I Know This Because It Happened To Me

Gorky Park (Arkady Renko Series) by Martin Cruz Smith

Paperback: Three bodies found frozen in the snow. And the hunt for the killer begins.

It begins with a triple murder in a Moscow amusement center: three corpses found frozen in the snow, faces and fingers missing. Chief homicide investigator Arkady Renko is brilliant, sensitive, honest, and cynical about everything except his profession. To identify the victims and uncover the truth, he must battle the KGB, FBI, and the New York City police as he pursues a rich, ruthless, and well-connected American fur dealer. Meanwhile, Renko is falling in love with a beautiful, headstrong dissident for whom he may risk everything.

A wonderfully textured, vivid look behind the Iron Curtain, Gorky Park (1981) is a tense, atmospheric, and memorable crime story.

Gorky Park is the first instalment in the Chief Investigator Arkady Renko series set in Russia. There are nine books in this excellent series.

About the author: Martin Cruz Smith is the bestselling author of thirteen novels, including the Arkady Renko thrillers: Gorky Park, Polar Star, Red Square, Havana Bay, Wolves Eat Dogs, Stalin's Ghost, and Three Stations. A recipient of the CWA Gold Dagger award for fiction in the UK, he is also two-time winner of the Hammett Prize in the United States. He lives in northern California with his wife and three children.

Rating: 3/5

Sought After Story

A State of Free Float

Sharlene Teo (1987- ), Singaporean-born Writer based in London

Reading and Talking From Different Fields

Murder in Pigalle (Aimée Leduc Investigation Series) by Cara Black

Paperback: June, 1998: Paris’s sticky summer heat is even more oppressive than usual as rowdy French football fans riot in anticipation of the World Cup. Private investigator Aimée Leduc has been trying to slow down her hectic lifestyle - she is five months pregnant and has the baby’s well-being to think about now.

But then disaster strikes close to home. A serial rapist has been terrorizing Paris’s Pigalle neighborhood, following teenage girls home and attacking them in their own houses. Zazie, the 13-year-old daughter of the proprietor of Aimée’s favourite café, has disappeared. The police aren’t mobilizing quickly enough, and when Zazie’s desperate parents approach Aimée for help, she knows she couldn’t say no even if she wanted to.

Murder in Pigalle (2014) is Cara Black’s fashionable Parisian PI Aimée Leduc fourteenth adventure and five months pregnant.

About the author: Cara Black is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of 18 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.

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 isn’t 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

Singapore Noir Edited by Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan

Paperback: From the Introduction by Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan:

"Say Singapore to anyone and you'll likely hear one of a few words: Caning. Fines. Chewing gum.

For much of the West, the narrative of Singapore - a modern Southeast Asian city-state perched on an island on the tip of the Malay Peninsula - has been marked largely by its government's strict laws and unwavering enforcement of them. As much as I understand these outside viewpoints, I have always lamented that the quirky and dark complexities of my native country's culture rarely seem to make it past its borders.

Beneath its sparkling veneer is a country teeming with shadows. And its stories remain. The rich stories that attracted literary lions W Somerset Maugham and Rudyard Kipling to hold court at the Raffles Hotel (where the Singapore Sling was created) are still sprinkled throughout its neighbourhoods. And in the following pages, you'll get the chance to discover some of them.

You'll find stories from some of the best contemporary writers in Singapore - three of them winners of the Singapore Literature Prize, essentially the country's Pulitzer: Simon Tay, writing as Donald Tee Quee Ho, tells the story of a hard-boiled detective who inadvertently wends his way into the underbelly of organized crime, Colin Cheong shows us a surprising side to the country's ubiquitous cheerful 'taxi uncle,' while Suchen Christine Lim spins a wistful tale of a Chinese temple medium whose past resurges to haunt her.

As for mine, I chose a setting close to my heart - the kelongs, or old fisheries on stilts, that once dotted the waters of Singapore but are gradually disappearing. I have a deep sense of romance about these kelongs, along with the many other settings, characters, nuances, and quirks that you'll see in these stories. They're intense, inky, nebulous. There is evil, sadness, a foreboding. And liars, cheaters, the valiant abound.

This is a Singapore rarely explored in Western literature until now. No Disneyland here; but there is a death penalty."

About the editor/author: Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan is a New York City-based food and fashion writer whose work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, InStyle, Marie Claire, Every Day with Rachael Ray, Family Circle, Baltimore Sun, Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, and many other outlets.

She is a regular contributor to the Atlantic Food Channel. Born and raised in Singapore, Tan graduated from Northwestern University and completed two residencies at Yaddo, the artists colony. Tan is the author of A Tiger in the Kitchen (2011) and Sarong Party Girls (2016).

Follow her at: twitter.com/cheryltan88.

Rating: 5/5

Talk About Magic

Confessions Of A Bookseller by Shaun Bythell

Hardback: Tuesday, 29 December. "Do you have a list of your books, or do I just have to stare at them?"

Monday, 13 April. A man approached me as I was pricing up stock and asked, "I wonder if you can help me, I'm looking for self-help books." I'm almost certain that he failed to see the irony, so I asked him what sort of self-help books he was looking for, to which he replied, "I don't know."

Saturday, 9 May. A very elderly man, walking using two sticks to help him get about, bought a copy of a book called 'Advanced Sex: Explicit Positions for Explosive Lovemaking'.

Shaun Bythell is the owner of The Bookshop, Scotland's largest second-hand bookshop, in Wigtown, Scotland. But if you think his days are taken up with sorting through rare and valuable first editions, snoozing by the fire with the latest literary gem, or chatting with interesting, well-informed readers, think again.

Bookselling, Shaun reveals in his sequel to the bestselling The Diary of a Bookseller (2017), is far from the idyll you might imagine. Beset by bizarre requests from customers who appear not to know what a shop is, locked in an endless struggle with Amazon and terrorised by his bin-diving, poultice-making employees, Shaun documents his trials and tribulations with a sharp eye and even sharper wit.

This the inside story of a life lived in books: from the pleasures of the unexpected find to the friendships forged over shared tastes and the sadness of finishing a really good book, Confessions of a Bookseller (2019) will delight and inform until the very last page.

About the author: Shaun Bythell bought The Bookshop in Wigtown on 1 November 2001 and has been running it ever since with an increasing passion for the business, matched only by a sense of despair for its future, and an ill-humour inspired by a decade-and-a-half of dealing with confused customers and surly staff. He is also one of the organisers of the Wigtown Festival.

His first book, The Diary of a Bookseller, was sold into twenty-three languages including Russian, Korean, Arabic and French and has been optioned for a television series.

Rating:  5/5

Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915), American Writer, Publisher, Artist, and Philosopher

The Cruellest Month (Chief Inspector Gamache Series) by Louise Penny

Paperback: Welcome to Three Pines, where the cruellest month is about to deliver on its threat.

It is spring in the tiny, forgotten village; buds are on the trees and the first flowers are struggling through the newly thawed earth. But not everything is meant to return to life.

When some villagers decide to celebrate Easter with a séance at the Old Hadley House, they are hoping to rid the town of its evil - until one of their party dies of fright. Was this a natural death, or was the victim somehow helped along?

Brilliant, compassionate Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec is called to investigate, in a case that will force him to face his own ghosts as well as those of a seemingly idyllic town where relationships are far more dangerous than they seem.

The Cruellest Month (2007) is the third book in the traditional Chief Inspector Gamache series set in a remote village in Canada.

The Cruellest Month won the Agatha Award (Best Novel) and was nominated the Best Novel by the Anthony, Barry and Macavity Awards respectively.

About the author: Louise Penny is the Number One New York Times bestselling author of the Inspector Gamache series, including Still Life, which won the CWA John Creasey Dagger in 2006. Recipient of virtually every existing award for crime fiction, Louise was also granted The Order of Canada in 2014 and received an honorary doctorate of literature from Carleton University and the Ordre Nationale du Québec in 2017. She lives in a small village south of Montreal.

Rating: 5/5

The Fallen Angel (Gabriel Allon Series) by Daniel Silva

Paperback: When last we encountered Gabriel Allon in Portrait of a Spy (2011), he was pitted in a blood-soaked duel with a deadly network of jihadist terrorists. Now, exposed and war-weary, he has returned to his beloved Rome to restore a Caravaggio masterpiece for the Vatican.

But while working early one morning in the conservation laboratory, Gabriel is summoned to Saint Peter's Basilica by his friend and occasional ally Monsignor Luigi Donati, the all-powerful private secretary to his Holiness Pope Paul VII. The body of a beautiful woman lies smashed and broken beneath Michelangelo's magnificent dome. The Vatican police rule the death a suicidal fall, though Gabriel, with his restorer's eye and flawless memory, suspects otherwise. So, it seems, does the monsignor. Concerned about a potential scandal, Donati fears a public inquiry will inflict more wounds on an already-damaged Church; he calls upon Gabriel to use his matchless talents and experience to quietly pursue the truth - with one important caveat.

"Rule number one at the Vatican," Donati said. "Don't ask too many questions."

Gabriel soon discovers that the dead woman had uncovered a dangerous secret - a secret that threatens powers beyond the Vatican. To solve the mystery, Gabriel joins forces with a master art thief to penetrate a criminal smuggling network that is looting timeless treasures of antiquity and selling them to the highest bidder. But there is more to this network than just greed. An old enemy is plotting revenge, an unthinkable act of sabotage that will plunge the world into a conflict of apocalyptic proportions. Once again Gabriel must return to the ranks of his old intelligence service - and place himself, and those he holds dear, on the razor's edge of danger.

An intoxicating blend of art and intrigue, The Fallen Angel (2012) moves swiftly from the private chambers of the Vatican, to a glamorous art gallery in St Moritz, to the hidden alleyways of Istanbul - and finally, to a pulse-pounding climax in the ancient city of Jerusalem, the world's most sacred and contested parcel of land. Each setting is rendered with the care of an Old Master, as are the spies, lovers, priests, and thieves who inhabit its pages. It is a story of faith and of the destructive power of secrets. And it is an all-too-timely reminder that those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it.

The Fallen Angel won the Barry Awards in the best thriller category in 2013. The Fallen Angel is the twelfth instalment in the superb and well-crafted Gabriel Allon series.

About the author: Daniel Silva was born in Michigan in 1960 and raised in California where he received his BA from Fresno State. Silva began his writing career as a journalist for United Press International (UPI), traveling in the Middle East and covering the Iran-Iraq war, terrorism and political conflicts. From UPI he moved to CNN, where he eventually became executive producer of its Washington-based public policy programming. In 1994, he began work on his first novel, The Unlikely Spy, a surprise best seller that won critical acclaim. He turned to writing full time in 1997 and all of his books have been New York Times/national best sellers, translated into 25 languages and published across Europe and the world. He lives in Washington, DC.

Rating:  5/5

The Arena: Guidelines for Spiritual and Monastic Life by Ignatius (Brianchaninov)

Paperback: I can quite correctly call this work my mystical confession. - St Ignatius

It is fashionable in our times to value youth over experience, novelty above tradition. This classic work stands in unmistakable contrast to this tendency. First published in its original Russian edition in the year of the author's death, it is the summation of his more than forty years experience of Christian and monastic life.

Like the sayings of the Fathers of the Egyptian desert, offered by monks to their fellow strugglers, the wisdom offered in these pages is ageless and of wide application to every aspect of life. Tradition is revealed as an appropriation of Divine Life, passed on to others by both action and word.

The title given to the original English language edition The Arena has been kept as this aptly sums up its constant theme; the need for struggle if we are to progress in the spiritual life. Like the gladiatorial combat of the Roman arena this struggle is against wild beasts and well-armed foes. There are many watching; some shouting encouragement to the struggler and others cheering their foes. All of this is occurring within the arena of our own hearts as we do battle with the sin that prevents us from knowing God as He would be known.

As the now Metropolitan Kallistos (Ware) writes in his foreword:

Such, then, is Bishop Ignatius' basic theme: he tells us of the struggle to be undertaken by every Christian in the spiritual arena. He speaks to us all, whether monks or not, explaining how we may tame, control, and transform the beast within - the lions and howling wolves of our inner jungle - and so build in our hearts Jerusalem, the city of peace and unity.

Subjects covered include unceasing prayer, the need for spiritual direction and the importance of Divine meditation. The original Russian edition was published in 1867. There is a helpful thirteen-page introduction provided by Archimandrite (now Metropolitan) Kallistos (aka Timothy Ware) as well as a glossary of terms.

The Arena (2012) is translated from the Russian by Archimandrite Lazarus (Moore).

About the author: St Ignatius (Branchininov) was one of the leading spiritual writers of 19th Century Russia.  He became a monk in 1831 and the bishop of the Caucasus and the Black Sea in 1857.  He devoted much of his life to writing spiritual works.  He reposed in 1867.