Fiction

Many people will find this book hard to read because it is in a language that is hard to understand unless you can read and understand Glaswiegen . I remember the film of this book being released in 1995 in Edinburgh but was not well received south of the border!

I was able to read this book but found the contents disturbing, but I feel that Edinburgh and the surrounding area have changed since it was first written and published in 1993. The book takes on board the subject of drink and drugs with the main drug being Heroin

Set in Islington 1940, it tells the story of a family that spend every night down the shelter under the local piano factory, with all their neighbours. This story develops from where Beth works and their friends who they start to get to know because of the nightly air raids.

This is a very different story to some of the other books written by Victor Pemberton. This story is based around a retired navy man who has a shop that is pulled around the streets by a beautiful horse. His daughter helps him do the business, but she is really not happy with having to be up early every day, to stock the shop and go around the streets to sell the goods and collect rents from properties in the area.

Victor Pemberton's new book Leo's Girl, is set at the time when girls become clippies on the buses when all the men are called away to serve in the war. Many people find that this is not what they feel they want to see.

Goodnight Amy, Goodnight were the last words that Amy Dodds heard her mum say. I was enthralled by this book by Victor Pemberton, about Amy who has struggled to keep the family together. Her father does nothing to help and just gives her the bare minum to keep her family going. She works at the local Lyons Corner House as a 'nippie' some one who serves the tea etc in the corner house.

She meets a young man who becomes a good friend, and helps her to sort out her problems and all the things that pour into and onto her younger brother ans sisters.

An acclaimed SF novel about vampires becomes a stunning new movie starring Will Smith. This is a great book if you love Vampires and goulish stories but What must it be like to scavage for all of one's food and everything that one needs, I can't imagine. I'm sure this is a great film which fuses together horror, science fiction and goulish intrigue and judging by my friends adult children, they enjoyed the film enormously but said you need to read the book to fill in the missing bits.

This is another book written by Rebecca Shaw and exceptionally well read by Susannah Harker.

Kate Howard the key figure in the story started by working as a receptionist at the Barley Bridge Practice, she was in love with the Australian vet Scott.

Many times whilst reading North I could feel the similarity to the Greek Tragedies. It is a beautifully written book about the teenager North, the Narrator and four other characters entwined in North's psychological manipulations. I was utterly fascinated in where Brian Martin was going to take his story and would there be a sequel.

Victor Pemberton is a great author who writes about ordinary people envolved with the war, and how they came through it.  This particular book is all about Nellie as she is named after she escapes from the rubble of the local orphange in Islington.  She joins up with a group of runaways who have made their way back to London after being evacuated to the country.

This novel The Lollipop Shoes by Joanne Harris is brilliantly set in Montmartre.  This book is based in a chocolate shop, where wonderful confections are made.  There are a number of charactors within the novel, with some staying around for a couple of days and others that are there from the beginning chapter of the book, October 31st and still there in the final chapter dated 25th December.