Good morning everyone I was tagged by the lovely Joanne from Portobello Book Blog to spell out April in book titles.
⭐A – Agatha Christie by Lucy Worsley ⭐P – Peach Blossom Spring by Melissa Fu ⭐R – Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt ⭐I – The IT Girl by Ruth Ware ⭐L – Lady MacBethad by Isabelle Schuler
This was harder than I thought as I couldn’t find a title starting with ‘I’ so had to cheat a little bit. It was also difficult to get the book titles lined up the right way…
These are all books I still need to read but want to read soon as I keep hearing lots about them.
Good afternoon everyone I’m excited to be in the Tandem Read-along for this fabulous sounding book. I’ve always been a huge fan of Greek Mythology so this book sounds right up my street.
What’s your favourite Greek Mythology re-telling?
Book Synopsis:
Spring and summer are my mother’s time, autumn and winter are my husband’s. What is left for me?
Persephone spends six months of the year under the ground with her husband, king of the dead, and six months on earth with her mother, goddess of the harvest. It has been this way for nine thousand years, since the deal was struck. But when she resurfaces this spring, something is different. Rains lash the land, crops grow out of season or not at all, there are people trying to build a road through the woods, and her mother does not seem able to stop them. The natural world is changing rapidly and even the gods have lost control.
While Demeter tries to regain her powers and fend off her daughter’s husband, who wants to drag his queen back underground for good, Persephone finally gets a taste of freedom, joining a group of protestors. Used to blinking up at the world from below, as she looks down on the earth for the very first time from the treetops with activist Snow, Persephone realises that there are choices she can make for herself. But what will these choices mean for her mother, her husband, and for the new shoots of life inside her?
No Season but the Summer takes a classic myth and turns it on its head, asking what will happen when our oldest stories fail us, when all the rules have changed. It is, above all, a book about choice.
About The Author:
Matilda Leyser read English Literature at King’s College, London and then ran away to join the circus. She trained as an aerialist, working up a rope, collaborating with dance and theatre companies, making her own work, and performing in diverse venues, including the National Theatre, Shakespeare’s Globe, and the Royal Opera House. After ten years in the air, she decided to come down to earth and take up the far more dangerous act of writing on the ground. She has two children, and is the founder and director of an international movement for creative mothers and carers called M/Others Who Make:
Good morning everyone! I was lucky enough to receive some great book post last week.
⭐ Confidence by Denise Mina ⭐ The Forgotten Garden by Sharon Gosling ⭐ The Maiden by Kate Foster ⭐ The Expectant Detectives by Kat Ailes ⭐ The Woman On The Bridge by Sheila O’Flanagan
I’m a huge fan of Sharon Gosling, Denise Mina and Sheila O’Flanagan so I’m excited to read those. The Maiden sounds amazing and I’ve heard good things from my fellow book friends about it. The Expectant Detectives sounds like a really fun read, similar to the Richard Osman series which I really enjoyed.
Huge thanks to all the publishers/ tour organisers for sending me a copy of these books- it’s really appreciated.
Any of these books on your radar?
Confidence by Denise Mina
A MISSING FILMMAKER. A STOLEN ANTIQUE. SOMEONE WILL KILL TO STOP THEM BEING FOUND…
‘Denise Mina is crime-writing royalty’ Val McDermid, author of A Place of Execution
When filmmaker, Lisa Lee goes missing, alongside a priceless Roman silver casket, there is no doubt the two are linked together.
The day after her vanishing, the casket is listed for auction in Paris with a reserve price of fifty million euros.
On a thrilling chase across Europe to discover what happened to Lisa, journalists Anna and Fin are caught up in a world of international art smuggling, billionaire con artists and religious zealotry.
The Forgotten Garden by Sharon Gosling
A novel of second chances and blossoming communities from the author of The Lighthouse Bookshop.
Budding landscape architect Luisa MacGregor is stuck in a rut – she hates her boss, she lives with her sister, and she is still mourning the loss of her husband many years ago. So when she is given the opportunity to take on a parcel of land in a deprived area, she sees the chance to build a garden that can make the area bloom.
Arriving in the rundown seaside town of Collaton on the north-west coast of Cumbria, she realises that her work is going to be cut out for her. But, along with Cas, a local PE teacher, and Harper, a teen whose life has taken a wrong turn, she is determined to get the garden up and running.
So when the community comes together and the garden starts to grow, she feels her luck might have changed. Can she grow good things on this rocky ground? And might love blossom along the way…?
The Maiden by Kate Foster
Inspired by a real-life case and winner of the Bloody Scotland Pitch Perfect Award, Kate Foster’s The Maiden is a remarkable story with a feminist revisionist twist, giving a voice to women otherwise silenced by history.
“In the end, it did not matter what I said at my trial. No one believed me.”
Edinburgh, October 1679. Lady Christian is arrested and charged with the murder of her lover, James Forrester. News of her imprisonment and subsequent trial is splashed across the broadsides, with headlines that leave little room for doubt: Adulteress. Whore. Murderess.
Only a year before, Lady Christian was newly married, leading a life of privilege and respectability. So, what led her to risk everything for an affair? And does that make her guilty of murder? She wasn’t the only woman in Forrester’s life, and certainly not the only one who might have had cause to wish him dead . . .
The Expectant Detectives by Kat Ailes
For Alice and her partner Joe, moving to the sleepy Cotswold village of Penton is a chance to embrace country life and prepare for the birth of their unexpected first child. He can take up woodwork; maybe she’ll learn to make jam. But the rural idyll they’d hoped for doesn’t quite pan out when a dead body is discovered at their local antenatal class and they find themselves suspects in a murder investigation.
With a cloud of suspicion hanging over the heads of the whole group, Alice sets out to solve the mystery and clear her name, with the help of her troublesome dog, Helen. However, there are more secrets and tensions in the heart of Penton than first meet the eye. Between the discovery of a shady commune up in the woods, the unearthing of a mysterious death years earlier and the near-tragic poisoning of Helen, Alice is soon in way over her head.
CAN YOU SOLVE THE MOTHER OF ALL MURDERS?
The Woman On The Bridge by Sheila O’Flanagan
Dublin. The 1920s. As war tears Ireland apart, two young people are caught up in events that will bring love, tragedy – and the hardest of choices.
In a country fighting for freedom, it’s hard to live a normal life. Winnie O’Leary supports the cause, but she doesn’t go looking for trouble. Then rebel Joseph Burke steps into her workplace. Winnie is furious with him about a broken window. She’s not interested in romance. But love comes when you least expect it.
Joseph’s family shelter fugitives and smuggle weapons. Joseph would never ask Winnie to join the fight; but his mother and sisters demand commitment. Will Winnie choose Joseph, and put her own loved ones in deadly danger? Or wait for a time of peace that may never come?
Ireland’s tumultuous independence struggle is the backdrop for an unforgettable story of courage and heartbreak, in which heroes are made of ordinary people. Inspired by the story of Sheila O’Flanagan’s grandmother, The Woman on the Bridge is the unmissable, compulsive new novel from a bestselling author.
A captivating and lyrical journey into our ancestral past, through what and how we eat.
Mo Wilde made a quiet but radical pledge: to live only off free, foraged food for an entire year. In a world disconnected from its roots, eating wild food is both culinary and healing, social and political. Ultimately, it is an act of love and community. Using her expert knowledge of botany and mycology, Mo follows the seasons to find nutritious food from hundreds of species of plants, fungi and seaweeds, and in the process learns not just how to survive, but how to thrive. Nourishing her body and mind deepens her connection with the earth – a connection that we have become estranged from but which we all, deep down, hunger for.
This hunger is about much more than food. It is about accepting and understanding our place in a natural network that is both staggeringly complex and beautifully simple. THE WILDERNESS CURE is a diary of a wild experiment; a timely and inspiring memoir which explores a deeper relationship between humans and nature, and reminds us of the important lost lessons from our past.
My Review:
The Wilderness Cure is a fascinating and thought provoking read about a subject I knew little about before reading this book.
Firstly I have always loved the idea of foraging but had no idea of the vast amount of edible plants and fungi there were in this country. A life time of being told to be careful of touching things I didn’t know in the woods made me a bit fearful of attempting foraging at first, though I soon discovered it was very enjoyable. The children and I had fun trying to find ingredients in our local woods which we made into a very decent soup. It was amazing to see what we had available in our local woods and how plants I had walked past on countless occasions were actually edible.
The author includes a bit of history about the food our ancestors in the stone age ate which I found very interesting. It was fascinating to discover the different foods they ate then and how we eat a much smaller variety now then they did back then. I enjoyed learning about when foods I take for granted as being available year round, are actually in season and discovering what food originated in the UK.
This is a book that is probably better to dip in and out of rather then trying to read in one go as there is a lot of information to absorb. I do wish there had been some pictures of some of the plants the author was discussing as I did spend a lot of time trying to Google them on my phone to check I was picking the right things. The author is an expert in her field which made for very interesting reading but I wonder how easy it would be for a normal person without her knowledge to do this experiment.
Overall I did enjoy this book and will be recommending it to others as it has taught me a lot. I often discover edible plants on my walks now that I previously wouldn’t have recognised and my kids are keen to try and make more things out of food they have collected from our woods.
Huge thanks to The Tandem Collective for letting me join in the read-along with my own copy of this book.
About The Author:
Monica ‘Mo’ Wilde is the author of The Wilderness Cure: Ancient Wisdom in a Modern World. Winner of The John Avery Award for “original and adventurous writing” in the 2022 André Simon Food and Drink Book Awards. Mo is a forager, research herbalist, author and ethnobotanist. She has been teaching foraging since 2005 but has had a lifelong passion for plants.
Mo has a Masters degree in herbal medicine, is a Fellow of the Linnean Society, a member of the Association of Foragers, a member of the British Mycological Society and a member of the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society (ILADS). Monica Wilde lives in Scotland in a self-built eco house, encouraging medicinal and foraging species to thrive in a wild, teaching garden. She also teaches and lectures on wild foods, plants, fungi and algae.
Good morning everyone! It was my birthday last week and I was lucky enough to receive some book vouchers from my lovely sister. This was quite an event as I never get books off my family as they say I have too many already.
I bought these two books as they sound really fascinating and I’ve been hearing lots of good things about them from my book friends. I’m excited to read them both soon.
What was the last book you bought?
The Dress Diary Of Mrs Anne Sykes by Kate Strasdin
‘The story of a singular woman… Kate Strasdin’s forensic detective work has finally let Mrs Sykes – and her book – speak again’ JUDITH FLANDERS
In 1838, a young woman was given a diary on her wedding day. Collecting snippets of fabric from a range of garments she carefully annotated each one, creating a unique record of her life and times. Her name was Mrs Anne Sykes.
Nearly two hundred years later, the diary fell into the hands of Kate Strasdin, a fashion historian and museum curator. Strasdin spent the next six years unravelling the secrets contained within the album’s pages.
Piece by piece, she charts Anne’s journey from the mills of Lancashire to the port of Singapore before tracing her return to England in later years. Fragments of cloth become windows into Victorian life: pirates in Borneo, the complicated etiquette of mourning, poisonous dyes, the British Empire in full swing, rioting over working conditions and the terrible human cost of Britain’s cotton industry.
This is life writing that celebrates ordinary people: the hidden figures, the participants in everyday life. Through the evidence of waistcoats, ball gowns and mourning outfits, Strasdin lays bare the whole of human experience in the most intimate of mediums: the clothes we choose to wear.
When The Dust Settles by Lucy Easthope
Lucy is a world-leading authority on recovering from disaster. She holds governments to account, supports survivors and helps communities to rebuild. She has been at the centre of the most seismic events of the last few decades, advising on everything from the 2004 tsunami and the 7/7 bombings to the Grenfell fire and the war in Ukraine. Lucy’s job is to pick up the pieces and get us ready for what comes next.
Lucy takes us behind the police tape to scenes of chaos, and into government briefing rooms where confusion can reign. She also looks back at the many losses and loves of her life and career, and tells us how we can all build back after disaster.
When the Dust Settles lifts us up, showing that humanity, hope and humour can – and must – be found on the darkest days.
Good Morning everyone I hope you are having a great Easter so far.
As you’ve probably noticed I love a good book challenge so when I saw this on the lovely Joanne from Portobello Book Blog I knew I had to join in. The idea is to match one of your favourite books with a word you might associate with Easter.
If you’d like to join in please do as I’d love to see what you pick.
What have you been up to this Easter weekend?
Rabbits: A Book You Wish Would Multiply (A Book You Wish Had A Sequel)
I absolutely loved this book when I read it and I am really hoping that the author writes a sequel one day as I’d love to read more about the fantastic Emily and Josh.
Egg: A Book That Surprised You
I love a good thriller but as I read so many of them I’m often able to guess what’s going to happen or who’s done it. This book however absolutely blew me away and I wasn’t able to predict the outcome of it at all which I always love.
Hunt: A Book That Was Hard For You To Get Your Hands On
I had heard lots of great things about this book so I was desperate to read it when it came out. However Waterstones took ages dispatching my order so I ended up waiting a few weeks to receive it sadly.
Lamb: A Children’s Book You Still Enjoy
I was a huge Secret Seven fan as a kid with my sister and I even trying to form are own Secret Seven to solve mysteries. I’m currently reading them with my little girl which I’m really enjoying.
Spring: A Book With A Cover That Makes You Think Of Spring
When I was looking for a book for this prompt I squealed when I found this as not only is it yellow which is a very spring colour but it has daffodils on it which are one of my favourite spring flowers!
Jesus: A Religious Or Spiritual Book You Love
I absolutely loved this book and would highly recommend it to everyone. It was so uplifting and thought provoking with the many wisdoms or ideas it had in it. It’s one of the only books I’ve ever felt compelled to highlight parts of as I wanted to be able to find it again.
Good morning everyone and Happy Easter if you celebrate. I got woken up at half five this morning by three kids who wanted to see if the Easter Bunny has been. It had so I now have three very happy, chocolate covered children!
I thought I’d share the books they were enjoying this Easter weekend:
⭐ Robo Dog by David Walliams
⭐ Izadora -Moon Goes To School by Harriet Muncaster
⭐ Harry & The Dinosaurs Have A Happy Birthday by Ian Whybrow
⭐ We’re Going On A Egg Hunt by Martha Mumford
My eldest kids are huge readers, with my 10 year old in particular being hard to keep up with sometimes as he’s such a fast reader. My little girl loves books and we’ve just discovered the Izadora- Moon series which we’re steadily working our way through. My youngest is reluctantly learning to read and is struggling a bit with it at the moment. He loves being read to though and I always look forward to bedtime stories with him.
Welcome to Charon’s Crossing. The tea is hot, the scones are fresh and the dead are just passing through.
When a reaper comes to collect Wallace from his own sparsely-attended funeral, Wallace is outraged. But he begins to suspect she’s right, and he is in fact dead. Then when Hugo, owner of a most peculiar tea shop, promises to help him cross over, Wallace reluctantly accepts the truth.
Yet even in death, he refuses to abandon his life – even though Wallace spent all of it working, correcting colleagues and hectoring employees. He’d had no time for frivolities like fun and friends. But as Wallace drinks tea with Hugo and talks to his customers, he wonders if he was missing something.
The feeling grows as he shares jokes with the resident ghost, manifests embarrassing footwear and notices the stars. So when he’s given one week to pass through the door to the other side, Wallace sets about living a lifetime in just seven days.
My Review:
Under The Whispering Door is a beautifully written, thought provoking and absorbing read that I’ve continued to think about long after reading.
Firstly I absolutely loved the author’s vision of what happens after we pass away and hope that’s what happens in real life. The tea shop was a lovely creation and I liked the idea of a place where the recently deceased can go to reflect on their life. It was quite amusing to watch Wallace trying to get used to being a ghost, with some of his actions making me laugh out loud.
There are some wonderful characters in this book that I enjoyed getting to know. I started off really not liking Wallace but grew very fond of him as the story progressed and he starts to become a nicer person. This change in Wallace was lovely to see, as was watching him grow closer to the other cafe inhabitants. His growing relationship with Hugo was interesting to follow though laced with sadness as to where it could go. I found myself feeling very sorry for Wallace that he seemed to have discovered this wonderful world too late.
The story starts off a bit slowly as the author sets the scene and we get introduced to the characters but I soon became absorbed into the story. I loved learning more about the cafe and the characters whose backstory was often very heartbreaking. The twist at the end was unexpected but beautifully done. I closed the book very happy though sad to leave the cafe and the wonderful characters behind. This was actually the first book I’ve read by this author but I’ll definitely be reading more from him in the future.
About The Author:
TJ KLUNE is a Lambda Literary Award-winning author (Into This River I Drown) and an ex-claims examiner for an insurance company. His novels include the Green Creek series, The House on the Cerulean Sea and The Exraordinaries. Being queer himself, TJ believes it’s important—now more than ever—to have accurate, positive, queer representation in stories.
Eek I was so excited to receive a copy of this book. I absolutely loved The Lighthouse Library by this author so I can’t wait to read this.
Huge thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy of this book and to Anne Cater for inviting me onto the blog tour.
Yes I did take this book to a National Trust visit, hoping to get an opportunity to take a nice picture – hopefully I’m not the only one who does that ..
Out 27th April 2023
Book Synopsis:
A novel of second chances and blossoming communities from the author of The Lighthouse Bookshop.
Budding landscape architect Luisa MacGregor is stuck in a rut – she hates her boss, she lives with her sister, and she is still mourning the loss of her husband many years ago. So when she is given the opportunity to take on a parcel of land in a deprived area, she sees the chance to build a garden that can make the area bloom.
Arriving in the rundown seaside town of Collaton on the north-west coast of Cumbria, she realises that her work is going to be cut out for her. But, along with Cas, a local PE teacher, and Harper, a teen whose life has taken a wrong turn, she is determined to get the garden up and running.
So when the community comes together and the garden starts to grow, she feels her luck might have changed. Can she grow good things on this rocky ground? And might love blossom along the way…?
About The Author:
I’ve been writing since I was a teenager, which is now a distressingly long time ago! I started out as an entertainment journalist – actually, my earliest published work was as a reviewer of science fiction and fantasy books. I went on to become a staff writer and then an editor for print magazines, before beginning to write non-fiction making-of books tied in to film and television, such as The Art and Making of Penny Dreadful and Wonder Woman: The Art and Making of the Film.
I now write both children’s and adult fiction – my first novel was called The Diamond Thief, a Victorian-set steampunk adventure book for the middle grade age group. That won the Redbridge Children’s prize in 2014, and I went on to write two more books in the series before moving on to other adventure books including The Golden Butterfly, which was nominated for the Carnegie Award in 2017, The House of Hidden Wonders, and a YA horror called FIR, which was shortlisted for the Lancashire Book of the Year Award in 2018.
My debut adult novel will be published by Simon & Schuster in August 2021. It’s called The House Beneath the Cliffs and it’s a story set in a very small coastal village in Scotland. The idea for it had lodged in my head years before. I have a love for unusual dwelling places and I came across a tiny house that completely captured my imagination. My adult fiction tends to centre on small communities – feel-good tales about how we find where we belong in life and what it means when we do. Although I have also published full-on adult horror stories, which are less about community and more about terror and mayhem…
I was born in Kent but now live in a very small house in an equally small village in northern Cumbria with my husband, who owns a bookshop in the nearby market town of Penrith.
Good morning everyone and happy first day of the Easter weekend! I thought I’d do a little reading update to show you what I’m planning on reading this weekend.
📚Last- Maybe Next Time by Cesca Major (Review posted Thursday)
📚Now – The Burning Chambers by Kate Mosse
🎧 Now – Daisy & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid
📚 Next – The Institution by Helen Fields
I’m really enjoying The Burning Chambers but the more I read the more I’m convinced I’ve actually read this book before as it seems very familiar.
I’ve been very intrigued about Daisy & The Six for a while now and have heard great things about the audiobook. I’ve got a few jobs to do this weekend so I’m looking forward to listening to this while I work.
Helen Fields is one of my favourite authors and I’m excited to read her latest book The Institution. I might end up reading it alongside The Burning Chambers as it’s difficult to read with the kids around so I might need a gripping book to ensure I manage to read this weekend.
Over The Rainbow Blog 