Monday, 20 July 2020
Friday, 17 July 2020
The Black Widow (Gabriel Allon Series) by Daniel Silva
Paperback: The black flags will come from the East, led by mighty men, with long hair and beards, their surnames taken from their home towns. - The Hadith
A network of terror. A web of deceit. A deadly game of vengeance.
Legendary spy and art restorer Gabriel Allon is poised to become the chief of Israel’s secret intelligence service. But on the eve of his promotion, events conspire to lure him into the field for one final operation. ISIS has detonated a massive bomb in the Marais district of Paris, and a desperate French government wants Gabriel to eliminate the man responsible before he can strike again.
They call him Saladin.
He is a terrorist mastermind whose ambition is as grandiose as his nom de guerre, a man so elusive that even his nationality is not known. Shielded by sophisticated encryption software, his network communicates in total secrecy, leaving the West blind to his planning - and leaving Gabriel no choice but to insert an agent into the most dangerous terrorist group the world has ever known. Natalie Mizrahi is an extraordinary young doctor as brave as she is beautiful. At Gabriel’s behest, she will pose as an ISIS recruit in waiting, a ticking time bomb, a black widow out for blood.
Her perilous mission will take her from the restive suburbs of Paris to the island of Santorini and the brutal world of the Islamic State’s new caliphate, and eventually to Washington, D.C., where the ruthless Saladin is plotting an apocalyptic night of terror that will alter the course of history.
The Black Widow (2016) is the sixteenth riveting instalment in the spy/art restorer Gabriel Allon series. But it is also a thoughtful journey into the new heart of darkness that will haunt readers long after they have turned the final page.
About the author: Daniel Silva is an American journalist and author of thriller and espionage novels. He is also the award-winning, #1 New York Times bestselling author of his long-running thriller series starring spy and art restorer Gabriel Allon. Silva's books are critically acclaimed bestsellers around the world and have been translated into more than 30 languages. He resides in Florida with his wife, television journalist Jamie Gangel, and their twins, Lily and Nicholas.
Rating: 5/5
Tuesday, 14 July 2020
The English Spy (Gabriel Allon Series) by Daniel Silva
Paperback: No more tears now; I will think upon revenge. - Mary, Queen of Scots
The target is royal. The game is revenge.
Stretched topless upon the foredeck, drink in hand, her flawless skin baking in the sun, was the most famous woman in the world. And one deck below, preparing an appetizer of tuna tartare, cucumber, and pineapple, was the man who was going to kill her.
She is an iconic member of the British Royal Family, beloved for her beauty and charitable works, resented by her former husband and his mother, the Queen of England. But when a bomb explodes aboard her holiday yacht, British intelligence turns to one man to track down her killer: legendary spy and assassin Gabriel Allon.
Gabriel’s target is Eamon Quinn, a master bomb maker and mercenary of death who sells his services to the highest bidder. Quinn is an elusive man of the shadows - ”a whisper in a half-lit chapel, a loose thread at the hem of a discarded garment” - but fortunately Gabriel does not pursue him alone. At his side is Christopher Keller, a British commando turned professional assassin who knows Quinn’s murderous handiwork all too well.
The English Spy (2015) moves at light speed from the glamorous island of Saint Barthélemy to the mean streets of West Belfast to a cottage atop the cliffs of Cornwall that Gabriel holds dear. And though he does not realize it, he is stalking an old enemy - a cabal of evil that wants nothing more than to see him dead. Gabriel will find it necessary to oblige them, for when a man is out for vengeance, death has its distinct advantages.
Filled with breathtaking twists, The English Spy (2015) will hold readers spellbound from its riveting opening passages to its heart-stopping conclusion. It is a timely reminder that there are some men in the world who will stop at nothing to achieve their goals. And it proves once again why Daniel Silva is regarded as his generation’s finest writer of international thrillers.
The English Spy is the fifteenth instalment in the excellent and inimitable Gabriel Allon spy fiction series.
About the author: Daniel Silva is an American journalist and author of thriller and espionage novels. He is also the award-winning, #1 New York Times bestselling author of his long-running thriller series starring spy and art restorer Gabriel Allon. Silva's books are critically acclaimed bestsellers around the world and have been translated into more than 30 languages. He resides in Florida with his wife, television journalist Jamie Gangel, and their twins, Lily and Nicholas.
Rating: 5/5
Saturday, 11 July 2020
Sounds Of Silence...A Monk's Journey by Father Benedict Kossmann
Paperback: Father Benedict tells of his calling to the life of a cloistered contemplative monk, his training in a Spanish monastery, and his being sent to only Carthusian monastery in the US.
He was trained to live to the letter of the rule, and compares that training to what he actually lived as a fully trained monk, including the several positions of authority he exercised within the monastic community, up to his eventual departure and ultimate severance of ties with the Carthusian Order.
This work of love will guide you into the intimate life of a Carthusian monk by an author who has experienced this life. Rarely, if ever, does the Carthusian monk write about his life but our author takes us with him on his interior journey of how to love God and one another in a genuine way.
They rise at 11.30pm for prayer while the rest of the world begins their sleep. The Carthusian monastery is alive with the sounds of the monks, chanting their prayers in Latin. They are before God for others who do not take the time to pray, and for those who do not pray enough. The author takes us into the intimate struggle between good and evil and the light and darkness of the human heart. It is a struggle we all have to face. This work will inspire many to enter into a deeper prayer life with God, Who is not satisfied with just Sunday worship. He wants our whole heart in word and work.
CARTHUSIANS
Through what long heaviness, assayed in what strange fire,
Have these white monks been brought into the way of peace,
Despising the world's wisdom and the world's desire,
Within their austere walls no voices penetrate;
A sacred silence only, as of death, obtains;
Nothing finds entry here of loud or passionate;
From many lands they came, in divers fiery ways;
Each knew at last the vanity of earthly joys;
And one was crowned with thorns, and one was crowned with bays,
And each was tired at last of the world's foolish noise.
A cloistered company, they are companionless,
None knoweth here the secret of his brother's heart:
They are but come together for more loneliness,
Whose bond is solitude and silence all their part.
(From a poem by Ernest Dawson)
Sounds of Silence...A Monk's Journey was published in 2005 by Author House.
About the author: The author was a cloistered contemplative monk for a total of twenty years in the most strict and austere Order of the Church, the Carthusian Order. He writes under the name Father Benedict out of continuing respect for Carthusian anonymity. In his first published book, he tells of his calling to the religious and monastic life, his training in a Spanish Carthusian monastery, and his being sent to the Carthusian monastery in Vermont soon after it opened. He was trained to live to the letter of the rule, and compares that training to what he actually lived as a fully trained monk. He was appointed to the offices of Novice Master and Vocation Director soon after his arrival in Vermont, and exercised several other positions of authority within the community. Unfortunate difficulties within that monastic community contributed to his eventual departure and ultimate severance of legal ties with the Carthusians. By a special determination of the pope, he was released from the obligations of his vows and the priesthood. Now married, he lives in Florida with his wife and Shih Tzu, Rudolph.
Friday, 10 July 2020
Camino Winds (Camino Island Series) by John Grisham
Hardback: John Grisham, #1 bestselling author and master of the legal thriller, sweeps you away to paradise for a little sun, sand, mystery, and mayhem.
With Camino Winds (2020), America’s favourite storyteller offers the perfect escape.
Welcome back to Camino Island, where anything can happen - even a murder in the midst of a hurricane, which might prove to be the perfect crime.
Just as Bruce Cable’s Bay Books is preparing for the return of bestselling author Mercer Mann, Hurricane Leo veers from its predicted course and heads straight for the island. Florida’s governor orders a mandatory evacuation, and most residents board up their houses and flee to the mainland, but Bruce decides to stay and ride out the storm.
The hurricane is devastating: homes and condos are leveled, hotels and storefronts ruined, streets flooded, and a dozen people lose their lives. One of the apparent victims is Nelson Kerr, a friend of Bruce’s and an author of thrillers. But the nature of Nelson’s injuries suggests that the storm wasn’t the cause of his death: He has suffered several suspicious blows to the head.
Who would want Nelson dead? The local police are overwhelmed in the aftermath of the storm and ill equipped to handle the case. Bruce begins to wonder if the shady characters in Nelson’s novels might be more real than fictional. And somewhere on Nelson’s computer is the manuscript of his new novel. Could the key to the case be right there - in black and white? As Bruce starts to investigate, what he discovers between the lines is more shocking than any of Nelson’s plot twists - and far more dangerous.
Camino Winds is an irresistible romp and a perfectly thrilling beach read - # 1 bestselling author John Grisham at his beguiling best.
About the author: John Grisham is the author of thirty-four novels, one work of non-fiction, a collection of stories and seven novels for young readers. The critically-acclaimed Netflix series, An Innocent Man, was based on his non-fiction bestseller. His works are translated into forty-two languages. He lives in Virginia.
Find out more at jgrisham.com and stay in touch via Facebook at John Grisham Books.
Rating: 5/5
Thursday, 9 July 2020
Wednesday, 8 July 2020
Fair Warning (Jack McEvoy Series) by Michael Connelly
Hardback: Who is not at once repulsed and attracted by a diabolical act? - David Goldman, Our Genes, Our Choices
he hero of The Poet and The Scarecrow is back in the new thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author Michael Connelly. Jack McEvoy, the journalist who never backs down, tracks a serial killer who has been operating completely under the radar – until now.
Veteran reporter Jack McEvoy has taken down killers before, but when a woman he had a one-night stand with is murdered in a particularly brutal way, he realizes he might be facing a criminal mind unlike any he has ever encountered.
Jack investigates – against the warnings of the police and his own editor – and makes a shocking discovery that connects the crime to other mysterious deaths across the country. Undetected by law enforcement, a vicious killer has been hunting women, using genetic data shared by the victims themselves to select and stalk his targets.
Uncovering the murkiest corners of the dark web, Jack races to find and protect the last source who can lead him to his quarry. But the killer has already chosen his next target, and he is ready to strike.
How do you find a killer who knows everything about you?
Fair Warning (2020), the third instalment in the Jack McEvoy series, is available in the USA, Canada, the UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand.
About the author: Michael Connelly was born in Philadelphia, PA on July 21, 1956. He moved to Florida with his family when he was 12 years old. Michael decided to become a writer after discovering the books of Raymond Chandler while attending the University of Florida. Once he decided on this direction he chose a major in journalism and a minor in creative writing — a curriculum in which one of his teachers was novelist Harry Crews.
After graduating in 1980, Connelly worked at newspapers in Daytona Beach and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, primarily specializing in the crime beat. In Fort Lauderdale he wrote about police and crime during the height of the murder and violence wave that rolled over South Florida during the so-called cocaine wars. In 1986, he and two other reporters spent several months interviewing survivors of a major airline crash. They wrote a magazine story on the crash and the survivors which was later short-listed for the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing. The magazine story also moved Connelly into the upper levels of journalism, landing him a job as a crime reporter for the Los Angeles Times, one of the largest papers in the country, and bringing him to the city of which his literary hero, Chandler, had written.
Michael is the bestselling author of thirty-five novels and one work of non-fiction. With over seventy-four million copies of his books sold worldwide and translated into forty foreign languages, he is one of the most successful writers working today. His very first novel, The Black Echo, won the prestigious Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award for Best First Novel in 1992. In 2002, Clint Eastwood directed and starred in the movie adaptation of Connelly’s 1998 novel, Blood Work. In March 2011, the movie adaptation of his #1 bestselling novel, The Lincoln Lawyer, hit theatres worldwide starring Matthew McConaughey as Mickey Haller. His most recent #1 New York Times bestsellers include Dark Sacred Night, Two Kinds Of Truth, The Late Show, The Wrong Side Of Goodbye, The Crossing, The Burning Room, The Gods of Guilt, and The Black Box. Michael’s crime fiction career was honoured with the Diamond Dagger from the CWA in 2018.
Michael is the executive producer of Bosch, an Amazon Studios original drama series based on his bestselling character Harry Bosch, starring Titus Welliver. Bosch streams on Amazon Prime Video. He is the creator and host of the podcast Murder Book. He is also the executive producer of the documentary films, Sound Of Redemption: The Frank Morgan Story and Tales of the American. He spends his time in California and Florida.
Rating: 5/5
Monday, 6 July 2020
Sunday, 5 July 2020
Saturday, 4 July 2020
Virgin Time: In Search Of The Contemplative Life by Patricia Hampl
Paperback: Patricia Hampl begins her quest not to find something but to shake off the indelible brand of a Catholic upbringing.
Yet even as an adult removed from the dogma of her early Catholic training, she feels the pull of contemplative prayer. In her search, she travels to the "old world" of Catholicism, to the golden haze of St Francis' Assisi and to the surging crowds of Lourdes with their candles and incurable illnesses.
Her pilgrimage is peopled with other wanderers - crotchety English agnostics, American Franciscan friars and nuns, and the seekers that fill every charter flight.
Inevitably, she finds the "old world" right at home, in the very past she had tried to escape. But what she was looking for confronts her, finally, on a retreat at a monastery near the Lost Coast of northern California in the still, virgin moments of silent prayer.
Virgin Time is a religious cliff-hanger, intimate, compelling and hard to put down. It was published in 1992 by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc.
About the author: Patricia Hampl first won recognition for A Romantic Education, her Cold War memoir about her Czech heritage. This book and subsequent works have established her as an influential figure in the rise of autobiographical writing in the past 30 years.
Her most recent book, The Florist’s Daughter, won numerous “best” and “year end” awards, including the New York Times “100 Notable Books of the Year” and the 2008 Minnesota Book Award for Memoir and Creative Nonfiction. Blue Arabesque: A Search for the Sublime (2006), was also one of the Times Notable Books; a portion was chosen for The Best Spiritual Writing 2005.
I Could Tell You Stories, her collection of essays on memory and imagination, was a finalist in 2000 for the National Book Critics Circle Awards in General Nonfiction.
Other works include Spillville, a meditation on Antonin Dvorak’s 1893 summer in Iowa.
Four of her books have been named “Notable Books” of the year by The New York Times Book Review.
Tell Me True: Memoir, History and Writing a Life came out from Borealis Books (the trade division of the Minnesota Historical Society Press), co-edited by Ms. Hampl and Elaine Tyler May with essays by 14 memoirists including the editors.
She is the author of two collections of poetry, Woman before an Aquarium, and Resort and Other Poems. In 2001, Carnegie Mellon Press chose Resort and Other Poems for its Contemporary Classics series. Ms Hampl conceived the idea and edited The Saint Paul Stories of F Scott Fitzgerald with a major “Introduction” by her, also published by Borealis. She also edited Burning Bright, an anthology of sacred poetry from Judaism, Christianity and Islam (Ballantine Books).
Ms Hampl’s fiction, poems, reviews, essays and travel pieces have appeared in The New Yorker, Paris Review, Granta, The American Scholar, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Best American Short Stories and Best American Essays. She has presented four one-woman shows at the Fitzgerald Theater, St Paul, with musical partner Dan Chouinard, all broadcast on Minnesota Public Radio.
She has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, Bush Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts (twice, in poetry and prose), Ingram Merrill Foundation and Djerassi Foundation. In 1990 she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship.
Ms Hampl is Regents Professor and McKnight Distinguished Professor at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, where she teaches fall semesters in the MFA program of the English Department. She is also a member of the permanent faculty of the Prague Summer Program, and affiliated with Kingston University-London as Visiting Professor in the Centre for Life Narratives. She regularly gives readings, lectures and workshops and serves as visiting writer across the country and internationally.
She serves on the Board of Directors of the Jerome Foundation (St Paul, Minnesota) and the Teachers and Writers Collaborative (New York) and as a Trustee of the Camargo Foundation (Cassis, France).
Wednesday, 1 July 2020
The Devil is Politically Correct by Ștefan Baștovoi
Paperback: In a world where sin is the new law and God is a distant memory, can one man’s inheritance change his entire life?
Jacob Kohner is like anyone else.
He wakes up, he goes to work. He spends too much time addicted to his computer, fighting with internet strangers. He uses his credit card since cash transactions are a distant memory.
He knows that at 65, he will be euthanized, as was the law.
He doesn’t agree with it, but he doesn’t fight it. No one does. After all, the politicians, bankers, and wealthy 1% have the power, and everyone else marches along. It’s life.
Until everything changes.
After his mother’s euthanasia, Jacob receives an unexpected inheritance - a Bible. At the same time, the world as he knew it alters in the blink of an eye.
Sinners succumb to a gruesome death overnight, and the government struggles to hide the details.
An end-of-the-world computer virus renders all money useless.
Millions die in a revolt against banks, the government, and a way of life that has brought only misery. But is it really all an unexpected crisis? Or are the powers that be behind the pandemonium that reshapes the population, and the world?
While lives are turned upside down, Jacob relies on unexpected friends and a renewed faith in God to show him what true happiness is.
Despite the chaos unfolding around him, can he find serenity in the church?
The Devil is Politically Correct (2020) is independently published by Karpatika Fiction, a division of Karpatika Publishing.
About the author: Ștefan Baștovoi, best known as Savatie Baștovoi, a Moldavian orthodox monk, is an essayist, poet, novelist, theologian and Romanian writer of the Republic of Moldova. He became a member of the Writers' Union of Moldova in 1996. He was also a moderator of a television show.
Rating: 5/5
Sex And Vanity by Kevin Kwan
Hardback: The iconic author of the bestselling phenomenon Crazy Rich Asians returns with the glittering tale of a young woman who finds herself torn between two men.
On her very first morning on the jewel-like island of Capri, Lucie Churchill sets eyes on George Zao and she instantly cannot stand him. She cannot stand it when he gallantly offers to trade hotel rooms with her so that she can have the view of the Tyrrhenian Sea, she cannot stand that he knows more about Curzio Malaparte than she does, and she really cannot stand it when he kisses her in the darkness of the ancient ruins of a Roman villa.
The daughter of an American-born-Chinese mother and blue-blooded New York father, Lucie has always sublimated the Asian side of herself in favour of the white side, and she adamantly denies having feelings for George. But several years later, when George unexpectedly appears in East Hampton where Lucie is weekending with her new fiancé, Lucie finds herself drawn to George again. Soon, Lucy is spinning a web of deceit that involves her family, her fiancé, the co-op board of her Fifth Avenue apartment, and ultimately herself as she tries mightily to deny George entry into her world – and her heart.
Moving between summer playgrounds of privilege, peppered with decadent food and extravagant fashion, Sex and Vanity (2020) is a truly modern love story, a daring homage to A Room with a View, and a brilliantly funny comedy of manners set between two cultures.
About the author: Kevin Kwan (Far Eastern Kindergarten/ACS/Clear Lake High/UHCL/Parsons School of Design) is the author of the international bestsellers Crazy Rich Asians, China Rich Girlfriend, and Rich People Problems. Crazy Rich Asians was a #1 New York Times bestseller, a major motion picture, and has been translated into more than thirty languages. He lives in Los Angeles and is trying to eat less pasta.
Rating: 4/5
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