We Have Books

Exquisite – Sarah Stovell – Review and Blog tour I’m so chuffed (do people still SAY chuffed these days?) to be part of the blog tour for this truly exquisite book! Certain to appeal to all keen readers and budding writers because its two lead characters are both authors, and absolutely guaranteed to enthrall those discerning folk who do pick it up and read it  owing to the wonderfully sublime writing and clever characterization within the pages. Bo is the first woman we meet. In her forties, she is already a successful, popular, published author with a string of books to her credit. Living in the tranquil and idyllic Lake district with her older husband and their two daughters, she is self-assuredly living the dream every fledgling writer fantasizes about. Every now and then she holds a creative writing course to help new talent emerge. Isn’t she just the perfect role model for a struggling, younger, would be author to admire? That emerging writer turns out to be Alice. She hasn’t...

Leopard at the Door by Jennifer McVeigh Blog Tour. Today is my stop on the blog tour for Leopard at the door a gritty historical novel about life in Kenya in the 1950s. The blurb Stepping off the boat in Mombasa, eighteen-year-old Rachel Fullsmith stands on Kenyan soil for the first time in six years. She has come home. But when Rachel reaches the family farm at the end of the dusty Rift Valley Road, she finds so much has changed. Her beloved father has moved his new partner and her son into the family home. She hears menacing rumours of Mau Mau violence, and witnesses cruel reprisals by British soldiers. Even Michael, the handsome Kikuyu boy from her childhood, has started to look at her differently. Isolated and conflicted, Rachel fears for her future. But when home is no longer a place of safety and belonging, where do you go, and who do you turn to? My Review: Leopard at the door is not your average historical romantic fiction, it is a dark and powerful look at a time and place whe...

I'm thrilled to be second up on the blog tour for the WONDERFUL new book The Wild Air by Rebecca Mascull as I'm not sure I can keep my big mouth shut any longer about quite how ownderful I found this story. Wow The Wild Air blew me away (or maybe I should say FLEW me away) The Blurb .....  A heart-warming, exhilarating novel about one young woman's determination to follow her dreams of becoming a pilot in the early 20th century. In Edwardian England, aeroplanes are a new, magical invention, while female pilots are rare indeed. When shy Della Dobbs meets her mother's aunt, her life changes forever. Great Auntie Betty has come home from Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, across whose windswept dunes the Wright Brothers tested their historic flying machines. Della develops a burning ambition to fly and Betty is determined to help her. But the Great War is coming and it threatens to destroy everything - and everyone - Della loves. Uplifting and page-turning, THE WILD AIR is a stor...

My Review of Goldsmith Jones by Sam Taylor-Pye Goldsmith Jones - It's like Oliver Twist with sodomy! Set in the wild west, in the gold rush era, the eponymous character is a teenage rent boy and he is a damn' fool! He just never learns from his mistakes and he gets himself into many risky situations he could so easily avoid, yet lands himself in scalding water, again and again. I'm not really sure why I found this book so engaging, but I rolled with it and really rather enjoyed it. It's certainly different and darkly exciting. Goldsmith Jones "My name's not Nancy or Boy" arrives, with his long blond hair tucked beneath a greasy cap, in San Francisco in the mid 19th century to find it a lawless and poverty ridden place. Orphaned and soon on the run from the law, he begins a life of male prostitution to earn himself a roof over his head and a crust and soon falls in with a succession of unsavoury characters, who in the main, treat him badly, apart from the n...