I’m excited to be kick of the blog tour for Black Water by Cormac O’Keeffe today.

Black Water will be published on the 19th of April 2018 in ebook and paperback but you can pre-order your copy here.

I have an exclusive extract to share with you but first here is a little bit about the book.

Book Blurb:

I killed the boy . . .

Jig loves football and his dog, hates school, misses his dead granda and knows to lie low when his ma’s blitzed on the vodka.

He’s just an ordinary boy on the brutal streets alongside Dublin’s Grand Canal. Streets that are ruled by Ghost and his crew. And now Ghost inked, vicious, unprincipled has a job for Jig.

A job that no one can afford to go wrong not the gangs, the police, the locals, and least of all not Jig.

Extract:

PROLOGUE

I’ve killed the boy.

Shay ground his teeth at the realisation.
The side of his head throbbed from the impact of the explosion and, with his nose split and swollen, he struggled to breathe as he ran.

Orange flames danced against a canvas of black. On the other side of the perimeter wall, he heard the canal waters hiss as crack- ling debris hailed down.

If the gang was inside the building they were blown to pieces, Jig with them.
A sheet of corrugated roofing slammed down in front of him, searing his shin. He winced, but forced himself on.
So, this is how it fucking ends: risking my life searching through rubble for bits of the boy. After everything I’ve sacrificed.

Somewhere behind, the detective shouted at him to come back. But, ahead, Shay thought he could make out screams. Distant sirens echoed along the warren of Dublin’s streets.
The remainder of the warehouse heaved and groaned. He was out of time.

Fuck it, I’ve nothing to lose.

He stumbled forward, his face bubbling with the heat. His ankle twisted over something loose on the ground, tipping him off balance. Spitting blood from his lips, he looked down and followed the forks of yellow light.
Something small was smouldering. It looked like a runner.

A child’s runner.

1:

Jig liked the word SNAP. The sound the wipers made when he
ripped them off the car. And when he wrote the letters on the page, his tongue curled against his lips.

He took the path in jumps, inches from the canal’s black waters. But when he saw the swans, he stopped. They were clustered here and there, asleep, their long necks curled into their backs, their heads buried under layers of thick white feathers. Like little soft icebergs, lit up by streaks of yellow from overhead lights and the silver haze of the moon.

He had slipped out of his gaff no bother. When the bottle fell from his ma’s bed onto the floor, and the snorting started, that was the green light. He had kept on his tracksuit and runners so he was ready to go. He remembered to put on his gloves before taking the wipers and the note out from under his Man U pillow.

The canal was still. A gust of wind wrapped around Jig’s face, carrying a waft of roasted sweetness from the brewery. He checked the time on his phone: 2 a.m.
He ran, the wipers in his gloved hands and the note in his pocket.
He had a job to do for Ghost.

Mary heard a noise at the front door, then footsteps running off,
light, like that of a child. She swung her arm to turn on the bedside
lamp and knocked something over. Easing herself out, she placed
the double picture frame back up, her eyes drawn towards the old photograph on the right. A fine big man, chest puffed out, a mop of black hair brushed to the side, eyes looking into the distance. It was her favourite of James.
She couldn’t help but glance at the photo next to it, taken years ago. Leo leaning forward, grabbing a friend’s head at his nine- teenth birthday party, beaming a wide and wet smile.
Frozen images melted in her mind. James, sitting at the front window, watching and waiting for Leo to come home. James, on his deathbed in hospital, refusing to let the cancer hollow him out without seeing his son one last time. And Leo, when he did visit that time and looked for ten thousand euro.
‘Da, I need it, Da. They have a bullet for me . . .’
But James was lost in a nightmare world of pain and sweeping tides of morphine. Mary had roared at Leo to get out. It was the last time she heard from him. But not the last time she heard from the lowlifes who wanted their ten thousand euro.

She put on her slippers and reached for the dressing gown. At the tiny landing, she turned on the light for the bottom of the stairs and peered down. There were long black rods or something inside the door.

Instinctively she went to grab the railing, but stopped, remembering the top fitting had come out completely from the crumbling wall. She pressed her two hands against the walls either side and stepped down.
The black things were wipers. Her heart jumped.

Oh God, they must be from the car.
As she neared, she could see a piece of paper on the ground. A voice inside told her not to, but she picked it up, her hands shaking. She dragged a short breath.

SNAP. TALK TO COPS AGAIN UR NEK WIL B NXT. Blood drained from her body. Her legs buckled.
As she fell, her head smacked against the edge of the hall table. The force of the blow twisted her head and shoulders around and
she went crashing onto her back.

The note sailed into the air.
Her eyes fixed wide open, blinked once, then twice.

Jig ran his hand through the reeds. They were swaying and rustling now. He tingled at the sensation. The wind had grown teeth.

Lampposts rattled as he sprinted. The water was flowing stronger, spilling over the locks onto the chambers below.
He wondered what Ghost would say about the job. He imag- ined bony fingers tossing his hair and Ghost saying, ‘Good job, little man.’
I’ll be in big time with Ghost now, I will.
A swan stirred. It unfurled its neck and shook its tail.

Jig knew from the brown feathers it was a young swan. That was what his granda had said. A cygnet, he’d told him, was what they were called. He thought he could see a sprout of white feathers. Jig stopped and stared for a moment.

Then he karate-kicked the air and ran.

2

The blows rained down. White fists and red-raw knuckles crunching on bone. Shay shuddered at the pummelling to his arms and hands, tossed at his moans for mercy.

Noise was dragging him away from his dream.

Bang. Bang . . . Yang. Yang.
Shay peeled back the sheets and flexed his wrists. They often throbbed with the memories.

The intrusion was the scream of an alarm from outside.

He eased himself out of bed and shook his head, the racket aggravating his tinnitus. He stood up, his feet arcing at the touch of the cold floorboards. He loosened his tight boxers and stepped silently to the window. Opening a blind, he tried to pierce the darkness, but he couldn’t determine the source of the siren.

He curled back into bed behind Lisa, warmed his feet and fixed on her hair. For a moment he expected to see the ripples of long blonde curls. He moved to push them out of his face, away from his nose, like he used to, a few years ago. When his vision focused, it revealed short straight brown hair and a pale thin neck. He remembered the day she arrived home from the salon. He knew why she did it, but never brought it up. Nor did she.
The scumbag grabbed her hair and licked her neck, the fucking animal.
That, and what Shay did afterwards, had landed them here. To this life.
The sense of being fucked over, of being trapped, of trying and failing to get his life – their life – back, scratched at his skull and
clawed at his stomach.
The walls and windows began to shudder. The Garda helicopter must be overhead, he thought.
Red lights flashed behind the blinds. He got up and looked out again; a fire tender was coming to a stop. Away to his right was the source of the noise: a car, now ablaze. Thick yellow flames curled into the night.
Ghost and his crew at work again, he thought.
He would see Ghost at the next match, as usual. The boys nearly shat their arses if he even looked at them, they held him in such awe.

I know what Ghost’s game is. Digging his nails into some of the boys. Like Jig.
He strained his neck to try and see the helicopter, it seemed that close. But then the vibrations subsided as it pulled away, towards the canal.

The noise from the car became more tortured, screeching one second, then receding. Two firemen pulled hoses, like long, bulbous snakes, and extinguished the flames with bursts of foam. Massive plumes of smoke puffed up.

Upright on the edge of the bed, he pulled at the skin under his eyes, then glanced down at the thin frame curled tight under the sheets.

He fretted over her reaction, once the sleeping tablet wore off.

‘You see that?’
The morning light pained Shay’s eyes as he blinked them open. Lisa had her back to him, hands pressed hard against her hips.

‘Yeah, a car went up on fire,’ he said, keeping his tone measured and slipping out of bed. ‘You were out for the count.’
He started at the sight of the smouldering shell, bare and black in the bright morning sunshine.
‘What a lovely thing to have on your doorstep,’ Lisa said, casting a look in his direction. ‘I bet you it will be there into next
week before those useless lumps in the council remove it.’
She scrunched up her nose at the smell of molten metal which
had infected the room. Shay knew she was being pulled down. His stomach tensed.
‘Brilliant,’ she said.
Shay watched three kids running from different directions to the car, whooping with delight. They circled the wreckage, kicking at it. Another boy, around six or so, emerged screaming, dragging a golf club behind him, the head of it scraping and slapping off the road. As he neared the car, he arced it up over his head and slammed it down on the bonnet, greeted by hoots.
Lisa recoiled at the noise, her face tightening.
‘Why car all burnt, Daddy?’ came a little voice from below. Charlie had crept past them. Molly followed. They put their
hands on the window sill and stood up on their tiptoes.

‘They’re bold boys,’ Molly scolded, pointing her finger at them,
‘they shouldn’t be doing that.’
Lisa turned her back on the window, and the kids. Shay saw the moistness in her eyes as she shuffled towards the door.

‘Listen, Lisa . . .’
Shay wanted to say something more, but couldn’t find the words. Lisa turned, her features tight against her pale skin.
‘What?’ she said.
Shay sensed the kids stiffen, looking up at them.
‘Well?’ she said. ‘What were you going to say? That we’ll be out of here soon?’
‘We will, Lisa. It can’t be much longer, won’t.’
‘Can’t or won’t? Which?’
Shay moved forward to hold her shoulder, to reassure her, but she shrugged him away. The kids jumped now at the banging outside. The hammering was getting more frantic.
‘You’ve been saying the same thing since we were dumped here,’ Lisa said. ‘A lot of our stuff is still in boxes. We’ve nothing up on the walls,’ she said, swinging her thin arms around. ‘We barely have any shelves. We’re half-living here.’
She paused. But he knew what was coming.
‘You said it’d be a year.’
‘I know,’ Shay replied, his stomach clamping. ‘But what can I
do? It’s not my fault.’
Her face strained again at the clang of metal on metal.
‘Isn’t it?’

About The Author:

Cormac O’Keeffe is the award-winning Security Correspondent for the Irish Examiner, where he has worked for nearly 20 years. His work has given him unique access to contacts both in the police and the community. Cormac has lived in gangland communities near the Grand Canal in Dublin for many years and his professional and personal lives have informed and fuelled his novel, giving it an intensity, authenticity and originality which can only come from personal experience. Cormac O’Keeffe runs a regular blog about his writing, is a respected book reviewer and appears frequently on national radio and television.

Follow The Blog Tour:

If you liked the sound of this book from the above extract do follow the blog tour and dse what these other fabulous bloggers thought!

Book Description:

FIND THE KILLER WHO LIKES TO PLAY DEAD
A bold, brilliant new crime thriller – perfect for fans of Tana French, Jane Casey and Gillian Flynn

TOO SOON TO SEE

Polished. Professional. Perfect. Dead. Respected scientist Dr Eleanor Costello is found hanged in her immaculate home: the scene the very picture of a suicide.

TOO LATE TO HIDE

DCS Frankie Sheehan is handed the case, and almost immediately spots foul play. Sheehan, a trained profiler, is seeking a murderer with a talent for death.

TOO CLOSE TO BREATHE

As Frankie strives to paint a picture of the killer, and their victim, she starts to sense they are part of a larger, darker canvas, on which the lines between the two blur.

Too Close To Breathe was published on the 5th April 2018 by River Run Books.  You can buy a copy here.

My Review:

I really enjoyed this fascinating, thrilling and unusual thriller.  I was drawn straight into the story from the intriguing prologue and continued to be gripped throughout.  The plot is finely paced with clues and revelations revealed at a perfect pace to keep a reader interested but not too fast that you feel you are in danger of missing anything.  The murders are unusual ones which I won’t say more about for fear of ruining the story, but I was surprised and I haven’t read a book where people had been murdered the same way before.

I had a bit of a love/ hate relationship with the main character, Frankie.  On one hand I felt a bit sorry for her and what she had gone through.  She was quite a strong women and obviously highly respected by her colleagues.  On the other she seemed unduly mean to her colleagues and seemed to let her prejudices cloud her judgement.  I felt quite frustrated with her at times and how she conducted the investigation.  Baz and Clancy were my favourite characters as they seemed very kind towards Frankie, even when I felt she didn’t deserve it, which was very touching.  The banter between Frankie and them was very amusing and led to some light relief from the murder case. I liked that all the police officers,  weren’t the stereotypical grizzly or seasoned police officers but instead seemed to care for each other and worked well as a team.

I always enjoy learning new things from books and I’d never heard of The Dark Web and the type of sites that are featured on it.  I was fascinated to learn more about this and lost quite a few hours researching it on line.  The author has definitely done her research as everything mentioned in the book seems to be true.

I must confess I was a little confused at the beginning as there is a few references to a case Frankie had worked on previously and I thought I might have missed a book in the series when I thought Too Close To Breathe was a debut.  I soon worked out that this wasn’t the case and that the previous case is mentioned as it is relevant to the story.  I only mention it here in case others are similarly confused, it is meant to be this way!

As mentioned above this is Olivia Kiernan’s debut novel and I am so excited to read more by her.  If you like thrilling and unusual crime thrillers that you can’t out down you’ll love this book.

Huge thanks to Anne Cater and River Run Books for my copy of this book and for inviting me onto the blog tour.

About The Author:

Book Description:

Pendle Fire was published on the 22nd March by Bloodhound books in ebook and paperback.  The ebook is currently only 99p and you can purchase a copy here.

Guest Post by Paul Southern:

Beginning writing a new book is like seeing the summit of Everest on a clear day and thinking you’ll be able to walk up there in a t-shirt. It’s a moment to be savoured. The rest of the climb may be full of dead-ends and false dawns, despairing plunges into abysses of uncertainty and crevices of doubt but, if you’re lucky, you’ll reach the summit some years later with your manuscript in hand. What is sure, however, is that the original idea you had on that clear day will have changed dramatically. When you look back down the mountainside at the route you’ve taken, you will realise how difficult and arduous was the journey, and how much you had to adapt it to keep it going. Writing a book is a slog, not a sprint.

The original idea for Pendle Fire came in 2008, when I was thinking of plots for a prospective TV series called Nightfall. Several episodes had been sketched out by a close friend of mine, the title of one being The Hobbledy Man. The plot of this episode wasn’t really fleshed out, but a line from the description always stayed with me: ‘The children on a local estate have a superstition about the Hobbledy Man who comes out of the shadows in the underpass: they believe the sighting of him is a precursor of the ending of the world.’ From that simple sentence, the seed of Pendle Fire was planted and over the years took root. The Hobbledy Man preyed on my mind and would not leave me.

The series was to be set in Lancashire (one episode was called ‘Lucifer Over Lancashire’ after The Fall’s song) and end up on Pendle Hill, where some great conflagration would take place. Pendle Hill is, of course, the home of the Pendle Witches. The witch trials of 1612 saw many innocent people lose their lives and set the established Church against the theology of witchcraft. King James I himself was sceptical of the evidence against them but it was his book on the subject, Daemonologie, which advocated their prosecution. I have always been interested in the twilight realm that exists between the possible and the impossible (see Killing Sound, 2014), and this historical basis added an extra layer of interest in the area and turned me towards the hill.
I like to know a place intimately before I write about it, so I took the first train up to Colne and went walking. I visited the Black Moss reservoirs and trudged through Aitken Wood and, all that day, a mist lay over the Pendle valley. The book started to take shape. Eerie locations appeared to my left and right – abandoned farmsteads, hillsides full of bracken and gorse, dark paths that led into stricken woods. This could easily be the birthplace of the Hobbledy Man. Belief in witchcraft may largely be dead, but it was easy to imagine what it must have been like at the time of the trials when old Demdike sold her soul to Tib. There is something wild and abandoned about the region still, something uncontained and dangerous. I now had a character and a location, I had historical links. I had atmosphere. What I needed now was a plot.

On the way back, I passed through the towns of Nelson and Burnley. They are typical of many in Lancashire, faded relics of a bygone age, old mill towns with nothing now to spin, with divided communities living cheek by jowl. In their own way, they seemed as abandoned and desolate as the hill.
When I returned to Manchester, the first thing I did was read about them. The local Burnley and Nelson newspapers were a mine of information. I wanted to get a feel for these places, hear what the local people said. What do the young people do? What happens at night? The answer appeared to be very little. Or, at least, very little which was spoken about.
In recent years, many northern towns have been plagued by grooming gangs. The national publicity given to cases in Rotherham and Rochdale has highlighted the issue. Sadly, these investigations are very much the tip of the iceberg. The polarisation of communities in northern towns has not helped community relations; nor has it allowed the authorities to effectively deal with the problems till it’s too late.
My first two books (The Craze and Brown Boys in Chocolate) were multi-racial crime thrillers that dealt with many issues in both the Muslim and white communities in Manchester. A novelist should never shy away from controversial subjects. If you find that you’re censoring yourself when you’re writing, then you’re doing what too many people have done in abuse cases. You’ve looked away and said nothing. I did the opposite. I started to talk to people on the ground and in authority.
Almost overnight, Pendle Fire had a contemporary political thread. Whereas, in the 17th century, the Devil’s work was seen in the practice of witchcraft and the exploitation of women, today it could be found in the practice of child abuse. The Devil was the master illusionist, blamed for tempting people to commit crimes. He knew the constitution of men and could take advantage of them. Conjury, lechery and magic were his calling cards. There was a casual offloading of guilt and responsibility which opened the door to the moral puritanism of the witchfinders. Today, that offloading has led to the suffering of too many vulnerable children, too much wringing of hands, and no solutions.

I had seen my Everest, or more aptly, Pendle Hill, now. It was not a clear day and it would have been impossible to get up there in a t-shirt, but the analogy still held true. It was the moment when I could see the way to the top and write the book. It was not till years later that I got it finished, of course, but in the end it didn’t let me down and I hope I didn’t let it down. I believe a good book should make you think at the same time it entertains. I hope you will be as changed when you read Pendle Fire as I was when I wrote it.

Thank you very much Paul for writing such a fascinating guest post.  

About The Author:

Book Description:

When Solomon’s sister is found drugged and in a coma after an online date, Solomon can’t believe this was just a terrible accident. Determined to find out what happened to his sister, and with the police unwilling to help, Solomon begins to investigate on his own. He soon uncovers a rash of similar cases of women who have been found brutally murdered or assaulted after an online date. There is a predator out there working the streets of London, preying on young women. Solomon sets out to bring him to justice, putting him on a collision course with a deadly killer who is fiendishly clever and more twisted than anyone could possibly imagine…

Perfect Match is published on the 5th April by Corvus Books in hardback and ebook.  You can pre-order a copy here.

My Review:

Perfect Match is what I like to call a mystery/ crime book with heart.  When I say this I mean that there is a human element to the story and that it’s not just about the solving of the crime.

The setting of the book involving on line dating is quite a scary one as it seems very realistic, especially with all the modern technical language that the author includes in his writing.  This is something that could actually happen, has actually happened and that did send a chill down my spine whilst I was reading it.  I felt more involved in the story and the characters because of this as I genuinely wanted to find out how this ended.

I loved Solomon, I thought he was such a great character.  I felt very sorry for him and the situation he finds himself in, again unfortunately a very modern occurrence, and I though it very heart warming to see how he throws himself into trying to find out who was responsible for what happened to his sister despite the obvious discomfort it causes him.  His care and affection for his sister was lovely to read about and I found myself hoping he’d be successful without coming to any harm himself.

The book highlight some quite thought provoking issues regarding the circumstances that affect a police investigation.  Id love to say that a person’s job or position in life doesn’t affect how the police conduct an investigation but unfortunately I think it is very true. I shudder to think how many cases could have been handled differently and have different outcomes because of this.

The novel moves at quite a fast pace and there is always something new happening or being discovered.  I found myself racing through the pages as I wanted to discover what would happen next.

This is DB Thorne” second book but the first I have read and I look forward to reading more from him in the future. If you like modern mysteries with a human back story then yiummy love Perfect Match.

Huge thanks to Anne Cater of randRa Things Tours and Corvus Books for my copy of this book and for inviting me onto the blog tour.

About The Author:

D. B. Thorne is a digital entrepreneur and founding member of a highly successful tech start-up in the UK. Thorne has long been fascinated by the intersection between the digital and real worlds, inspiring him to write the acclaimed thriller Troll and the brilliant follow-up, Perfect Match.

Follow The Blog Tour:

I’m so excited to have kicked off the blog tour for this book.  If you liked the sound of this book from my review do follow the blog tour and find out what these other fabulous bloggers are saying.

Book Description:

HE’LL STEAL YOU IN YOUR SLEEP

The fourth gripping serial killer thriller in the No.1 bestselling Joona Linna series. Perfect for fans of Jo Nesbo.

HE’S SWEDEN’S MOST PROLIFIC SERIAL KILLER.

Jurek Walter is serving a life sentence. Kept in solitary confinement, he is still considered extremely dangerous by psychiatric staff.

HE’LL LULL YOU INTO A SENSE OF CALM.

Mikael knows him as “the sandman”. Seven years ago, he was taken from his bed along with his sister. They are both presumed dead.

HE HAS ONE TARGET LEFT.

When Mikael is discovered on a railway line, close to death, the hunt begins for his sister. To get to the truth, Detective Inspector Joona Linna will need to get closer than ever to the man who stripped him of a family; the man who wants Linna dead.

The Sandman was published in the US on 6th March and is available to buy here.

It is also available to buy in the UK here.

My Review:

Lars Kepler is a name I’ve been hearing a lot about but have never quite manage to read any of their books.  Therefore you can imagine my glee when I was contacted to be part of the blog tour for it by the lovely Abby from Crime By The Book.  I was so impressed with the story that, upon finishing, I immediately went and bought all the remaining books in the series.

What struck me most about this book is the truly creepy and unusual murderer.  He really got under my skin and made me shiver.  I think it’s the fact that he’s so calm and calculated that you don’t realise what he’s capable of, until he strikes and you realise how cruel he can be.  You wonder how he manages to control his victims as he does and you shudder as you realise just how manipulative he can be.

The Sandman is very gripping despite its slightly slow start and I soon found it impossible to put down, reading until quite late at night and hiding in the toilet just to read a few more pages.  The authors do a great job of keeping the atmosphere quite tense and gripping. I was kept guessing until the end how everything would work out and how The Sandman would be stopped.

As mentioned above the first part of the book is a little slow as the author sets the scene and introduces us to the characters.  There is a bit of recapping of what happened in previous books that whilst necessary for people, like me who haven’t read the book,  did feel a little drawn out and repetitive at times.  This didn’t put me off the book however, I just mention it in case others feel this way and want to give up.  I strongly urge you to continue as the story does pick up and I actually rate this book as one of the best I’ve ever read!

This is the first book by Lars Kepler I have read and it definitely won’t be my last as I so enjoyed The Sandman.

Huge thanks to Abby of Crime By The Book for my copy of this book and for inviting me onto the blog tour.  I’m very excited to have discovered a new author!

About The Author:

Lars Kepler is a No.1 bestselling international sensation, whose Joona Linna thrillers have sold more than 12 million copies in 40 languages. The first book in the series, The Hypnotist, was selected for the Richard and Judy Book Club and the most recent, Stalker, went straight to No.1 in Sweden, Norway, Holland and Slovakia.

Lars Kepler is the pseudonym for writing duo, Alexander and Alexandra Ahndoril. They live with their family in Sweden.

Follow The Blog Tour:

If you liked the sound of this book from my review please follow the blog tour and find out what these other fabulous bloggers are saying!

I’m so pleased to be on The Blog Tour for Time & Places by Keith Anthony. As some of my followers may know I lost my son Christopher at 24 weeks, he was born alive but was too poorly to survive.  One of the biggest questions I have been asked since is how others can support people in the same situation.  You can imagine how excited I was when Keith said he’d write a guest post for me in how to support grieving people.

Time and places was published on the 25th February 2018 and you can purchase a copy here.

I will be sharing my very special guest post in a bit, but first here is a bit more about the book.

Book Description:

Ten years after his daughter Justine’s death, an anxious Fergus embarks on a cruise with his wife. On board, he meets a myriad of characters and is entranced by some, irritated by others and disgusted by one. These turbulent feelings, combined with a sequence of bizarre events, only lead to his increased anxiety.

In a series of flashbacks, Justine enjoys an ultimately short romance, a woman concludes she killed her and an investigating police officer is drawn into her idyllic world. Fergus, haunted by poignant memories, withdraws in search of answers.
Back on the cruise, Fergus reaches breaking point, fearing he has done something terrible. By the time the ship returns, his world has changed forever.

Times and Places spans Atlantic islands, the Chiltern countryside, Cornish coasts and rural Slovenia, all of which provide spectacular backdrops to a humorous and moving tale of quiet spirituality.

Guest Post:

Supporting grieving people

Within “Times and Places” a late middle aged couple – Fergus and Sylvie – reflect on the loss, ten years earlier, of their then 24 year old only child, Justine. Despite the sad topic, the book aims to be accessible and full of both humour and beautiful natural settings. But writing about losing a child – even an adult one – still felt a big responsibility: some readers might have been through such tragedies. And yet, paradoxically, if we are lucky (to live long enough) then losing someone we love is an inevitable part of life.

When someone old dies – whom we have loved for decades – we feel grief but are consoled that there is a natural order and that we all ride along life’s conveyor knowing one day we will reach its end. When someone doesn’t get to travel that full journey – dying prematurely and out of sequence – then that consolation is replaced by “what ifs” and despair at a life which went uncompleted. Fergus feels this grief as “an uninvited companion to whom you eventually grew so accustomed that you actually became scared it might go away, though it never did.”

However, if we loved them, then usually they loved us, so we can be sure they wouldn’t have wanted their legacy to be our lifelong misery. Whilst we can know this with our heads, grief is of the heart and the spirit. A key ingredient is time. For some life will resume quickly, for others it appears to do so (even perhaps to them) until something triggers the sadness further down the line. Still others become stuck in a paralysing grief for many years, in some instances a lifetime. In Fergus’ case it takes a decade, and, even then, this “uninvited companion” doesn’t go away, nor does he want it to, but he finally comes to better terms with it.

Towards the end of my story Fergus reflects:
“How many billions of personal tragedies had their ever been in the world, most of them untold, but all of them felt deeply by someone, somewhere, sometime? Where in this pantheon of disasters did Justine’s accident lie? She had lived and she had lived well: happily, beautifully, surrounded by love and doing the things she loved doing. She had lived: sometimes that was almost enough for Fergus, nobody could ever take that away – she had lived. And as for him and Sylvie? Well, their lives would go on, diminished yes and not the lives they had planned or hoped for, but precious none the less, and together.”
My father died in 1991 – far too early – I think I still remember him every day, most days certainly, and I wonder how our relationship would have developed had he lived to see me grow into who I am today. When Fergus asks Mrs Huffington, a slightly eccentric old lady, if she still misses her husband, she answers: “I carry him with me.” I think I do the same with my father, but he is a light presence not a heavy burden. He would want me to live the life he gave me to the full. I try to do that – with mixed success – and I hope he would be proud of my book.

It can feel disquieting to know we too will eventually follow those lost loved ones, though it can be a consolation as well, and Mrs Huffington certainly has some interesting ideas for what happens next. Meanwhile, emerging from a pitch black cave with waters inhabited by a sightless Salamander, Justine’s boyfriend is blinded by the daylight of a world which that creature could not have begun to imagine. He briefly wonders “whether such an unimagined world might exist for humans too, one of still greater light and colour perhaps, if only they had the senses to detect it.” Fergus’ own beliefs are more traditional, but he knows they are only beliefs and that none of us can be sure of anything, apart from that one day we will find out.

In the meantime – and with time – life goes on, diminished maybe, but still precious and in the knowledge that our loved ones lived, that nobody can take that away and that they would want us to live to the full. But perhaps you can’t actually tell anyone this, maybe everyone must find their own way there, or perhaps to other consolations of their own.

About The Author:

Keith Anthony was born and brought up in the Chilterns, to where he returned after studying French at university in Aberystwyth and a subsequent spell living in west London. He has a love of nature, both in his native Buckinghamshire countryside, but also in Cornwall and wherever there is a wild sea.
Keith has been lucky enough to spend time living in France, Spain, Belgium, Serbia and Croatia, as well as being a regular visitor to Germany, and languages were the only thing he was ever half good at in school. Since graduating he has worked in government departments, but between 2005 and 2008 he was seconded to the European Commission in Brussels and, thanks to a friend from Ljubljana he met there, has travelled regularly to Slovenia, getting to know that country well.
​
Keith’s other great love is music and he plays classical and finger picking blues guitar, though with persistently limited success. He has always enjoyed writing, including attempts at children’s fiction, and in 2016 he began work on his first full book with Times and Places the end result: an accessible, observational story, mixing quiet spirituality with humour, pathos and gothic horror, and setting it against a rich backdrop of the natural world.

International Giveaway:

There is a chance to win 3 copies of Times and Places internationally by clicking on the rafflecopter link below.

http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/33c6949472/?

*Terms and Conditions –Worldwide entries welcome. Please enter using the Rafflecopter box below. The winner will be selected at random via Rafflecopter from all valid entries and will be notified by Twitter and/or email. If no response is received within 7 days then I reserve the right to select an alternative winner. Open to all entrants aged 18 or over. Any personal data given as part of the competition entry is used for this purpose only and will not be shared with third parties, with the exception of the winners’ information. This will passed to the giveaway organiser and used only for fulfilment of the prize, after which time I will delete the data.

**Please note Over The Rainbow Book Blog is not responsible for this Giveaway**

Book Description:

A young woman is found dead on a remote Icelandic beach.

She came looking for safety, but instead she found a watery grave.

A hasty police investigation determines her death as suicide . . .

When Detective Inspector Hulda Hermannsdóttir of the Reykjavik police is forced into early retirement, she is told she can investigate one last cold case of her choice – and she knows which one.

What she discovers is far darker than suicide . . . And no one is telling Hulda the whole story.

When her own colleagues try to put the brakes on her investigation, Hulda has just days to discover the truth. A truth she will risk her own life to find.

The Darkness was published by Michael St Joseph on the 15th March.  You can purchase a copy here.

My Review:

I really enjoyed Ragnar’s previous series, the brilliant Dark Iceland, so I was very excited to receive a copy of The Darkness the first book in his new series, Hidden Iceland.

The pace in this book felt a little different from his previous ones.  For me it was faster and I felt drawn into the story a lot quicker. My interest was piqued from the start not only by the murder investigation but by Hulda’s personal back story and struggles.  I thought it was great that the author was able to make this story stand out by being different from his previous books.

I wasn’t expecting the story to be as though provoking as it was as it does raise a lot of interesting questions regarding how we treat people in the work force, particularly women and the older members, and the techniques people can use to get ahead in work.  I found myself thinking about this story quite a lot when I wasn’t reading it wondering how I would react in such a situation.

Hulda is a brilliant main character that I found highly likeable.  I enjoyed following her investigation and learning more about her.  I felt so sorry for her and the way she was treated by her colleagues that at times I wished I could reach into the book and give her a hug.  We’ve all been been there and felt under appreciated so I really emphasised with how she was feeling.  I wanted her to succeed and solve the cold case she was working on so she could show her colleagues how capable she was!

As with his other books Ragnar provides some great descriptions of the stunning Icelandic scenery.  I felt I could really imagine the setting of the novel and even looked up some of the places on the internet.  I’d never heard of the lava fields and I did enjoy looking at pictures of them as they are so unlike anything we have in England.

This is the third book I have read by this author and it definitely won’t be my last as I really enjoy his books.  I’m very interested to read the other books in the Hidden Iceland series, especially as the story is being told in reverse order and the other books are set in an earlier time.

Huge thanks to Laura Icnol and Michael St Joseph for my copy of this book and for inviting me onto the blog tour.

About The Author:

Ragnar Jónasson is author of the international bestselling Dark Iceland series. His debut Snowblind went to number one in the kindle charts shortly after publication, and Nightblind, Blackout and Rupture soon followed suit, hitting the number one spot in five countries, and the series being sold in 15 countries and for TV. Ragnar was born in Reykjavik, Iceland, where he continues to work as a lawyer. He also teaches copyright law at Reykjavik University and has previously worked on radio and television, including as a TV-news reporter for the Icelandic National Broadcasting Service. Ragnar is a member of the UK Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) and set up its first overseas chapter in Reykjavik. He is also the co-founder of the international crime-writing festival Iceland Noir. From the age of 17, Ragnar translated 14 Agatha Christie novels into Icelandic. He has appeared on festival panels worldwide, and lives in Reykjavik with his wife and young daughters.

Follow The Blog Tour:

If you liked the sound of The Darkness from this review do follow the blog tour and find out what other people are saying!

I’m on the blog tour for The Love Factory by Elaine Proctor today and have an extract to share.

The Love Factory is available to buy in ebook and hardback now, you can buy a copy here.

Before I share my extract, here is a little bit about the book.

Book Description:

When literary writer Anna falls on hard times, she tries her hand at erotic fiction to make money, and faces an uncomfortable truth. Though she’s a wife and mother of two, her stories fail to fly because she’s never experienced true sexual desire. Even her Sicilian grandmother – wearer of diamante sunglasses and knock-off Louis Vuitton – knows more than she does about real passion.

Anna turns to her friends for inspiration. As secrets and desires are revealed, she discovers more about the people close to her than she ever knew. When one of them suggests she borrow an alter ego to banish her inhibitions, a new world opens up, and The Love Factory – a group of writers penning ever more successful sexy stories – is born.

Yet Anna knows that she can’t rely on borrowed passion and an alter ego forever. For her tales to truly sizzle, she needs to find a true love of her own.

Extract:

Chapter One

Anna sat up in her bed warmth and waited for her natural impatience to tip her towards the waiting day.

She slid from under the bedcovers so quietly that the harghgggg-p-p-p-whooshnrrrr of her husband’s snoring continued without the slightest increase in pitch or rhythm. Then she ran lightly down the stairs with Liebe, her hunting dog, at her heels.

If she’d known what turmoil the day was to bring she might’ve slowed her pace, but unlike some in her family, Anna was not burdened with prescience.

She pulled open the kitchen door and sucked in a lungful of frosty air; she smelled the city in it and the liquid green of the underground stream at the bottom of her garden.

As she breathed in she whispered to herself, ‘I am,’ and, as if willing it would make it so, she said, ‘at peace.’
There was fox scat on the stonework; the big male must the love factory have passed by in the night. She heard the distant sound of the early train.

Liebe scratched at the gate at the far end of the garden, her pied orange and white body luminous in the dark day.
‘Coming,’ called Anna softly.
The dog and her owner both loved the unruly allotments that ran along the edge of the railway line behind the house, each small garden tended according to their owners’ fancy; some grew flowers, others, like Anna, vegetables. Most started off every spring with a burst of enthusiasm and then let their beds fade to nothing by late summer. Only a few managed to keep something alive through the cold.
Just about all the families on Carlyle Road had a strip of earth to tend here. Anna liked to think it brought them closer together but, in truth, it was the two tornados that had twice torn the roofs off their houses that had made them allies. If past storm patterns continued, they were about due for another.

The grind of a sash window opening disturbed the darkness of the house next door. Anna saw a young man, pale-skinned and lanky, flip over the sill and onto the frozen grass. Liebe stiffened into pointer bird-hunting-alert.
The intruder turned back to the window . . . for one more kiss . . . oh Lord . . . from her neighbour, Farhad.

Anna watched the kiss pass from sweet-goodbye to fuck-me lust. She could have been inside their mouths, for the sudden heat they put out. She watched as Farhad fumbled with his lover’s belt.
The encounter that followed, both their bodies half-in, half-out of the window, was over quickly. The lover pulled his trousers up, pecked Farhad on the nipple, and stumbled away over the grass. Farhad stood in the window bare-chested in the freezing dawn, watching him go.

And Anna stood to full attention in the perpetual spinach patch – impossible for Farhad to miss as he turned to close the window.

She longed to bend down and tend to her beds, to pretend that she’d not witnessed their coming together, but it was too late for that. She could see thought-ripples cross Farhad’s face; Ah shit, he seemed to say. Do you judge me? Will you tell my mother?

Anna waved at him, an awkward flick of the hand – as if to say Your secret is safe with me – although I can’t say it didn’t shake me up so early in the morning.

He waved back.
Anna could see that Farhad would have preferred not to have to take his pleasure in so clandestine a way, and she turned away.

Released from watchfulness, Liebe ploughed joyfully into a flock of half-frozen pigeons huddled on the grass. They took to the air in a cloud and swept away over the rooftops of London’s Kensal Rise.

About The Author:

Elaine Proctor was born in South Africa. She became involved in the anti-apartheid movement as a teenager and filmed several political documentaries up until 1986, when the political situation made it impossible for her to continue and she left to study at the National Film and Television School in Britain. She has made several films, including On The Wire (winner of the British Film Institute’s Sutherland Trophy) and Friends (selected by the Cannes Film Festival and winner of the Mention Speciale – Prix de Camera D’Or), has written a series for the BBC and published two novels, Rhumba and The Savage Hour. She sits on the chapter for screenwriting at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts and is a member of the Writer’s Guild of Great Britain. Elaine lives in Queen’s Park, London.

You can find out more by visiting Elaine’s website and following her on Twitter @ElaineProctor2.

I’m on the blog tour for beautiful The Long Forgotten by David Whitehouse and am excited to share my review with you.

The Long Forgotten is available to buy ebook and hardback now.  You can by a copy here.

Book Description:

When the black box flight recorder of a plane that went missing 30 years ago is found at the bottom of the sea, a young man named Dove begins to remember a past that isn’t his. The memories belong to a rare flower hunter in 1980s New York, whose search led him around the world and ended in tragedy.

Restless and lonely in present-day London, Dove is quickly consumed by the memories, which might just hold the key to the mystery of his own identity and what happened to the passengers on that doomed flight, The Long Forgotten.

The Long Forgotten is a thrilling mystery about memory and identity from David Whitehouse, the award-winning author of Bed and Mobile Library.

My Review:

Firstly let me say something about the absolutely stunning cover for this book.  The variety of colours of the flowers against a black background really draws the eye.  I can see a lot of people picking up this book for the cover!

This is such a beautiful book for many different reasons.  I loved the characters in the book and the journey, literally at times, that they go on.  All of them are lonely characters, on the fridges of society.  They are sleep walking through life, just trying to get by with little or no friends.  Both Dove and Peter before him go on a journey of discovery as they try to unravel the mystery of what happened to the plane.  I so enjoyed reading about this journey and it was heartwarming to see how much they had changed and learnt about themselves at the end.

The author has such a wonderful way of describing things that makes the reader feel that they are right there experiencing things alongside the characters.  The vivid descriptions of the places they visit are stunning as is the descriptions of the unusual flowers they discover on the way.  I hadn’t heard of a lot of these flowers and I enjoyed looking up all of them. I had heard of the usual looking Corpse flower however as it was featured in an episode of Go jetters!

The mystery is gradually unraveled and it was very interesting to see how it all comes together.  It was a very addictive story which made the book hard to put down as I wanted to read more to discover what happened.  I was also really invested in the characters and wanted to continue reading to see if they get a happy ending.

This is the first book by this author that I have read and I look forward to reading more from him in the future.  If you like mysteries with heart and some beautiful descriptions you will love this book.

Huge thanks to Emma Finnigan and Picador Books for my copy of this book and Anne Cater of Random Things Tours for inviting me on the blog tour.

About The Author:

I have written three novels. The first, BED, was published in 2011 by Canongate in the UK and Scribner in the US.  It won The Betty Trask Prize 2012. The movie rights were optioned by Duck Soup and Film 4.
The second, MOBILE LIBRARY, was published in January 2015 by Picador in the UK and Scribner in the US. It won the Jerwood Fiction Prize 2015 and the TV rights were optioned by Duck Soup and Channel 4.
The third, THE LONG FORGOTTEN, will be published by Picador in March 2018.
I currently have a number of TV projects in development.
I have written for lots of newspapers and magazines including The Guardian, Esquire, The Times, The Observer Magazine, Sunday Times Style and many more. I’ve won awards for journalism from The Times, The Evening Standard, the PPA and the PTC. I am the Editor-at-Large of ShortList magazine.
Website: http://www.davidwhitehouse.net/
Twitter: @d_whitehouse

Follow The Blog Tour:

If you liked the sound of this book from my review please follow the blog tour and see what these other fabulous bloggers are saying.

So thrilled to be involved in the blog tour for The Stranger by Kate Riordan.  I absolutely loved The Shadow Hours so I was so excited to read her next book.

The Stranger is published in Hardback and ebook TODAY.

Book Description:

Cornwall, 1940.

In the hushed hours of the night a woman is taken by the sea.

Was it a tragic accident? Or should the residents of Penhallow have been more careful about whom they invited in?

In the midst of war three women arrive seeking safety at Penhallow Hall.

Each is looking to escape her past.

But one of them is not there by choice.

As the threat of invasion mounts and the nightly blackouts feel longer and longer, tensions between the close-knit residents rise until dark secrets start to surface.

And no one can predict what their neighbour is capable of . . .

In a house full of strangers, who do you trust?

My Review:

It’s always nice when you get a book you realise you are going to love within the first few pages.  It brings a smile to my face and means I can relax into the book.

The Stranger is told from the point of view of three women who have been brought together at Penhallow for the summer.  Two, Rose and Diana, are landgirls at Penhallow there to work in the grounds, growing vegetables to aid the war effort.  For the other woman, Eleanor, Penhallow is her family home where she has lived since she was a little girl and where she still lives with her cantankerous mother.  All of these women have secrets that they have kept from each other and all are haunted by pasts events.  These are slowly revealed as the story goes on leaving the reader very intrigued and glued to the page.  I think what is most special about this book is that the way it is told allows the reader to get inside the woman’s heads so that you feel like you know them intimately and understand them completely.  For this reason I didn’t have a favourite character as I enjoyed all their stories equally and liked all of them.  I wanted all of them to have the opportunity to put their demons to rest and have a happy ending.

The setting of this book is brilliant, with the author’s descriptions being so vivid that you feel like you are there watching it all unfold.  I could almost see the sea, feel the sun on my face and view the beautiful scenery. I felt I knew Cornwall and Penhallow really well like I had visited it personally.

This was one of those rare books that I simultaneously wanted to read more of to find out what happens and read slowly to savour the spectacular story.  I was almost bereft when the story ended as I realised I had read a fabulous story and closed the book with a happy sigh.

There are very few books I believe deserve the comparison with Kate Morton but this one truly does, so if you are a fan of Kate Morton you will love this book!

Huge thanks to Jenny Platt and Michael St Joseph Publishers for my copy of the book and for inviting me onto the blog tour.

About The Author:

Follow The Blog Tour:

If you liked the sound of this book from my review do follow the blog tour and see what these other fabulous bloggers are saying!