meesha, a beautiful near-slave taken in by the invading tribe when just a girl. By learning how the other operates, the women form an intimate, almost magical sisterhood in their internal fight to free their inner demons.
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Calling All Young Explorers!
Discover over 200 pages filled with diverse challenges for ages 6-12+. Dive into logic puzzles, uncover hidden pictures, navigate intricate mazes, and test your wits with word and number games. Some puzzles? Easy peasy lemon squeezy. Others? As sneaky and tricky as ninja cats in the dark. And for an added touch of fun: every puzzle you solve earns you cupcake points. Keep track and colour in your chart with each point you collect. With beautiful illustrations and vibrant colours on every page, this book is both educational and entertaining. Unlock adventures and learning with Tot Fun!
For Ages: 6-12+
Paperback: 204 Pages
Dimensions: 8.5 x 11 inches
Enchanting Illustrations: Beautiful, whimsical artwork on every page
Vibrant Colors: Delightful shades to spark creativity and fun
Educational & Entertaining: Enhances problem-solving and critical thinking skills
Diverse Challenges: Varied puzzles, including logic, picture, word, number puzzles, and mazes, to enhance multiple skill sets.
About the Author
Tot Fun, an imprint of Anna Conrad, LLC, specializes in creating educational and entertaining puzzle books for children aged 6-12+. Committed to delivering high-quality content, our books bolster problem-solving and critical thinking skills. With the expertise of our extraordinary team of artists, we bring to life the most vibrant colours and enchanting illustrations, ensuring both creative and educational play. Every puzzle and maze is designed to guide young explorers on a journey of discovery, cultivating their curiosity and enhancing their abilities with every challenge.
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Powerful and lyrical essays from a new and noteworthy poet and fiction writer. Morgan Christie’s new book explores current social themes of race, gender inequity, socioeconomic disparities.
How do experiences define us when viewed through a Boolean Logic lens, where sums do not always equal their parts?
These essays intertwine sport, family, and community and how identities are shaped through lineage and the lessons we take from them.
The following is an extract from Boolean Logic
Sewing Dresses
“My grandmother’s hands are steadier than mine, guiding the seams of the cloth the way I used to guide my bounce passes. She starts with the shoulder seams, their connection and even keel are the perfect benchmark for the rest of the dress’s alignment. When she borders the hem, her fingers run next to the beating needle, the presser foot as firm as her own against the pedal I cannot see. She told me to try sewing the zipper, it was easy, a straight shot. My hands run faster than my wind sprints, guiding the thread through the garment and twisting it together like the bungled legs of a defender that didn’t know they weren’t supposed to cross their feet on a side shuffle.
“She touches my shoulder as if to tell me to slow down, but I cannot undo the knot. Its resiliency and attachment to the pattern is unnerving but familiar, something as unmoving as a pick set right or a zone moving in unison.”
About the Author
Morgan Christie’s work has appeared in Room, Hawai’i Review, Sport Literate, and elsewhere. She is the author of four poetry chapbooks and her full-length short story manuscript ‘These Bodies’ (Tolsun Books, 2020) was nominated for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in fiction. Her poetry chapbook ‘when they come’ was released by Black Sunflowers Press (2021) and was featured in the Forward Arts Foundation’s National Poetry Day exhibit. She is the 2022 Arc Poetry Poem of the Year Winner and her collection ‘People Without Wings’ is the winner of the 2022 Digging Chapbook Series Prize (Digging Press, 2023). Her essay collection, ‘Boolean Logic’ is the winner of the Howling Bird Book Prize (2023) and her novella ‘Liddle Deaths’ (Stillhouse Press) is due out in 2024.
Author’s Website: www.morganchristiewrites.com
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Debby Morris, mother of two, goes to a Christmas party at historic Hollyhock Manor in Marlow, and never comes home.
A MISSING MOTHER.
Her phone, handbag and Santa’s elf hat are found in a park near the River Thames. The police issue a nationwide search, but Debby is nowhere to be found.
Three weeks later, Debby’s body, still in her elf costume, is discovered five miles downstream from where she disappeared.
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A DETECTIVE ON THE BRINK.
Detective Rob Miller is pulled from compassionate leave and put in charge. He’s still reeling from his last botched case, and he knows all eyes are on him — waiting to see if he’ll crack.
Meanwhile, another body is found with their throat slashed . . . and a link is discovered between the two cases that changes everything.
A RACE AGAINST TIME TO STOP A KILLER.
Rob and his team will need to pull out all the stops to catch a twisted killer before anyone else dies.
My Review
I haven’t read all of the books in the series, but I read The Soho Killer (Rob Miller #6), so the references to the botched case and Jo’s life-threatening injury made sense.
Following the disastrous outcome of the previous case, Detective Rob Miller was put on compassionate leave, while his team was suspended until a decision was made regarding their future. But when mother-of-two Debby Morris goes missing and her body is washed up in the River Thames three weeks later, Miller is pulled back from leave to take charge of the case.
He is ably assisted by his old team, plus PC Trent, a young constable from Marlow, who was first on the scene when the body was discovered, and also has a lot of local knowledge of the area, which Miller does not. Trent also knows (even if it’s just gossip) about the local ‘celebrities’ like Dame Constance Blanchard and dodgy arms dealer Roman Petrovic.
Not long after, a second body is discovered, this time with their throat slashed, and it appears there could be a connection between the two killings. But why would anyone kill Debby? What possible motive could they have?
This was a very fast-paced story, no messing about. I love that this book is so to the point, without any ‘padding’ that seems to be so common nowadays. You are not shouting ‘get on with it’ at the author, because she does. And it’s more exciting because of it.
Many thanks to Biba for inviting me to be on the blog tour.
About the Author.
Biba Pearce is a British crime writer and author of the DCI Rob Miller series. Biba grew up in post-apartheid Southern Africa. As a child, she lived on the wild eastern coast and explored the sub-tropical forests and surfed in shark-infested waters. Now a full-time writer with more than twenty-five novels under her belt, Biba lives in leafy Surrey and when she isn’t writing, can be found walking through the countryside or kayaking on the river Thames.
Step into the ring with life’s challenges and come out a champion.
Drawing on an impressive network of mentors and gurus from around the world, Deborah Charnes has distilled the life lessons they taught her into a collection you won’t want to miss. Some of her teachers are real-life swamis dressed in orange robes. Others don lab coats, army fatigues or boxing gloves. All radiate an inner wisdom that echoes the union of mind, body and spirit.
As a wellness coach, Deborah Charnes has selected tips from their powerful and transformative teachings with her students and clients in mind, those who are seeking ways to boost their flagging mental, physical and spiritual resources. And now they are available to you too in this practical and adaptable guide.
With easy life hacks for improving your overall health and well-being that take as little as ten minutes a day, From the Boxing Ring to the Ashram empowers you to rise above your struggles and conquer your challenges.
This holistic approach to self-improvement is the ultimate guide to finding balance, peace and purpose. So don’t miss out on this unique opportunity to learn from some of the most experienced and insightful teachers of our time.
Genre: Self-Help, Spirituality, Alternative Healing
Publisher: Emerald Lake Books
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My Picnic Basket is the third story in the Birdsall family series following on from ‘What’s In My Fridge’ and ‘In My Toaster.’
The Birdsall family are enjoying some quality time together with fun days out to the seaside and more.
But when they return home from a picnic, they receive an unexpected visit from Sam the Titfur, asking Terry and Tracey for their urgent help.
They are needed to stop the Grayling.
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Sam, with his trusted Needed Bag, explains that they must get to the Memory Tree before the Grayling does or there will be grave consequences.
In this new adventure of a race against time, Terry and Tracey meet Wimple the Wizard again, walk on the backs of Skylings to cross a Canyon, dodge bouncing heads and watch a battle between two armies who fight every Saturday over who has the prettiest flower!
My Review
My Picnic Basket is the third book in the trilogy featuring the Birdsall family – mum, dad, Terry and Tracey. In the first book Terry got pulled through the fridge into a magical land. Then the same thing happened to Tracey, only this time she travelled through the toaster. Must have been one of those that toasts really thick bread.
Terry had been badly bullied and Tracey was unhappy because her dad was stuck in New Zealand for ten months during Covid, but now he is finally home. Everyone is so pleased.
So having taken the family on a trip down memory lane through his childhood haunts, Mr Birdsall plans a picnic in one of the places he used to visit. They decide to use the wicker picnic basket that has been stored in the loft for over two years. Onced it’s all cleaned and loaded, they pop it in the boot of the car and off they go.
At this point I will just mention that the description of Scarborough brought back many happy pre-Covid memories. And I also love halloumi cheese.
But let’s get back to the story. Having eaten their picnic and put all the cutlery and crockery back in the basket, Terry and Tracey are sure there is something or someone hidden in the basket. But is there really?
When they get home, it turns out that there was someone in the basket after all. It’s Sam the Titfur, with his trusted Needed Bag! He explains that they must all go to the Memory Tree and stop the Grayling getting there first. And so another madcap adventure ensues.
Kids will love this story. It’s a race against time with lots of crazy characters and impossible rides. I think it may be the last though for Terry and Tracey.
Many thanks to @ZooloosBT for inviting me to be part of this blog tour.
About the Author
“I was born in Leeds, Yorkshire, England in 1960 to a single parent family. I am the youngest of five siblings – four boys and a girl. I was brought up on a council estate and my family had very little, just like many other families on the estate at the time. I attended two schools as I grew up Bentley Lane Infants/Junior School and then onto Stainbeck High School. For me school was always hard, mainly because of my absenteeism. I wasn’t ill, it was just my mum didn’t send me (empty nest syndrome). Looking back at my school years there is a good chance I spent more times at home, than I did in school.
“I officially left school in 1976 and my first full time job was making special mirrors, the ones you see in pubs. I didn’t last long there before I got bored. I had a number of other jobs after that, but I didn’t stay long in any of them. One job I stayed a full day before not going back, but my record for the shortest stay was 4 hours, I walked away from this job after the hourly rate was cut from 90p an hour, down to 70p an hour.
“The following year I was forced to take a job, back at Stainbeck High School repairing school desks. While here I met my wife, Beverley. We are still together and have two wonderful grown- up children and three grandchildren. I worked for Leeds City Council, in the Housing section for 22 years, before retirement. Since retiring I have the time to carry out one of my first loves, writing stories.”
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In Highly Flawed Individual, thirty-year-old eternal bachelor Archie Flynn has it all: a successful finance career, a beautiful terrace home in Sydney’s highly sought-after Rocks district, and a thriving sex life that James Bond would envy. In other words, life is perfect.
Until, the stunning Jezebel Ekas, an American professional mixed martial arts fighter, enters his life. Jezebel is a woman far superior to Archie in so many ways. When their paths cross, the life Archie thought so perfect is quickly turned upside down. Smart, funny, strong-willed, this is the woman he wants to settle down with, but she won’t fall easily for his usual lines and his promiscuous past is about to catch up with him.
Desperate to date Jezebel but unwilling to let her know that he just caught a rare and exotic, un-diagnosed sexually transmitted infection, Archie must go against his every instinct. Rather than seducing her he must do everything he can to not sleep with Jezebel, including lying to her.
Tim Roberts’ debut novel takes a hard and honest look at the “modern” man who might not be quite as cool and sexy as he thinks. With a knowing nod and a self-deprecating humour that draws you in, Roberts details Archie and Jezebel’s whirlwind, almost-but-not-quite, romance.
Genre: Romance | Humour
About the Author
Tim Roberts is the author of Goodbye Office, Hello World! and the forthcoming graphic novel Killer Sexbot. When he is not writing, Tim loves traveling, exploring new places, or seeking out his next destination. This is his first novel.
Author’s Website: https://timroberts.au
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Nobel Prize-winning scientist Sarah Collier has started to show the same tell-tale signs of the Alzheimer’s disease as her father: memory loss, even blackouts.
So she is reluctant to accept the invitation to be the guest of honour at a prestigious biotech conference – until her husband Daniel, also a neuroscientist, persuades her that the publicity storm will be worth it. The technology being unveiled at this conference could revolutionise medicine forever. More than that, it could save Sarah’s life.
In Geneva, the couple are feted as stars – at least, Sarah is. But behind the five-star luxury, investors are circling, controversial blogger Terri Landau is all over the story, and Sarah’s symptoms are getting worse. As events begin to spiral out of control, Sarah can’t be sure who to trust – including herself.
My Review
First of all let me just say that the narration was brilliant. Richard Armitage voices Daniel and everything else, while Nicola Walker voices Sarah. It works really well, but then these two are amongst the finest actors of their generation.
I listened to it on Audible. It’s not like someone is simply reading a book, however good they are. This was a performance. And how exciting it was! It was a bit slow to start with, I have to admit, as we had to get to know the characters, but I listened to the last three and a half hours on the plane back from Gran Canaria. I’m glad it got to the end before we landed. I was on the edge of my seat – literally and not just because of the turbulence.
Gosh, what a plot. Sarah has just been diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s. Her father has dementia, and has recently had to move into a care home. Sarah has frighteningly similar symptoms. She suffers memory loss, disorientation, dizziness and sickness. A brain scan has confirmed the worst. She takes tablets to control the issues.
Having won the Nobel prize for her contribution to controlling ebola in Africa, she ‘retires’ to take care of her and Daniel’s daughter Maddie. Daniel is a complex character, at times fully supportive of his brilliant wife, but at times he shows signs of jealousy. She is a celebrity in the world of neuroscience, whereas he is just a humble professor.
Sarah has been asked to endorse Neurocell, a discovery that could revolutionise medicine forever. It’s been developed at the Schiller Institute in Geneva. All top secret – there are ethical implications and huge sums of money involved. Sarah hates the limelight, and now with her diagnosis, she knows she couldn’t cope. But Daniel pushes and pushes until she agrees to go.
What follows is a terrifying journey to hell and back, with Sarah unable to trust anyone, not even herself. And while she is supposedly the ‘victim’ with a terminal diagnosis, she is also strong and inspirational. And the scenes with her father will bring a tear to your eye, even if you have no experience of dementia.
A wonderful debut, I hope we hear a lot more from Richard as an author, as well as an actor.
About the Author
British actor and audio-book narrator.
Richard Armitage was born in 1971, the second son of Margaret, a secretary, and John, an engineer. He grew up in a village outside the city. Some of his favourite childhood stories included The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
At the age of fourteen he transferred from a local state middle school, Brockington College, to Pattison’s Dancing Academy in Coventry (now Pattison College), an independent boarding school specialising in Performing Arts. The school arranged regular theatre visits, and it was here, watching a performance at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, that he discovered an interest in acting: “I remember having that moment of finally understanding what was going on. They were having such a good time and the audience was having such a good time and I just thought that was where I wanted to be. I remember thinking they were doing something they loved and they were getting paid for it”.
Pattison’s introduced him to the demands and obligations of an acting career: “It… instilled me with a discipline that has stood me in good stead – never to be late, to know your lines and to be professional.” It gave its pupils opportunities to appear in local amateur and professional productions, and by the time Richard left school at 17, he had already appeared in Showboat, Half a Sixpence, as Bacchus in Orpheus and the Underworld and in The Hobbit at the Alexandra Theatre, Birmingham.
After leaving school, Richard joined The Second Generation, a physical theatre group, working for eight weeks in a show called Allow London at the Nachtcircus in Budapest. Here he “threw hoola hoops to a skateboarding Russian and held ladders for a juggling act…did guide roping for the trapeze, and…a weird kind of UV glow-in-the-dark mime illusion thing”. Though he later described “sleeping next to the elephants” as “a low point in show business”, it was sufficient to gain him his Equity card, a prerequisite at the time for entry to the profession.
Returning to the UK, he embarked on a career in musical theatre, working as assistant choreographer to Kenn Oldfield and appearing in the West End and on tour in a series of musicals including 42nd Street, My One and Only, Nine, Mr Wonderful, Annie Get your Gun and Cats.
By 1995, inspired in part by seeing Adrian Noble’s classic 1994 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Stratford, he was laying the foundations of an acting career, appearing at the Actors’ Centre’s Tristram Bates Theatre as Macliesh in Willis Hall’s The Long and the Short and the Tall, and at the Old School Manchester as Henry in Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing, Flan in John Guare’s Six Degrees of Separation and Biff in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. He was also studying for a Society of British Fight Directors qualification.
This was the year that Richard enrolled on a three-year Acting course at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA). In his final year at LAMDA, an advert on the college notice board for film extras led to his first experience of acting in a feature film: a one-line role in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. It was a humble, though interesting, entry into film: “I felt very nervous saying my line – I had practised it for three weeks… I actually ended up as a computer graphic in the film, I think”. Despite being unidentifiable on screen, he found himself besieged by Star Wars fans when touring Japan with the RSC two years later.
Graduating in the summer of 1998, he immediately joined the cast of Hamlet at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, having already appeared at the Edinburgh Festival.
And the rest, as they say, is history.
In a fusion of past and present, Catherine’s world spirals into chaos when a mysterious childhood memory unveils haunting recollections of a life she never lived.
The mesmerizing saga of Merwynn, a defiant 9th-century Saxon beckons from deep within her psyche. Every revelation from Merwynn’s era sends ripples through Catherine’s existence. Connected across millennia, Catherine grapples with the weight of their entwined destinies, as she confronts stark parallels in their quests for love and liberation. With each layer of Merwynn’s history, Catherine’s own life frays, driving her to a precipice: will she succumb or muster the strength to redefine her destiny through understanding the truth about her past?
Genre: Women’s Fiction
Delve into a moving narrative that examines the essence of identity, the scars of generational trauma, and the transformative effects of empowerment. Catherine’s fervent pursuit of truth amidst illusion and reality stands as a compelling symbol of human resilience and the perpetual hope that links souls across the ages.
About the Author
In her debut novel, Mary Turner Thomson (international best-selling author of THE BIGAMIST and THE PSYCHOPATH) draws upon her personal experience of being victimised to tell an inspiring story about powerlessness, learning from the past and taking back control.
Author’s Website: www.maryturnerthomson.com
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