Things I Do In My Spare Time

The Girl Who Takes An Eye For An Eye (Millenium Series) by David Lagercrantz

Paperback:  The girl with the dragon tattoo lives on.  The Girl Who Takes An Eye For An Eye (2017) is the fifth in the Millennium series that began with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  The latest book is inspired by Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy, as Salander and Blomkvist continue the fight for justice that has thrilled millions of readers across the world.

Lisbeth does not forgive.

Sentenced to two months in Flodberga women's prison for saving a young boy's life by any means necessary, Salander refuses to say anything in her own defence.  She has more important things on her mind.  Mikael Blomkvist makes the long trip to visit every week - and receives a lead to follow for his pains. 

For him, it looks to be an important exposé for Millennium magazine.

For her, it could unlock the facts of her childhood. 

Even from a corrupt prison system run largely by the inmates, Salander will stand up for what she believes in, whatever the cost. 

And she will seek the truth that is somehow connected with her childhood memory, of a woman with a blazing birthmark on her neck - that looked as if it had been burned by a dragon's fire.

The Girl Who Takes An Eye For An Eye is translated from the Swedish by George Goulding.

About the author:  David Lagercrantz, born in 1962, is a journalist and author, living in Stockholm. His first book was published in 1997, a biography of the Swedish adventurer and mountaineer Göran Kropp.  In 2000, his biography on the inventor Håkan Lans, A Swedish genius, was published.  His breakthrough as a novelist was of the Fall in Wilmslow (Fall of Man in Wilmslow), a fictionalized novel about the British mathematician Alan Turing. 

In 2011, his best-selling sports biography I am Zlatan (I am Zlatan Ibrahimovic) was published, one of the most successful books in Sweden in modern times.  The biography was nominated for the prestigious August Prize in 2012, as well as shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year award.  To date, I Am Zlatan Ibrahimovic has been published in over 30 languages around the world and been sold in millions of copies.

In the summer of 2013, Lagercrantz was asked by Moggliden (the Larsson Estate) and Collins to write the fourth, free-standing sequel to Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy.  That Which Does Not Kill Us (The Girl in the Spider's Web) was published in 2015 and The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye in 2017, the latter two being the fourth and fifth instalments respectively in the Millennium series originated by Stieg Larsson.  The Girl in the Spider’s Web was designated as one of the year’s best thrillers in 2015 by the magazine Esquire and short-listed to the 2016 Petrona Award in the Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year category. 

He is a board member of Swedish PEN, which fights for persecuted authors over the entire world.  Lagercrantz is also actively involved in children’s and youth’s readership through Läsrörelsen.

Rating:  5/5

No Bed Of Roses: The Rose Chan Story by Cecil Rajendra

Paperback: 

The Rose does not care
If someone calls it a thorn...
Ordinary Eyes classify human beings.
Pay no attention to what
so-and-so says about such-and-such,
Bow only to the essence in a person. (Rumi)

Rose Chan (née Chan Wai Chang) was Asia's undisputed Striptease Queen who took the art of shedding clothes to new heights in the 50s and 60s.  She represented Malaya at an International Striptease Contest in Paris in 1957 and was invited to train strippers in Japan in 1958.

Rose was also an accomplished ballroom dancer and gourmet cook.  Beyond the boards, Rose was renowned for her philanthropic work and preferred the moniker 'Charity Queen' to 'Striptease Queen'.

In 1980, Rose was diagnosed with terminal cancer and retreated to Penang, where she was introduced to the author Cecil Rajendra by her stage manager of the 50s.  A unique friendship blossomed and Rose invited Cecil to write her life story which she was then negotiating to sell to publishers.  Over the next five to six years, up to her demise in 1987, Rose unabashedly bared her remarkable life story which began in Soochow, China.

In No Bed of Roses (2014), Cecil Rajendra pens an account of her life her childhood in Soochow, China, and then in Kuala Lumpur and Singapore, her five marriages and personal struggles, how she circumvented the colonial decency laws that forbade nudity, and finally her fight with cancer that took her life in 1987 at the age of 62.

About the author:  Cecil Rajendra was born in Penang, Malaysia and spent the best part of his childhood in the then fishing village of Tanjong Tokong.  He received his formal education at St Xavier's Institution, the University of Singapore and Lincoln's Inn London.  While still a law student, he had his first collection of poems, Embryo.  He has since authored twenty-one collections of poetry.  His poems have been published in over fifty countries and translated into several languages including German, Japanese, Swahili, Tagalog, French, Chinese, Tamil, Bengali, Thai, Spanish, Malay, Dutch, Danish, Urdu and Esquimaux.

Over the years, Cecil's poems have appeared on records, cassettes, CDs, greeting cards, calendars, posters, human rights dossiers, tourist handbooks, church hymnals, environmental kits and school and university texts in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe and the United States.  Such is the wide range and sweep of his poetry that they have been used by Amnesty International, the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), INDEX (on Censorship), UNICEF, UNESCO, UNDP, UNHCR, the World Wide Fund on Nature (WWF), National Geographic, TIME, OXFAM, BBC, CONCERN and the World Council of Churches (WCC).

But though long acknowledged as 'one of the finest poets writing in Asia', he has also been one of the most controversial.  His work has been under constant attack by the literary and political establishment.  In 1993, authorities seized his passport ostensibly for his anti-logging activities which in reality was a body of work about the destruction of rainforests.  After an international outcry in five continents, culminating in a protest reading at the National Theatre in London, his passport was summarily returned.

Cecil Rajendra is a practising lawyer and has been credited as the founder of free legal aid in his country.  He has helmed the Legal Aid and Human Rights committees of the Malaysian Bar Council for several terms.  He is also past President of the Human Rights Society of Malaysia (HAKAM).  In 2005, he received the Malaysian Lifetime Humanitarian Award for his pioneering legal aid work and inspirational poetry.  In 2011, he was honoured by the Arts Council of Denmark with the prestigious DIVA (Danish International Visiting Artiste) Award.

In 2012, his work and contribution towards raising human rights consciousness was finally recognised when he was bestowed the Individual Human Rights Award by the Malaysian Human Rights Commission (SUHAKAM).

Aretha Franklin (1942-2018), American Singer, Songwriter and Pianist

The Washington Decree by Jussi Adler-Olsen

Hardback:  Sixteen years before Democratic Senator Bruce Jansen was elected president of the United States, a PR stunt brought together five very different people:  fourteen-year-old Dorothy "Doggie" Rogers, small-town sheriff T Perkins, single mother Rosalie Lee, well-known journalist John Bugatti, and the teenaged son of one of Jansen's employees, Wesley Barefoot.

In spite of their differences, the five remain bonded by their shared experience and devotion to their candidate (with Doggie and Wesley integral players in the campaign team that elevated Jansen to the Oval Office).

For Doggie, Jansen's election is a personal victory:  a job in the White House with Wesley.  Proof to her Republican father that she was right to support Jansen.  The rise of an intelligent, clear-headed leader with her same ideals.  But the triumph is short-lived:  Jansen's pregnant wife is assassinated on election night, and the alleged mastermind behind the shooting is none other than Doggie's own father.

When Jansen ascends to the White House, he is a changed man, determined to end gun violence by any means necessary.  Rights are taken away as quickly as weapons.  International travel becomes impossible.  Checkpoints and roadblocks destroy infrastructure.  The media is censored.  Militias declare civil war on the government.

The country is in chaos, and Jansen's former friends each find themselves fighting a very different battle, for themselves, their rights, their country and, in Doggie's case, the life of her father, who just may be innocent.

The Washington Decree (2017) is translated from the Danish by Steve Schein.

About the author:  Jussi Adler-Olsen is Denmark's No 1 crime writer and a New York Times bestselling author.  His books routinely top the bestseller lists in Europe and have sold more than fifteen million copies around the world.  His many prestigious Nordic crime-writing awards include the Glass Key Award, also won by Henning Mankell, Jo Nesbø, Stieg Larsson and Peter Høeg.  Connect online at www.jussiadlerolsen.com

Rating:  5/5

Sister Marie-Marthe Chambon of the Visitation Holy Mary of Chambéry and The Holy Wounds of Our Lord Jesus Christ by Sisters of the Visitation of St Louis

Paperback:  Marie Martha Chambon (March 6, 1841 – March 21, 1907) was a nun of the Religious of the Visitation of Chambery, known for introducing the Rosary of the Holy Wounds.

She began to report visions of Jesus in 1866, telling her to contemplate the Holy Wounds.  These were visions of Jesus Christ appearing to her and teaching her specific prayers and meditations on His wounds.  She reported that she was told to pray to and invoke the Holy Wounds unceasingly.

Her mother superior kept a chronicle of her life which constitutes this book (originally published in 1924), here translated from the original French by Bartholomew Okonkwo and re-published (2017) again for the first time in 93 years.

Most People Don't Live To Eat

The Borrowed by Chan Ho-Kei

Hardback:  From award-winning Hong Kong writer Chan Ho-kei, The Borrowed (2016) tells the story of Kwan Chun-dok, a Hong Kong detective who rises from constable to senior inspector over the span of several decades, from the 1960s to the present day, and becomes a legend in the force, nicknamed “the Eye of Heaven” by his amazed colleagues.

Divided into six sections told in reverse chronological order - each of which covers an important case in Kwan’s career and takes place at a pivotal moment in Hong Kong history - the novel follows Kwan from his experiences during the Leftist Riot in 1967, when a bombing plot threatens many lives;  the conflict between the HK Police and ICAC (Independent Commission Against Corruption) in 1977; the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989;  the Handover in 1997;  and the present day of 2013, when Kwan is called on to solve his final case, the murder of a local billionaire, while Hong Kong increasingly resembles a police state.

Along the way we meet Communist rioters, ultraviolent gangsters, stallholders at the city’s many covered markets, pop singers enmeshed in the high-stakes machinery of star-making, and a people always caught in the shifting balance of political power, whether in London or Beijing.

The Borrowed reveals just how closely everything is connected, how history always repeats itself, and how we have come full circle to repeat the political upheaval and societal unrest of the past. It is a gripping, brilliantly constructed novel from a talented new voice. 

The Borrowed is the story of Hong Kong.

The Borrowed is translated from the Chinese by Jeremy Tiang.

About the author:  Chan Ho-Kei 陳浩基 was born and raised in Hong Kong.  He has worked as a software engineer, scriptwriter, game designer and editor of comic magazines.  His writing career started in 2008 at the age of thirty-three, with the short story ‘The Case of Jack and the Beanstalk,’ which was shortlisted for the Mystery Writers of Taiwan Award.  He went on to win the award again the following year with ‘The Locked Room of Bluebeard.’

In 2011, Chan’s first novel, The Man Who Sold The World, won the biggest mystery prize in the Chinese-speaking world, the Soji Shimada Mystery Award, and has subsequently been published in Taiwan (Crown), China (New Star), Japan (Bungeishunju), Thailand (Nanmee) and Italy (Metropoli d’Asia).  The Borrowed has now been published in eight countries, and the film rights have been bought by director Wong Kar-wai.

Jeremy Tiang is an author, playwright and translator.  His short story collection It Never Rains on National Day is published by Epigram Books, and his writing has appeared in the Guardian, Esquire, Ambit and Litro among others.  He has translated more than ten books from Chinese, including work by Yeng Pway Ngon and Zhang Yueran.  He lives in New York.

Rating:  5/5

Mariam "The Little Arab": Sister Mary of Jesus Crucified (1846-1878) by Amédée Brunot, SCJ

Paperback:  Mariam "The Little Arab" follows the mystical crescendo of Saint Mary of Jesus Crucified aka Mariam Baouardy's life.  She founded the Carmelite monastery of Bethlehem and was beatified by John Paul II in 1983 continues to be an example for Christians of the Middle East and the entire world.  She was a mystic who knew how to live in God and to give witness to his love.

Three major themes emerge:

1)  Saint Mary affirms and reveals the reality of the supernatural world

2)  the transcendence of the Love of God, and

3)  the activity of the Holy Spirit in the Church.

Saint Mary forces us to reflect on the physical and spiritual condition of man.  What is more astonishing than the trajectory of a saint?  What greater message of hope could there be today in the troubled Near East, than to tell the Palestinians:  here is a young girl of your race, your language, and of one of your most honoured rites.  How can we fail to see that this child of Galilee and of the Eastern Church has a special message for those of her race and her rite.

Saint Mary referred to herself as the little nothing, and people ordinarily called her the little Arab, or the little one, or quite simply little one.  What an abyss of humility indeed!  Mysterious and fascinating, the phenomenon Mariam Baouardy does not lend itself easily to comprehension and analysis, with her alternations and frequent imbrications of the extraordinary and ordinary, of the supernatural and preternatural, of divine ecstasies and diabolical possessions.  It must be added that since the death of the young Carmelite at Bethlehem, many cures, of body as well as of soul, have been obtained through her intercession.

Mariam "The Little Arab" (1981) is translated from the French by Jeanne Dumais, OCDS and Sister Miriam of Jesus, OCD, Carmel of Maria Regina in Eugene, Oregon.

The Road To Jonestown: Jim Jones And Peoples Temple (True Crime) by Jeff Guinn

Paperback:  In the 1950s, a young Indianapolis minister named Jim Jones preached a curious blend of the gospel and Marxism.  His congregation was racially integrated, and he was a much-lauded leader in the contemporary civil rights movement.  Eventually, Jones moved his church, Peoples Temple, to northern California.  He became involved in electoral politics, and soon was a prominent Bay Area leader.

In this riveting narrative, Jeff Guinn examines Jones’s life, from his extramarital affairs, drug use, and fraudulent faith healing to the fraught decision to move almost a thousand of his followers to a settlement in the jungles of Guyana in South America. Guinn provides stunning new details of the events leading to the fatal day in November, 1978 when more than nine hundred people died - including almost three hundred infants and children - after being ordered to swallow a cyanide-laced drink.

Guinn examined thousands of pages of FBI files on the case, including material released during the course of his research.  He travelled to Jones’s Indiana hometown, where he spoke to people never previously interviewed, and uncovered fresh information from Jonestown survivors.  He even visited the Jonestown site with the same pilot who flew there the day that Congressman Leo Ryan was murdered on Jones’s orders. 

The Road to Jonestown (2017) is the definitive, comprehensive, authoritative, and tragic story of preacher Jim Jones, who was responsible for the Jonestown Massacre - the largest murder-suicide in American history - and the events that led to the tragedy at Jonestown.

About the author:  Jeff Guinn is the author of Manson:  The Life and Times of Charles Manson, The Last Gunfight:  The Real Story of the Shootout at the O.K. Corral And How It Changed the American West, and Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie & Clyde, which was a finalist for an Edgar Award in 2010.  He was a longtime journalist who has won national, regional and state awards for investigative reporting, feature writing and literary criticism.  He has written sixteen books including New York Times bestsellers.  One of only 32 members of the Texas Literary Hall of Fame, he lives in Fort Worth, Texas.

Get Out, Satan! by Father Gabriele Amorth, SSP

Paperback:  Get Out, Satan! (2014), in its simple structure, first of all, proposes to make clarifications, in conformity with theology and Catholic doctrine, on the figures of Satan and his demons and on their relationships with humans.

Therefore, this book aims to make people aware of the vast power that the Devil exercises on the world, especially if he is ignored or misinterpreted.

About the author:  Fr Gabriele Amorth, SSP is a member of the Society of St Paul, an international congregation engaged in evangelization through media of social communications.  As the Chief Vatican Exorcist, he claimed to have performed over 70,000 exorcisms from 1986 to 2010.  He was also the founder and honorary president of the International Association of Exorcists.  Among his bestselling books are An Exorcist Tells His Story, An Exorcist:  More Stories, and The Gospel of Mary, A Month with the Mother of God.

National Book Lovers Day 2018

Killers Of The Flower Moon: Oil, Money, Murder And The Birth Of The FBI (History) by David Grann

Paperback:  In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Indian Nation in Oklahoma.  After oil was discovered beneath their land, the Osage rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe.

Then, one by one, they began to be killed off.  One Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, watched as her family was murdered.  Her older sister was shot.  Her mother was then slowly poisoned.  And it was just the beginning, as more Osage began to die under mysterious circumstances.

In this last remnant of the Wild West where oilmen like J P Getty made their fortunes and where desperadoes such as Al Spencer, “the Phantom Terror,” roamed - virtually anyone who dared to investigate the killings were themselves murdered.  As the death toll surpassed more than twenty-four Osage, the newly created FBI took up the case, in what became one of the organization’s first major homicide investigations.

But the bureau was then notoriously corrupt and initially bungled the case.  Eventually the young director, J Edgar Hoover, turned to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to try to unravel the mystery.  White put together an undercover team, including one of the only Native American agents in the bureau.  They infiltrated the region, struggling to adopt the latest modern techniques of detection. 

Together with the Osage they began to expose one of the most sinister conspiracies in American history.

Killers Of The Flower Moon (2017) is a true-life murder mystery about one of the most monstrous crimes in American history.

About the author:  David Grann has written about everything from New York City’s antiquated water tunnels to the hunt for the giant squid to the presidential campaign.  His stories have appeared in several anthologies, including What We Saw: The Events of September 11 (2001);  The Best American Crime Writing, of both 2004 and 2005;  and The Best American Sports Writing, of 2003 and 2006.  A 2004 finalist for the Michael Kelly award for the “fearless pursuit and expression of truth,” Grann has also written for The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, The Weekly Standard, and The New Republic.

Before joining The New Yorker in 2003, Grann was a senior editor at The New Republic, and from 1995 until 1996, the executive editor of the newspaper The Hill.  He holds master’s degrees in international relations from the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy as well as in creative writing from Boston University.  After graduating from Connecticut College in 1989, he received a Thomas Watson Fellowship and did research in Mexico, where he began his career in journalism. 

He lives in New York with his wife and two children.

The Apartment by S L Grey

Paperback:  The Apartment (2016) is a high-concept psychological chiller about a troubled married couple on a house swap from hell.

Mark and Steph live an idyllic life with their young daughter in sunny Cape Town until one day when three men in masks violently break in.  Traumatized but physically unharmed, Mark and Steph are unable to return to normal and are living in constant fear.

When a friend suggests they take a restorative vacation abroad via a popular house-swapping website, it sounds like the perfect plan.

They find a nice artistic couple with a charming apartment in Paris who would love to come to Cape Town.  How could Mark and Steph resist the idyllic, light-strewn pictures, and the promise of a romantic getaway?

But once they arrive in Paris, they quickly realize that nothing is as advertised.  As their perfect holiday takes a deadly turn, the cracks in their relationship grow ever wider and dark secrets from Mark’s past begin to emerge.

Deftly alternating between two complex and compelling narrators, The Apartment is a terrifying tour de force of horror, of psychological thrills, and of chilling suspense.

About the author:  S L Grey is a collaboration between Sarah Lotz and Louis Greenberg.

Sarah is a novelist and screenwriter and die-hard zombie fanatic.  She writes crime novels and thrillers under her own name, and as Lily Herne, she and her daughter, Savannah Lotz, write the Deadlands series of zombie novels for young adults.

Louis is a Johannesburg-based fiction writer and editor.  He was a bookseller for several years, and has a Master's degree in vampire fiction and a doctorate in post-religious apocalyptic fiction.

Rating:  2/5