BOOKSIMO

  Excited to be a part of the book tour for this book today. Synopsis: “For crying out loud! I can’t even cast on now.” Claire has never unravelled anything before, being a confident knitter. But now, to her dismay, everything she creates is a disaster, riddled with dropped stitches and glaring holes. It’s almost as if her hands have a mind of their own. Maybe it’s because her longest relationship to date has just ended, or perhaps it has something to do with the fact her career is on the ropes. “Don’t get frustrated with your needles! The problem lies with the knitter, not the knitting,” said Adrian, owner of Oddballs wool shop. Following his advice, in the desperate hope it will cure her woolly woes, Claire begins to turn her life around. Her grand plan involves FishTank, the online dating site. She convinces Adrian that if they sign up and find love, their problems will be solved (and she’ll have at least one area of her life sorted!). The trouble starts when he has far more luc...

  Description 'When did you last read a genuinely original thriller?  The wait is over ' A. J. Finn, bestselling author of The Woman in the Window ' I couldn't put  Eight Detectives  down  . . . I genuinely wanted to applaud at the end' Alex North, bestselling author of The Whisper Man All murder mysteries follow a simple set of rules. Grant McAllister, an author of crime fiction and professor of mathematics, once sat down and worked them all out. But that was thirty years ago. Now he's living a life of seclusion on a quiet Mediterranean island - until Julia Hart, a sharp, ambitious editor, knocks on his door. His early work is being republished and together the two of them must revisit those old stories: an author, hiding from his past, and an editor, keen to understand it. But as she reads, Julia is unsettled to realise that there are things in the stories that don't make sense. Intricate clues that seem to reference a real murder, one that's remained ...

  Description *A moving, unforgettable story inspired by true events* We all have something to tell those we have lost . . . When Yui loses her mother and daughter in the tsunami, she wonders how she will ever carry on. Yet, in the face of this unthinkable loss, life must somehow continue. Then one day she hears about a man who has an old disused telephone box in his garden. There, those who have lost loved ones find the strength to speak to them and begin to come to terms with their grief. As news of the phone box spreads, people travel to it from miles around. Soon Yui makes her own pilgrimage to the phone box, too. But once there she cannot bring herself to speak into the receiver. Then she finds Takeshi, a bereaved husband whose own daughter has stopped talking in the wake of their loss. What happens next will warm your heart, even when it feels as though it is breaking. When you've lost everything, what can you find . . ? Review I usually love books set in Japan, and whilst th...

  Description This is Britain as you've never read it. This is Britain as it has never been told. From Newcastle to Cornwall, from the birth of the twentieth century to the teens of the twenty-first,  Girl, Woman, Other  follows a cast of twelve characters on their personal journeys through this country and the last hundred years. They're each looking for something - a shared past, an unexpected future, a place to call home, somewhere to fit in, a lover, a missed mother, a lost father, even just a touch of hope . . . Review I had so many reasons for not reading this book! It won a Booker Prize (I often don't get on with ones that do win), it has no punctuation, there are no capital letters for words beginning a sentence, it is a mix of prose and writing. It is written from a POV I know little about. Yet I read it - and I am so glad I did. Borrowed from the library in case I hated it I slowly got into the book. Yes the lack of capital letters and punctuation annoyed me - b...

  Description Leila’s charm bracelet tells a story of love, a story of loss, a story of hope. This is the story of her… and the story of Jake. When Leila Jones loses her precious charm bracelet and a stranger finds it, she has to tell the story of how she got the charms to prove she’s the owner. Each and every one is a precious memory of her life with Jake. So Leila starts at the beginning, recounting the charms and experiences that have led her to the present. A present she never could have expected when she met Jake nearly twenty years ago… Review The book begins with Leila having lost her charm bracelet, she is emailing Caitlin who has found it. What follows is Leila's explanation of how she got each charm, so as to prove to Caitlin that she is the true owner of the bracelet. We are then transported back to when Leila and Jake first met when they were children. Leila's Mum has left the family home and she and her Dad are moving out now. Jake and his parents are moving into ...

  Description Vintage Crime  is a CWA anthology with a difference, celebrating members’ work over the years. The book will gather stories from the mid-1950s until the twenty-first century by great names of the past, great names of the present together with a few hidden treasures by less familiar writers. The first CWA anthology,  Butcher’s Dozen , appeared in 1956, and was co-edited by Julian Symons, Michael Gilbert, and Josephine Bell. The anthology has been edited by Martin Edwards since 1996, and has yielded many award-winning and nominated stories in the UK and overseas. This new edition includes an array of incredible and award-winning authors:  Robert Barnard, Simon Brett, Liza Cody, Mat Coward, John Dickson Carr, Marjorie Eccles, Martin Edwards, Kate Ellis, Anthea Fraser, Celia Fremlin, Frances Fyfield, Michael Gilbert, Paula Gosling, Lesley Grant-Adamson, HRF Keating, Bill Knox, Peter Lovesey, Mick Herron, Michael Z. Lewin, Susan Moody, Julian Symons  an...

  Description You think your life is perfect. You think your secrets are safe. You think it’ll always be this way. But your life can change in a heartbeat. Brilliantly emotional, suspenseful and page-turning,  One Minute Later  is the stunning new novel from the Sunday Times bestselling author, Susan Lewis. Susan Lewis – behind every secret lies a story. With a high-flying job, a beautiful apartment and friends whose lives are as happy as her own, Vivienne Shager is living the dream. Then, on the afternoon of Vivi’s twenty-seventh birthday, one catastrophic minute changes everything. Forced to move back to the small seaside town where she grew up, Vivi remembers the reasons she left. The secrets, lies and questions that now must be answered before it’s too late. But the answers lie in thirty years in the past… Shelley Raynor’s family home, Deerwood Farm, has always been a special place until darkness strikes at its heart. When Vivi’s and Shelley’s worlds begin to entwine,...