There are some books that transcend a time or a place. Some books demand space on your bookshelf, elbowing aside less demanding, more transient material. Some books, every time you read them, reveal something new about themselves, the writer, or the story they are telling. These are some of the books I return to when I want to rediscover why I became a writer. Why are they my favourites? I really have no idea. The only thing I do know is that re-reading them is like being with an old friend, sharing both the past and the present and everything in between.
Sometimes, digging up the past reveals more than just secrets…
Former police detective, Jayne Sinclair, now working as a genealogical investigator, is commissioned by an adopted American billionaire to discover the identity of his birth father.She has only three clues to help her: a photocopied birth certificate, a stolen book, and an old photograph. But she soon realises somebody else is on the trail of the mystery. A killer who will stop at nothing to prevent Jayne from discovering the secret hidden in the past. It is the first in a series of novels featuring Jayne Sinclair, a genealogical detective.
This was one of the first books I ever read that forced me to re-evaluate the way I look at history. It was recommended to me by my teacher when I was fourteen. In it, Josephine Tey examines the death of the Princes in the Tower during the reign of Richard III and comes to some startling conclusions. But it’s not a dry, historical tome. On the contrary, she uses the device of a detective using modern investigative techniques to examine the evidence. He comes to some startling conclusions and so will you if you read the book. Up yours William Shakespeare…
_________________________ Josephine Tey's classic novel about Richard III, the hunchback king whose skeleton was famously discovered in a council car park, investigates his role in the death of his nephews, the princes in the Tower, and his own death at the Battle of Bosworth.
Richard III reigned for only two years, and for centuries he was villified as the hunch-backed wicked uncle, murderer of the princes in the Tower. Josephine Tey's novel The Daughter of Time is an investigation into the real facts behind the last Plantagenet king's reign, and an attempt to right what many believe to be the…
I read virtually all the books of the Queen of Crime when I was in my teens, relishing her plots for their deviousness and twists and turns. I return to this one every couple of years because this is the perfectly plotted book. I defy anyone to guess the denouement. Despite her reputation as not a great writer of characters, I think she manages a great job here. Each of the suspects is sharply defined in a few pithy sentences. Brilliant.
Agatha Christie's world-famous mystery thriller, reissued with a striking new cover designed to appeal to the latest generation of Agatha Christie fans and book lovers.
Ten strangers, apparently with little in common, are lured to an island mansion off the coast of Devon by the mysterious U.N.Owen. Over dinner, a record begins to play, and the voice of an unseen host accuses each person of hiding a guilty secret. That evening, former reckless driver Tony Marston is found murdered by a deadly dose of cyanide.
The tension escalates as the survivors realise the killer is not only among them but…
I picked this up by accident in a beach hotel I was staying and I’m so glad I did. Written in the 1970s, it is a precursor to, and far better than, The Da Vinci Code and the library of conspiracy novels that followed. It tells the story of an obscure Cathar sect, taking in the history and role of film and the movies in the twentieth century. You’ll never be able to look at a horror movie in the same way again.
From the golden age of art movies and underground cinema to X-rated porn, splatter films, and midnight movies, this breathtaking thriller is a tour de force of cinematic fact and fantasy, full of metaphysical mysteries that will haunt the dreams of every moviegoer. Jonathan Gates could not have anticipated that his student studies would lead him to uncover the secret history of the movies—a tale of intrigue, deception, and death that stretches back to the 14th century. But he succumbs to what will be a lifelong obsession with the mysterious Max Castle, a nearly forgotten genius of the silent screen…
This should actually cover the whole 20-book series as I’ve read them all. Three times. They take historical fiction, and Napoleonic sea stories, to a whole new level. Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin are wonderfully rounded characters, the detail of life at sea is amazing , and the books unputdownable. And did I say they are beautifully written too? Well worth a few months of reading. Get them and discover their world. You won’t be disappointed.
This, the first in the splendid series of Jack Aubrey novels, establishes the friendship between Captain Aubrey, R.N., and Stephen Maturin, ship's surgeon and intelligence agent, against a thrilling backdrop of the Napoleonic wars. Details of a life aboard a man-of-war in Nelson's navy are faultlessly rendered: the conversational idiom of the officers in the ward room and the men on the lower deck, the food, the floggings, the mysteries of the wind and the rigging, and the roar of broadsides as the great ships close in battle.
Again, this should cover the whole LA Quartet. Crime novels that ooze the sleaziness, despair, and hypocrisy of the city of dreams that Hollywood built. Perfectly formed sentences, amazing characters, a story that twists and turns more than a rollercoaster and Ellroy’s savage wit. What more could anybody want? Except more Ellroy books….
Christmas 1951, Los Angeles: a city where the police are as corrupt as the criminals. Six prisoners are beaten senseless in their cells by cops crazed on alcohol. For the three LAPD detectives involved, it will expose the guilty secrets on which they have built their corrupt and violent careers. The novel takes these cops on a sprawling epic of brutal violence and the murderous seedy side of Hollywood. One of the best (and longest) crime novels ever written, it is the heart of Ellroy's four-novel masterpiece, the LA Quartet, and an example of crime writing at its most powerful.
Gabrielle found her grandfather’s diaries after her mother’s death, only to discover that he had been a Nazi. Born in Berlin in 1942, she and her mother fled the city in 1945, but Api, the one surviving male member of her family, stayed behind to work as a doctor in a city 90% destroyed.
Gabrielle retraces Api’s steps in the Berlin of the 21st century, torn between her love for the man who gave her the happiest years of her childhood and trying to come to terms with his Nazi membership, German guilt, and political responsibility.
Api's Berlin Diaries: My Quest to Understand My Grandfather's Nazi Past
"This is not a book I will forget any time soon."
Story Circle Book Reviews
Moving and provocative, Api's Berlin Diaries offers a personal perspective on the fall of Berlin 1945 and the far-reaching aftershocks of the Third Reich.
After her mother's death, Robinson was thrilled to find her beloved grandfather's war diaries-only to discover that he had been a Nazi.
The award-winning memoir shows Api, a doctor in Berlin, desperately trying to help the wounded in cellars without water or light. He himself was reduced to anxiety and despair, the daily diary his main refuge. As Robinson retraces Api's…
