Monday, 8 January 2018
Sunday, 7 January 2018
The Husband's Secret by Liane Moriarty
Paperback: Did one act define who you were forever?
At the heart of The Husband’s Secret (2013) is a letter that is not meant to be read.
My darling Cecilia, if you’re reading this, then I’ve died...
Imagine that your husband wrote you a letter, to be opened after his death. Imagine, too, that the letter contains his deepest, darkest secret - something with the potential to destroy not just the life you built together, but the lives of others as well. Imagine, then, that you stumble across that letter while your husband is still very much alive.
Cecilia Fitzpatrick has achieved it all - she is an incredibly successful businesswoman, a pillar of her small community, and a devoted wife and mother of three. Her life is as orderly and spotless as her home. But that letter is about to change everything, and not just for her: Rachel and Tess barely know Cecilia - or each other - but they too are about to feel the earth-shattering repercussions of her husband’s secret.
Acclaimed author Liane Moriarty has written a gripping, thought-provoking novel about how well it is really possible to know our spouses - and, ultimately, ourselves.
About the author: Liane Moriarty is the Australian author of six internationally best-selling novels, Three Wishes, The Last Anniversary, What Alice Forgot, The Hypnotist's Love Story and the number 1 New York Times bestsellers, The Husband's Secret and Big Little Lies.
Her breakout novel The Husband's Secret sold over three million copies worldwide, was a number 1 UK bestseller, an Amazon Best Book of 2013 and has been translated into over 40 languages. It spent over a year on the New York Times bestseller list. CBS Films has acquired the film rights.
With the launch of Big Little Lies, Liane became the first Australian author to have a novel debut at number one on the New York Times bestseller list. Little Lies is now an Emmy-winning HBO limited series starring Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman, Shailene Woodley, Alexander Skarsgård, Laura Dern, Adam Scott and Zoe Kravitz set in Sydney, Australia.
Writing as L M Moriarty, Liane has also written a children's book series, The Petrifying Problem with Princess Petronella, The Shocking Trouble on the Planet of Shobble and The Wicked War on the Planet of Whimsy.
Liane lives in Sydney with her husband, son and daughter.
Rating: 5/5
Murder In Clichy (Aimée Leduc Series) by Cara Black
Hardback: Spirited Aimée Leduc, a private investigator based in Paris, has been introduced to the Cao Dai temple by her partner, René, who urges her to learn to meditate as a counterbalance to her frenetic lifestyle. There a Vietnamese nun asks her, as a favour, to pick up a package across town in the Clichy quarter.
Aimée is to hand over a check and bring the package back to the temple. But this act of kindness ends in a stranger's death and leaves her with a bullet wound in the arm, a check for 50 000 francs and a trove of ancient jade artifacts whose provenance is a mystery.
The French secret service, a group of veterans of the war in Indochina, some wealthy ex-colonials and contending international oil companies all claim the jade. They will stop at nothing to gain possession of it. And the nun has disappeared.
Since the incident in which she was temporarily blinded, in Murder In The Bastille, Aimée has promised both her partner and her fiancé that in future she will avoid danger. But somehow it continues to seek her out.
Murder In Clichy (2005) is the fifth book in the sophisticated, well-paced and intensely Parisienne Aimée Leduc series.
About the author: Cara Black is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of 17 books in the Private Investigator Aimée Leduc series, which is set in Paris. Cara has received multiple nominations for the Anthony and Macavity Awards, a Washington Post Book World Book of the Year citation, the Médaille de la Ville de Paris - the Paris City Medal, which is awarded in recognition of contribution to international culture - and invitations to be the Guest of Honour at conferences such as the Paris Polar Crime Festival and Left Coast Crime. With more than 400 000 books in print, the Aimée Leduc series has been translated into German, Norwegian, Japanese, French, Spanish, Italian, and Hebrew.
Cara was born in Chicago but has lived in California’s Bay Area since she was five years old. Before turning to writing full-time, she tried her hand at a number of jobs: she was a barista in the Basel train station café in Switzerland, taught English in Japan, studied Buddhism in Dharamsala in Northern India, and worked as a bar girl in Bangkok (only pouring drinks!). After studying Chinese history at Sophia University in Tokyo - where she met her husband, Jun, a bookseller, potter, and amateur chef - she obtained her teaching credential at San Francisco State College, and went on to work as a preschool director and then as an agent of the federally funded Head Start program, which sent her into San Francisco’s Chinatown to help families there - often sweatshop workers - secure early care and early education for their children. Each of these jobs was amazing and educational in a different way, and the Aimée Leduc books are covered in fingerprints of Cara’s various experiences.
Her love of all things French was kindled by the French-speaking nuns at her Catholic high school, where Cara first encountered French literature and went crazy for the work of Prix Goncourt winner Romain Gary. Her junior year in high school, she wrote him a fan letter - which he answered, and which inspired her to make her first trip to Paris, where her idol took her out for coffee and a cigar. Since then, she has been to Paris many, many times.
On each visit she entrenches herself in a different part of the city, learning its secret history. She has posed as a journalist to sneak into closed areas, trained at a firing range with real Paris flics, gotten locked in a bathroom at the Victor Hugo museum, and - just like Aimée - gone down into the sewers with the rats (she can never pass up an opportunity to see something new, even when the timing is not ideal - she was headed to a fancy dinner right afterwards and had a spot of bother with her shoes).
For the scoop on real Paris crime, she takes the flics out for drinks and dinner to hear their stories - but it usually turns into a long evening, which is why she sticks with espresso.
Rating: 5/5
Murder In The Bastille (Aimée Leduc Series) by Cara Black
Paperback: Aimée Leduc is all dressed up in her new Chinese silk jacket for dinner at an elegant restaurant in the Bastille district, but is chagrined to see the woman seated at the very next table is wearing an identical jacket.
When the woman leaves her mobile phone on the table, Aimée follows her to return it, but is attacked in the shadowy Passage de la Boule Blanche and blinded.
The woman she was following is dead.
Was her attacker a serial killer targeting showy blondes, as the police insist?
Was he really after the other woman?
Or was Aimée his intended victim?
Murder In The Bastille (2003) is the fourth instalment in the atmospheric and suspenseful PI Aimée Leduc investigation series set in Paris.
About the author: Cara Black is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of 17 books in the Private Investigator Aimée Leduc series, which is set in Paris. Cara has received multiple nominations for the Anthony and Macavity Awards, a Washington Post Book World Book of the Year citation, the Médaille de la Ville de Paris - the Paris City Medal, which is awarded in recognition of contribution to international culture - and invitations to be the Guest of Honour at conferences such as the Paris Polar Crime Festival and Left Coast Crime. With more than 400 000 books in print, the Aimée Leduc series has been translated into German, Norwegian, Japanese, French, Spanish, Italian, and Hebrew.
Cara was born in Chicago but has lived in California’s Bay Area since she was five years old. Before turning to writing full-time, she tried her hand at a number of jobs: she was a barista in the Basel train station café in Switzerland, taught English in Japan, studied Buddhism in Dharamsala in Northern India, and worked as a bar girl in Bangkok (only pouring drinks!). After studying Chinese history at Sophia University in Tokyo - where she met her husband, Jun, a bookseller, potter, and amateur chef - she obtained her teaching credential at San Francisco State College, and went on to work as a preschool director and then as an agent of the federally funded Head Start program, which sent her into San Francisco’s Chinatown to help families there - often sweatshop workers - secure early care and early education for their children. Each of these jobs was amazing and educational in a different way, and the Aimée Leduc books are covered in fingerprints of Cara’s various experiences.
Her love of all things French was kindled by the French-speaking nuns at her Catholic high school, where Cara first encountered French literature and went crazy for the work of Prix Goncourt winner Romain Gary. Her junior year in high school, she wrote him a fan letter - which he answered, and which inspired her to make her first trip to Paris, where her idol took her out for coffee and a cigar. Since then, she has been to Paris many, many times.
On each visit she entrenches herself in a different part of the city, learning its secret history. She has posed as a journalist to sneak into closed areas, trained at a firing range with real Paris flics, gotten locked in a bathroom at the Victor Hugo museum, and - just like Aimée - gone down into the sewers with the rats (she can never pass up an opportunity to see something new, even when the timing is not ideal - she was headed to a fancy dinner right afterwards and had a spot of bother with her shoes).
For the scoop on real Paris crime, she takes the flics out for drinks and dinner to hear their stories - but it usually turns into a long evening, which is why she sticks with espresso.
Rating: 5/5
Hear No Evil (Jack Swyteck Series) by James Grippando
Paperback: The fourth Jack Swyteck mystery finds the Miami defense lawyer in unfamiliar territory.
When a woman asks him to defend her against the charge of murdering her husband, Jack is initially reluctant: the victim is a U.S. naval officer; the crime took place at the naval base at Guantanamo Bay; and Jack has almost no experience with military courtroom procedures.
But the woman has a very persuasive reason for Jack to take the case (all right, it is a little far-fetched, but it works), and soon Jack finds himself fighting for his client's life in an arena that is brand new to him.
Hear No Evil (2004) is a tight, smartly constructed mystery - with military overtones - that will keep readers on the edge of their seats. It is the fourth instalment in the well-written Jack Swyteck legal series set in Florida, USA.
About the author: James Grippando is a New York Times bestselling author of twenty-five novels. He was a trial lawyer for twelve years before the publication of his first novel in 1994 (The Pardon), and later served as counsel at Boies Schiller and Flexner LLP. He lives in South Florida with his wife, three children, two cats, and a golden retriever named Max who has no idea that he is a dog.
Rating: 5/5
Saturday, 6 January 2018
Friday, 5 January 2018
City of Friends by Joanna Trollope
Paperback: City of Friends (2017) is the number one bestselling twentieth novel from the highly acclaimed author, Joanna Trollope.
She glanced at her phone again. There were appeals from the girls, from her colleagues, a text from Steve reading with uncharacteristic imperiousness, 'Call me.' She couldn't. She couldn't call anyone. She leaned forward, gripping the edge of the bench, and stared at the ground. God, she thought, am I losing my mind? Is this what happens when you lose your job?
The day Stacey Grant loses her job feels like the last day of her life. Or at least, the only life she had ever known. For who was she if not a City high-flyer, Senior Partner at one of the top private equity firms in London?
As Stacey starts to reconcile her old life with the new - one without professional achievements or meetings, but instead, long days at home with her dog and ailing mother, waiting for her successful husband to come home - she at least has The Girls to fall back on. Beth, Melissa and Gaby. The girls, now women, had been best friends from the early days of university right through their working lives, and for all the happiness and heartbreaks in between.
But these career women all have personal problems of their own, and when Stacey's redundancy forces a betrayal to emerge that was supposed to remain secret, their long cherished friendships will be pushed to their limits.
Stylishly written and perfectly enjoyable, City of Friends tackles contemporary issues about women, career, and whether women can have it all.
About the author: Joanna Trollope is the author of nineteen highly acclaimed and bestselling novels, including The Rector's Wife, Marrying The Mistress and Daughters-in-Law. She has also written a study of women in the British Empire, Britannia's Daughters, and ten historical novels under the pseudonym of Caroline Harvey. She was appointed OBE in 1996, and a trustee of the National Literacy Trust in 2012. She has chaired the Whitbread and Orange Awards, as well as being a judge of many other literature prizes; she has been part of two DCMS panels on public libraries and is patron of numerous charities, including Meningitis Now, and Chawton House Library. In 2014, she updated Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility as the opening novel in the Austen project.
Rating: 4/5
Thursday, 4 January 2018
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