This week the final part of author Sophie McKenzie’s hard hitting ‘Missing‘ trilogy for teens is published. Missing Me completes the story started in Girl, Missing, and continued in Sister, Missing. The books follow the story of Lauren, who is adopted and has always known that. In Girl, Missing, Lauren is fourteen. One day she Read More
Author: AnnaBookBel
A fascinating setting for a crime novel…
City of Veils by Zoë Ferraris This is the first novel I’ve read set in modern day Arabia. It gives a tantalising glimpse of life in Jeddah, particularly how men and women live, and combines that with a complex crime story. The mutilated body of a woman is found on a beach. Detective Osama Ibrahim Read More
The Food of Love …
John Saturnall’s Feast by Lawrence Norfolk (republished into its original place in the time-line from my lost post archive) I’ve taken my time reading John Saturnall’s feast, the latest novel by Lawrence Norfolk. He’s a man that takes his time to write his novels, having published just four in twenty one years, and so I’ve Read More
Should I do Dunnett?
One author I have yet to read is Dorothy Dunnett. I own the first few volumes of the Lymond chronicles thanks to my late Mum. She enjoyed them very much and was re-reading them back then. They are renowned for not being an easy read though, requiring perseverance and frequent referring back or to a Read More
Who killed the penguin?
Morgue Drawer Next Door by Jutta Profijt Translated from the German by Erik J Macki. This unusual crime novel is narrated by Pascha – he used to be a car thief – the best young one in Cologne. Pascha has become a sort of detective, teaming up with Dr Martin Gänsewein, a forensic examiner for the Read More
“Summer fling, don’t mean a thing, But, oh, oh, the summer nights”
This post was republished into my blog’s timeline from my lost posts archive. August is a Wicked Month by Edna O’Brien When I came across this short novel published in 1965, in a bag of books from my late Mum’s, I had to read it straight away for two reasons. The obvious one is the Read More
Mid-book cull – pause for a giggle or three…
As you may have surmised, I’m in the throes of having a major book cull. I gave seven bags full to my daughter’s school fête back in June, and have been working my way through the other piles, double-stacked shelves and bags over the past weeks. I’ve sorted out some worth selling via various routes Read More
An evening with Vera and Jimmy … and Ann Cleeves
I spent a great evening hearing about two fictional British detectives yesterday. Two totally different people – the frumpy, middle-aged Vera Stanhope (pronounced Stannup) from Northumberland, and the descendant a Spanish sailor from the Armada who was shipwrecked at Fairisle in the Shetlands. Both were created by Ann Cleeves, who had escaped for the evening Read More
A dystopian psychodrama that packs a punch…
I Have Waited, and You Have Come by Martine McDonagh Set in a near future where global warming has wreaked Mother Nature’s revenge on the Earth and made large parts of the globe uninhabitable due to rising water levels, Rachel lives alone in a old mill in the Yorkshire Dales. Jacob used to live with Read More
My Policeman, Your Policeman …
My Policemanby Bethan Roberts This is a story of two people who love the same man. Firstly Marion, who fell for Tom, the brother of her best friend, the first time she saw him … He was leaning in the doorway with the sleeves of his shirt rolled up to the elbows, and I noticed Read More
Generations of family photos …
Doing some sorting out this afternoon whilst watching the Olympics, and found some family photos that had belonged to my Great Aunt. I adored this one, so I thought I’d share a few with you. It shows my maternal Grandmother Ethel (known as Ettie) on the left and my Great Aunt Muriel on the right. Read More
This tale’s pinned on a donkey …
Caroline: A Mystery by Cornelius Medvei This short novel is a weird and wonderful thing, slightly surreal in parts, but utterly captivating. It is the story of Mr Shaw, who takes his family on their annual vacation where he tries to unwind from his day job in insurance, but is fretting internally (as is his Read More
Once upon a time, there was a girl who didn’t read proper fairy tales …
When I was little, the books I enjoyed reading the most were fairy tales. My childhood favourite was the Puffin A Book of Princesses selected by Sally Patrick Johnson published in 1965. It’s a great collection combining old tales like The Twelve Dancing Princesses with ones by E E Nesbit and Oscar Wilde. I still Read More
The Glass Books Trilogy – an awfully fun adventure!
The Glass Books Trilogy by G W Dahlquist Bantam in the USA, reputedly paid début novelist Dahlquist an advance of $2,000,000 for the first two installments in this series. Although the first was well received, apparently they lost shedloads of money on the deal. Penguin, the books’ publisher in the UK, also published the first volume with a Read More
You shall go to the ball …
Republished into its original timeline from my lost posts archive Invitation To The Waltz by Rosamond Lehmann Rosamund Lehmann is another of those authors from the middle decades of the twentieth century that I’ve been meaning to read for ages. Invitation to the Waltz, her third novel, was published in 1932. Set in the 1920s, Read More
Scenes from a humorist’s life …
Our book group is having a short story July, concentrating on two authors renowned for their wit: Saki and Thurber. I’m working my way through Saki, so I’ll deal with him in another post; here I’ll talk about my first experience of reading James Thurber. My Life and Hard Timesby James Thurber James Thurber (1894-1961), Read More
It brings it all back …
I’ve waxed lyrical about my favourite musicals before – Oliver! in particular. It still is, I think, but the musical that lead me into a rockier direction was Jesus Christ Superstar. I’ve been sparked off to post about it because, belatedly, I’ve started watching Superstar – Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s current TV search for a singer to Read More
Art, Love and War
Waiting for Robert Capa by Susanna Fortes, trans from the Spanish by Adriana V Lopez This novel is a fictionalised account of the true story of Gerda Taro and Robert Capa, two of the foremost photojournalists who reported on the Spanish Civil War. The story begins in Paris though, when young Jewish German refugee Gerta Read More
Medieval Iceland – a place of cod wars even then…
On the Cold Coasts by Vilborg Davidsdottir Transl Alda Sigmundsdottir At the heart of this novel is the tale of Ragna, a young Icelandic woman from a family with property in Greenland which she will inherit. Still a young teenager, yet betrothed to Thorkell, Ragna becomes unmarriageable when she becomes pregnant by an English sailor Read More
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me. Or can they?
The Flame Alphabetby Ben Marcus Before Beryl Bainbridge Reading week, I posted about how I’d essentially bought this book on the basis of its cover alone which is rather stunning, and how it would be the first book I read after Beryl. Now, I’ve read it and the question is did it live up to its Read More
Beryl Bainbridge Reading Week – Review Round-up
Thank you again to everyone who has joined in Beryl Bainbridge Reading Week. I said I’d do a full round up – so here are all the links so far. If I’ve missed you out, please leave a link in the comments and I’ll add you in. As Simon did for his Review Round-up for Muriel Read More
Nights at the Theatre
Front Row: Evenings at the Theatre by Beryl Bainbridge From 1992 until 2002, Beryl was the theatre reviewer for The Oldie magazine, and her reviews have been collected in this volume. Collected columns like these can easily date, however Beryl prefaces each review in her idiosyncratic style with comments about what she’d been doing, or thoughts about arriving at the Read More
“Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way”
A Quiet Life by Beryl Bainbridge Alan sits in a café waiting for his sister Madge, whom he hasn’t seen for fifteen years – there to discuss their late mother’s effects. Both are now in their forties, and they’re still as different as chalk and cheese. Rewind twenty-five years. It’s the 1950s; petrol is still Read More
Dinner Parties – A Risky Business!
Injury Time by Beryl Bainbridge Dinner parties… Love ’em, loathe ’em – but from the mid 1970s to perhaps as far as the late 1990s they were a symbol of the middle classes. The kitchen-sink drama moved into the Dining Room. Acceptance of your position in the hierarchy by giving dinner parties was soon replaced by Read More
Beryl on the box & big screen …
Today, I offer you a survey of Beryl’s work for TV and film, with as many links to clips as I can find… During the early part of her career, Beryl was an actress. In 1961, she famously appeared in one episode of Coronation Street as the peace-protesting girlfriend of Ken Barlow. See BB in Corrie. She wrote Read More
Love the one you’re with – the Bainbridge version
Sweet William by Beryl Bainbridge I was thinking of an apt title for this post and was planning on calling it ‘The man who loved women‘ after the celebrated François Truffaut film, but then I remembered the Stephen Stills song ‘Love the one you’re with‘. It seemed to encapsulate Bainbridge’s 1975 novel in a nutshell. (More Read More
Two Naughty Schoolgirls…
Harriet Said by Beryl Bainbridge Harriet Said was Beryl’s first work written in the late 1950s. However it ended up as her third published novel, as its darkness struggled to find a publisher initially. It is the story of two teenaged schoolgirls and what they got up to one summer holiday… The two girls are an Read More
It’s Beryl Bainbridge Reading Week!
Welcome to Beryl Bainbridge Reading Week I hope that many of you will join us in reading one of her books this week, and maybe posting about it, or leaving a comment on any of the Beryl posts here. Please do leave a link to your review in the comments below so everyone can follow Read More
A Farm Girl’s Tale …
The Colour of Milk by Nell Leyshon this is my book and i am writing it by my own hand. in this year of lord eighteen hundred and thirty one i am reached the age of fifteen and i am sitting by my window and i can see many things. i can see birds and Read More
Definitely not a misery memoir…
Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson In anyone else’s hands, this would be a misery memoir, however, in Jeanette Winterson’s, the memoir become more of a search for happiness. Pursuing happiness, and I did, and I still do, is not at all the same as being happy – which I Read More
