BOOKSIMO

  Description The Pulitzer Prize-winning, Booker-longlisted, bestselling author returns to her beloved heroine Lucy Barton in a luminous novel about love, loss, and the family secrets that can erupt and bewilder us at any point in life Lucy Barton is a successful writer living in New York, navigating the second half of her life as a recent widow and parent to two adult daughters. A surprise encounter leads her to reconnect with William, her first husband - and longtime, on-again-off-again friend and confidante. Recalling their college years, the birth of their daughters, the painful dissolution of their marriage, and the lives they built with other people, Strout weaves a portrait, stunning in its subtlety, of a tender, complex, decades-long partnership. Oh William!  captures the joy and sorrow of watching children grow up and start families of their own; of discovering family secrets, late in life, that alter everything we think we know about those closest to us; and the way ...

  Description CAN YOU AVOID A BIZARRE DEATH IN ENGLAND’S MOST DANGEROUS COUNTY?  All is not well in the beautiful county of Midsomer. On the eve of its first Villages In Bloom competition, a man lies slain, smelling of damson jam. Who could have done it? Well, that's where you come in. Step into the shoes of Midsomer CID's newest recruit, choose your own path and decide which way the story goes. Could You Survive Midsomer? sets off on an engaging pick-your-own adventure format to challenge the reader to solve a crime or succumb to the county's suspiciously high death rate. Set in television’s most celebrated and murderous county, the book allows readers to see if they can get to the bottom of the mystery and bring the perpetrator to justice, avoiding an untimely, and possibly bizarre death, along the way. Your task is to make the right choices, solve the case and – most tricky of all – stay alive!  Review This book is certainly a very clever concept. I'm not a big a fan...

  Description 'The Sun always has ways to reach us.' From her place in the store, Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, watches carefully the behaviour of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass in the street outside. She remains hopeful a customer will soon choose her, but when the possibility emerges that her circumstances may change for ever, Klara is warned not to invest too much in the promises of humans. In  Klara and the Sun , his first novel since winning the Nobel Prize in Literature, Kazuo Ishiguro looks at our rapidly-changing modern world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator to explore a fundamental question: what does it mean to love? Review This story was just amazing. Klara is an Artificial Friend and it is through her eyes the story is told. From her sitting in the shop window with her friend Rosa another AF and then when she is chosen by Josie to be her AF. I loved the beginning of the book and seeing the wor...

  Description Shay Bastable is the woman in the middle. She is part of the sandwich generation – caring for her parents and her children, supporting her husband Bruce, holding them all together and caring for them as best she can.   Then the arrival of a large orange skip on her mother’s estate sets in motion a cataclysmic series of events which leads to the collapse of Shay’s world. She is forced to put herself first for a change.   But in order to move forward with her present, Shay needs to make sense of her past. And so she returns to the little village she grew up in, to uncover the truth about what happened to her when she was younger. And in doing so, she discovers that sometimes you have to hit rock bottom to find the only way is up. Review Wow! Milly has packed so much into this book.  Shay is in the middle of it all. She cares for her Mother and her children even though they are now grown up and she cares for everyone else too. Unfortunately for Shay this i...

  Description She thought she had the perfect stepfather. So why is she running for her life? Emily longs to be an artist. So she’s thrilled when her famous and talented stepfather offers to act as her mentor. But when his teachings take a darker turn, she flees his fancy home. Bad boy Jack has made good as a hot DJ. Then he sees thugs attack a rough sleeper, and shocking memories spur him to her rescue. He doesn’t know she’s only 15 and running from a deadly predator. Emily’s hopes of safety are crushed when her stepfather hunts her down. Now Jack faces the hardest choice of all. If he protects Emily from the fiend who’s stolen her childhood, he’ll kiss goodbye to his future. What would you sacrifice to save a life? If you enjoy nail-biting suspense, slow-burning secrets and dark domestic noir, you’ll love AA Abbott’s chilling psychological thriller. Read Bright Lies today to join Emily and Jack on their journey! I'm on the blog tour today with Random Things Tours for this audiobo...

  Description *CHOSEN FOR THE BBC RADIO 2 BOOKCLUB!*  The first in the brilliant new  Pentecost and Parker  series, FORTUNE FAVOURS THE DEAD is a hugely entertaining murder mystery set in 1940s New York City. New York, 1946. Lillian Pentecost is the most successful private detective in the city, but her health is failing. She hires an assistant to help with the investigative legwork. Willowjean Parker is a circus runaway. Quick-witted and street-smart, she's a jack-of-all-trades with a unique skill-set. She can pick locks blindfolded, wrestle men twice her size, and throw knives with deadly precision - all of which come in handy working for Ms P. When wealthy young widow Abigail Collins is murdered and the police are making no progress, Pentecost and Parker are hired by the family to track down the culprit. On Halloween night, there was a costume party at the Collins' mansion, where a fortune teller performed a séance which greatly disturbed Abigail. Several hours la...

  Description Meet Gilda. She cannot stop thinking about death. Desperate for relief from her anxious mind and alienated from her repressive family, she responds to a flyer for free therapy at a local church and finds herself abruptly hired to replace the deceased receptionist Grace. It's not the most obvious job - she's queer and an atheist for starters - and so in between trying to learn mass, hiding her new maybe-girlfriend and conducting an amateur investigation into Grace's death, Gilda must avoid revealing the truth of her mortifying existence. A blend of warmth, deadpan humour, and pitch-perfect observations about the human condition,  Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead  is a crackling exploration of what it takes to stay afloat in a world where your expiration - and the expiration of those you love - is the only certainty. Review This novel deals with a character who has extreme anxiety/depression - it may not be for someone who can sometimes feel like thi...