Reviewed by Rod McLary Lanny is a book of the imagination and the reader who most enjoys it will have an imagination to match. Lanny – the eponymous hero – is a young boy living with his parents in a village outside London. His mother, Jolie, is an emerging crime writer and his father, Robert,
Reviewed by Ian Lipke Michael Connelly has a name among writers for producing crime fiction in a style that is balanced, thorough, and exciting. Reviewers who are prone to analysing his stories soon discover that a Connelly story could realistically happen in the way that he says has happened. Being factually accurate and written in
Reviewed by Gerard Healy This is a challenging read for a gaijin. The traditional conventions of the Japanese Tea Ceremony, as explained by Noriko Morishita, are a world away from most Westerners. Nevertheless, it is an intriguing world of ritual and ancient practices from which Miss Morishita has taken some valuable life lessons. She has
Reviewed by Ian Lipke Scott Newstok’s How to Think like Shakespeare: Lessons from a Renaissance Education really is a feel good book. A thick lather of the author’s enthusiasm, a comprehensive coverage of his subject matter, and the common sense inherent in his value judgments, work together to whip up a likeminded enthusiasm in his
Reviewed by Wendy Lipke When I first read the title of this book, I imagined the storyline would be something that highlighted the dedication of this group of people who provide us with the sustenance to survive. I was wrong in my assumption. This story does have a farmer at its centre. Mitch Bishop is
Reviewed by Antonella Townsend Six-legged bear-sized aliens living and procreating like bees in enormous hives that float in deep space; a state-of-the-art weaponized space ship; a volatile crew of four; and, artificial intelligence (AI) so evolved that humans are superfluous. Such are the elements of Max Barry’s latest speculative novel – Providence. This is a
Reviewed by Rod McLary Perveen Mistry is a lawyer – in fact, she is the first and so far the only female lawyer in Bombay – and in The Satapur Moonstone she is called on to resolve a dispute over the education of a young crown prince. The prince’s father and older brother have died
Reviewed by Patricia Simms-Reeve As a charming distraction from the Covid19 world, The Switch has all the winning ingredients, especially for the female reader. There is a clever, beautiful thirty-something heroine; a feisty adventurous seventy-year-old, her grandmother; a handsome, near perfect hero and a host of diverse minor characters. There is even a lively Labrador
Reviewed by E.B. Heath When the Global Financial Crisis rocked our confidence in the banking sector, it was not envisioned that a few years on a virus could wreak yet more economic havoc on our world. And now, Covid19 has landed on the heels of devastating bush fires that brought global warming up close and
Reviewed by Wendy Lipke The Lost Jewels by Kirsty Manning is a work of fiction woven around the mysterious Cheapside Hoard dug up in 1912. This was a cache of jewels from the late 16th and early 17th centuries unearthed by workmen using pickaxes when excavating a cellar in London. It is said to have
Reviewed by Ian Lipke This book traces the career, and the attempts to escape retribution, of SS Brigadesfűhrer Otto Freiherr von Wächter, a Nazi officer who commanded various armed groups during the Second World War. Charged with ‘mass murder’ and indicted, Wächter escapes the unstoppable American and Russian forces by taking to the Austrian Alps
Reviewed by Wendy Lipke With the words Seven Lies emblazoned across a fan folded red backdrop, one gets the impression that this book will not be a relaxing ‘feel good’ read. This feeling is further increased when learning that it has gained much attention in the literary world and garnered a flurry of 18 international
Reviewed by Wendy Lipke The latest fictional account of her hero private detective, Alex Clayton, appears in Katherine Kovacic’s The Shifting Landscape. The story of a bickering family, located on a sheep station in western Victoria, is interesting enough. It would not carry the Kovacic stamp if it were not heavily laden with reference after
Reviewed by Rod McLary Set in Austria in the middle years of World War II, this is a story of two families – Berthold [or Tholdi as he is generally known] and his parents Nathan and Lina, and Alex and his parents Jacob and Mira and his sister Peppa. Tholdi, Alex and Peppa are best
Reviewed by Wendy Lipke Danielle Steel is an extremely prolific writer with six new novels published during 2019 and five more planned for 2020. The Numbers Game was published in March 2020 and her latest presentation, The Wedding Dress, is due for publication in late April. Although she has a very strong following world-wide, and