The Boys From Biloxi by John Grisham

Hardback: For most of the last hundred years, Biloxi was known for its beaches, resorts, and seafood industry. But it had a darker side. It was also notorious for corruption and vice, everything from gambling, prostitution, bootleg liquor, drugs . . . even contract killings. The vice was controlled by a small cabal of mobsters, many of them rumoured to be members of the Dixie Mafia.

Keith Rudy and Hugh Malco grew up in Biloxi in the sixties and were childhood friends. But as teenagers, their lives took them in different directions. Keith’s father became a legendary prosecutor, determined to ‘clean up the Coast.’ Hugh’s father became the ‘Boss’ of Biloxi’s criminal underground. Keith went to law school and followed in his father’s footsteps. Hugh preferred the nightlife and worked in his father’s clubs. The two families were headed for a showdown, one that would happen in a courtroom.

Rich with history and with a large cast of unforgettable characters, The Boys from Biloxi (2022) is a sweeping saga of two sons of immigrant families who grow up as friends, but ultimately find themselves in a knife-edge legal confrontation in which life itself hangs in the balance.

In this novel, Grisham takes his powerful storytelling to the next level, his trademark twists and turns will keep you tearing through the pages until the stunning conclusion.

No one writes a legal drama like the legendary John Grisham.

About the author: Beginning with The Firm in 1991, John Grisham has published at least one No 1 bestseller every year. His books have been translated into 45 languages and have sold over 350 million copies worldwide. Ten have been adapted to film, including The Firm, The Pelican Brief, and A Time To Kill. His Theodore Boone series for young readers is now in development at Netflix. 

Find out more at jgrisham.com and stay in touch via Facebook at /JohnGrishamInt.

Rating: 5/5

Lucie Yi Is Not A Romantic by Lauren Ho

Paperback: An ambitious career woman signs up for a co-parenting website only to find a match she never expected, in this unflinchingly funny and honest novel, Lucie Yi Is Not A Romantic (2022).

Management consultant Lucie Yi is done waiting for Mr Right. After a harrowing breakup foiled her plans for children - and drove her to a meltdown in a Tribeca baby store - she is ready to take matters into her own hands. She signs up for an elective co-parenting website to find a suitable partner with whom to procreate - as platonic as family planning can be.

 

Collin Read checks all of Lucie’s boxes; he shares a similar cultural background, he is honest, and most important, he is ready to become a father. When they match, it does not take long for Lucie to take a leap of faith for her future. So what if her conservative family might not approve? 

When Lucie becomes pregnant, the pair return to Singapore and, sure enough, her parents refuse to look on the bright side. Even more complicated, Lucie’s ex-fiancé reappears, sparking unresolved feelings and compounding work pressures and the baffling ways her body is changing. 

Suddenly her straightforward arrangement is falling apart before her very eyes, and Lucie will have to decide how to juggle the demands of the people she loves while pursuing the life she really wants.

About the author: Lauren Ho is a reformed legal counsel who now prefers to write for pleasure. Hailing from Malaysia, she is currently based in Singapore, where she is ostensibly working on her next novel while attempting to parent. She is also the author of Last Tang Standing (2020). Ho can be found on Instagram or Twitter @HelloLaurenHo.

Rating: 5/5

2023 Prayer, Not A Resolution

St Thomas Beckett, Archbishop of Canterbury

Thomas à Becket (1118-1170)

Outside And Inside The Church

An Honourable Pact

Not Alone Enough To Make Every Moment Holy

Cold East by Gabija Grušaitė

Paperback: Twenty-something author and minor media influencer Stasys Šaltoka - or Stanley Colder to his adoring IG followers - has hit an existential wall. Abandoning his clichéd and stifling New York city life, he buys a one-way ticket to Southeast Asia in search of life-changing experiences.

A chance meeting with an enigmatic Russian leads Stasys to a documentary project - the murder of a mysterious Mongolian model that implicates a prime minister and his jewel-hoarding wife. 

Unravelling the truth takes Stasys deeper through the murky swamp of extreme corruption, death, Islamophobia and media manipulation.

Will he ever figure out the meaning of life or find a decent espresso?

Cold East (2017, 2018) has been shortlisted for the European Union Prize for Literature 2019 and Book of the Year in Lithuania 2018. It won the Jurga Ivanauskaitė Literary Prize (Lithuania) 2018 and the Penang Monthly Book Prize 2018. Cold East is translated from the Lithuanian by Kipras Šumskas.

About the author: Gabija Grušaitė is an author and curator; Cold East is her second novel. A graduate of Anthropology & Media from Goldsmiths College, UK, Gabija has defined her creative pursuit by the relentless search of new horizons through travel. In 2009, she settled in Penang, Malaysia, where she cofounded an independent, contemporary art centre – Hin Bus Depot – as its curator-in-chief. She currently lives in Vilnius, Lithuania with her two Malaysian dogs, Gorgeous and Hazelnut.

About the translator: Kipras Šumskas has translated movies, magazines, several books, and far too many legal documents. In his spare time, he teaches Creative Thinking to teenagers and kids in informal education projects.

Rating: 5/5

Merry Christmas, The Wondrous Gift of Christ

And The Word Became Flesh!

Just Like A Carpenter

In Due Time, As Snow Melts

Singapore Fire (An Ash Carter Thriller Series) by Murray Bailey

Paperback: The Endgame.

Once again caught between the government and the criminal gangs, it's time for Carter to choose.

Escape now or stand and fight? 

Singapore Fire (2021) is the sixth instalment in the excellent Private Investigator/ex-Special Investigations Branch British MP Ash Carter Thriller series set in Singapore in the 1950s. 

About the author: By day, Murray Bailey is an international consultant and lecturer in risk and statistical models. However crime-thriller writing is his main passion. He resides in beautiful Dorset with his wife and family.

Rating: 5/5

Just Look At Us

The Accidental Malay by Karina Robles Bahrin

Paperback: Siapa yang makan cili, dia lah yang terasa pedasnya. (He who eats chillies will feel the heat). - Malay proverb

Jasmine Leong wants to be the next CEO of Phoenix, her family’s billion-ringgit company known especially for its bak kwa. 

But when Jasmine discovers she is actually a Malay Muslim, her newfound identity threatens to upend her life and ambitions. 

Set in Kuala Lumpur and other areas of Malaysia, The Accidental Malay (2022) examines the human cost of a country’s racial policies, and paints a portrait of a woman unwilling to accept the fate history has designated for her.

The Accidental Malay won the Epigram Books Fiction Prize 2022, which promotes contemporary creative writing and rewards excellence in Southeast Asian literature.

The Accidental Malay is available in all bookshops in Malaysia and Singapore. In the UK (Amazon) and in the USA (Barnes & Noble), it is currently available on Kindle form only.

About the author: Karina Robles Bahrin got her first break as a writer when she guest edited a weekly teen column in The New Straits Times a very long time ago. Her short fiction has been published in venues such as Urban Odysseys: KL Stories; KL Noir: Blue; A Subtle Degree of Restraint & Other Stories and Malaysian Tales: Retold & Remixed. She is a former columnist with The Heat, a weekly by Focus Malaysia. She currently lives and works on the island of Langkawi, Malaysia. The Accidental Malay is her debut novel.

Rating: 5/5

Happiness No 1412

Church Of Cowards: A Wake-Up Call To Complacent Christians (Religion & Spirituality) by Matt Walsh

Paperback: They followed worthless idols and became worthless themselves. - Jeremiah 2:5

What Would You Surrender for God?

Christians in the Middle East, in much of Asia, and in Africa are still being martyred for the faith, but how many American Christians are willing to lay down their smartphones, let alone their lives, for the faith?

Being a Christian in America does not require much these days. Suburban megachurches are more like entertainment venues than places to worship God. The lives that American “Christians” lead aren’t much different from those of their atheist neighbours, and their knowledge of theology is not much better either.

Matt Walsh of The Daily Wire exposes the pitiful state of Christianity in America today, lays out the stakes for us, our families, and our eternal salvation, and invites us to a faith that is a lot less easy and comfortable - but that is more real and actually worth something.

The spiritual junk food we are stuffing ourselves with is never going to satisfy. As St Augustine said over a millennium ago, our hearts are restless until they rest in Him. Only God Himself can make our lives anything but ultimately meaningless and empty. And we will never get anywhere near Him if we refuse to take up our cross and follow Jesus.

This rousing call to the real adventure of a living faith is a wake-up call to complacent Christians and a rallying cry for anyone dissatisfied with a lukewarm faith. 

About the author: Matt Walsh, a columnist and host of The Matt Walsh Show podcast at The Daily Wire, is known for his controversial and provocative insights into culture, politics and religion. He speaks out in a way that connects with his generation and beyond. He lives in Nashville, Tennessee with his wife and young children.

Jolabokaflod

I'm Reading

Reading To A Young Calf

How The Tables Have Turned

Anwar Ibrahim: Evolution Of A Muslim Democrat by Charles Allers

Paperback: Long before the recent Arab Spring, when the topic of democracy with in many Muslim countries took centre stage internationally, Malaysia's Anwar Ibrahim, an energetic and charismatic politician, had been one of the most vocal global proponents of the compatibility of Islam and democratic principles. 

Anwar, who at one time was asked to be secretary-general of the United Nations, has lived a life that is a compelling testimony of the growth and evolution of his love for his country and his faith. Anwar has been active at the highest levels of Malaysian politics for over thirty years, and though he has been jailed for his activism on several occasions, he continues to be a dynamic, passionate voice for the diverse cultures, religions, and peoples of Malaysia. 

Charles Allers, who holds a PhD in Islamic Studies, tells Anwar's life story in a factual, impartial way, and his one-on-one interviews with Anwar add a unique personal component.

Anwar Ibrahim: Evolution of a Muslim Democrat (2013), illustrated with photographs of Anwar from throughout his political career, is essential reading for those interested in developing their understanding of the complexities and controversies surrounding Anwar Ibrahim and his place in Malaysian society, as well as those interested in attitudes toward politics and religion in modern Islamic contexts.

About the author: Charles Allers holds a PhD in Islamic studies. He has been a pastor and educator in Southern California for the past 30 years. He and his wife, Greta, reside in San Diego, California.

Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman

Paperback: From 'the folk hero of Davos', Fox News antagonist and author of the international bestseller Utopia for Realists (2014, 2017) comes a radical history of our innate capacity for kindness. It is a belief that unites the left and right, psychologists and philosophers, writers and historians. It drives the headlines that surround us and the laws that touch our lives. 

From Machiavelli to Hobbes, Freud to Pinker, the roots of this belief have sunk deep into Western thought. Human beings, we are taught, are by nature selfish and governed by self-interest.

Humankind (2019, 2020) makes a new argument: that it is realistic, as well as revolutionary, to assume that people are good. The instinct to cooperate rather than compete, trust rather than distrust, has an evolutionary basis going right back to the beginning of Homo sapiens. By thinking the worst of others, we bring out the worst in our politics and economics too. In this major book, international-bestselling author Rutger Bregman takes some of the world's most famous studies and events and reframes them, providing a new perspective on the last 200,000 years of human history.

From the real-life Lord of the Flies to the cooperation seen in the aftermath of the Blitz, the hidden flaws in the Stanford Prison Experiment to the true story of the Kitty Genovese murder, Bregman shows how believing in human kindness and altruism can be a new way to think - and act as the foundation for achieving true change in our society. It is time for a new view of human nature.

Humankind (2019, 2020) was awarded the Publieksprijs voor het Nederlandse Boek (2020) and nominated for the Goodreads Choice Award for History & Biography (2020).

About the author: Rutger Bregman (1988) is a historian and author. He has published five books on history, philosophy, and economics. His books Humankind and Utopia for Realists were both New York Times Bestsellers and have been translated in more than 40 languages. Bregman has twice been nominated for the prestigious European Press Prize for his work at The Correspondent. He lives in Holland.

A Town Called Solace by Mary Lawson

Paperback: A Town Called Solace (2021) is longlisted for the Booker Prize 2021.

Clara's older sister is missing. Angry, rebellious Rose, had a row with their mother, stormed out of the house and simply disappeared. Eight-year-old Clara, isolated by her distraught parents' efforts to protect her from the truth, is grief-stricken and bewildered.

Liam Kane, newly divorced, newly unemployed, newly arrived in this small northern town, moves into the house next door, a house left to him by an old woman he can barely remember and within hours gets a visit from the police. It seems he's suspected of a crime.

At the end of her life Elizabeth Orchard is thinking about a crime too, one committed thirty years ago that had tragic consequences for two families and in particular for one small child. She desperately wants to make amends before she dies.

Set in Northern Ontario in 1972, A Town Called Solace is Mary Lawson's fourth novel and explores the relationships of these three people brought together by fate and the mistakes of the past. By turns gripping and darkly funny, it uncovers the layers of grief and remorse and love that connect us, but shows that sometimes a new life is possible.

About the author: Mary Lawson was born and brought up in the small farming community of Blackwell, near Sarnia, Ontario, Canada. Her family had a summer cottage in northern Ontario, in an area of lakes and rocks and forests known as the Canadian Shield. It remains, Lawson says, her favourite landscape, and it has played a major role in her writing.

After graduating from McGill University in Montreal she went to England for a holiday, ran out of money, had to find a job, fell in love with a colleague and married him. They have two sons and live in Kingston upon Thames, near London.

Lawson began writing when her children went to school. For some years she dabbled with short stories, which she sold to women’s magazines, but it wasn’t until she set one of those stories in Canada and was advised by an editor to turn it into a novel that she finally found her voice and discovered what she wanted to write about.

Crow Lake, her first novel, published when Lawson was 55, sold in 28 countries. It spent 75 weeks on the bestseller list in Canada, won the Amazon.ca First Novel Award, was a New York Times bestseller and was chosen as a Book of the Year by the New York Times, The Sunday Times, The Washington Post and The Globe and Mail. The Other Side of the Bridge, her second novel, was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize and was a Richard and Judy Summer Read in the UK.  Road Ends, published to critical acclaim in 2014, was a top-ten bestseller, described by the New York Times as “tender and surprising...a vivid and evocative tale”.

Rating: 5/5

The Disappearance Of Lydia Harvey: A True Story Of Sex, Crime And The Meaning Of Justice by Julia Laite

Paperback: 1910, Wellington, New Zealand. Lydia Harvey is sixteen, working long hours for low pay, when a glamorous couple invite her to Buenos Aires. She accepts - and disappears.

London, England. Amid a global panic about sex trafficking, detectives are tracking a ring of international criminals when they find a young woman on the streets of Soho who might be the key to cracking the whole case. As more people are drawn into Lydia's life and the trial at the Old Bailey, the world is being reshaped into a new, global era. Choices are being made - about who gets to cross borders, whose stories matter and what justice looks like - that will shape the next century.

In this immersive account, historian Julia Laite traces Lydia Harvey through the fragments she left behind to build an extraordinary story of aspiration, exploitation and survival - and one woman trying to build a life among the forces of history.

The Disappearance of Lydia Harvey: A True Story of Sex, Crime and the Meaning of Justice (2021) won the CWA ALCS Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction 2022.

About the author: Julia Laite is a reader in modern history at Birkbeck, University of London. Her first book, Common Prostitutes and Ordinary Citizens (2011), examined the criminalisation of commercial sex in 20th-century London. She has written for the Guardian, Open Democracy and History & Policy, and appeared on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour and Making History, as well as the television programme Find My Past. She discovered Lydia Harvey during research for her first book and has been searching for her story in archives around the world ever since. She lives in Cambridge with her partner and their two children.

My Menopause Memoir by Tracy Minnock-Nuku

Paperback: Planning my Fabulous 50th and I smacked into the throes of perimenopause - although I'd never heard of it! Hot flashes, night sweats, brain fog, anxiety and no one to talk to about this. Even my GP hadn't mention the pending hormonal changes. 

Once I wrapped my head around the 35 recognised symptoms (and counting) and that I had 29 of these, I committed to learning everything I could and telling everyone I could. My journey through menopause has had trauma, heartbreak, humour and enlightenment. While I share my personal experience about each perimenopause symptom, I navigate conversations with experts from around the world for my podcast "Sexy Ageing" and learn that there are many things we can do to support our menopause transition - both naturally and medically. 

Each symptom is broken down into a story that you can probably relate to, an explanation of what is happening in the body to cause that symptom and then top tips to support you as recommended by the experts in this field. My experience is supported by other women's stories and from their sharing, we learn that every woman's journey is different.

About the author: Tracy Minnoch-Nuku (BPhEd - Otago, NZ and MBA, Vic, Melb.) is an educated and experienced advocate for women's health and fitness. With over 30 years in the fitness industry, Tracy began her career as a Group Fitness Teacher and Personal Trainer where she transformed bodies and lives through fitness and nutrition. Tracy spent 20 years developing teams and fitness training programs in Asia - live, online and through fitness apps. 

Tracy’s own experience with menopause was messy. Without any prior warning, her symptoms began to accelerate and negatively impacted on her physical and mental health, work life and relationships. Tracy documents all of her symptoms and experiences in her book My Menopause Memoir (2022) as well as through her highly acclaimed podcast “Sexy Ageing”.

Saint Maravillas Of Jesus: Jesus Christ The Sole Reason Of My Life by Baldomero Jiménez-Duque

Booklet: Since her death, Mother Maravillas has become a talking point both among Carmelites and throughout the Church. It should as no surprise to us that of all Carmelites, she is the one who has been raised to the altar in the shortest time: only 24 years after her death. St Teresa of Ávila took 30 years and even St Thérèse of Lisieux took 32. So this is a record.

She has been called the St Teresa of the 20th century. And rightly so. The convents she founded and her life are very impressive. The role she played had providential and prophetic echoes. This small and urgent biography is intended as a humble offering to this extraordinary woman, or rather to the glory of God, since all is grace.

Mother Maravillas (1891-1974), a Discalced Carmelite, is an example of deep humility and devotion to the Lord. Her dedication and her love of God, her Teresian spirituality and apostolic zeal can be seen in the foundation of various convents, among which two stand out: Cerro de los Ángeles and La Aldehuela. She died in 1974, was beatified in 1998 and canonized in 2003.

Saint Maravillas Of Jesus: Jesus Christ The Sole Reason Of My Life (2002) is translated from the original Spanish text, Vida de la Madre Maravillas, into the English by Oliver Todd.

Saint Maravillas Of Jesus: Jesus Christ The Sole Reason Of My Life (2002) was purchased at the Librairie Catholique Internationale in Lourdes, France, for a sum of €12.

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