Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Bookcrossing

This is another interesting site. You may have heard of this movement – if not take the time to this out. It's an interesting way to share your favourite books with the rest of the world.

LibraryThing

This is a great tool for keeping track of your personal collection and you can sign up and catalogue up to 200 items for free. If you have more in your collection then the annual fee is extremely modest - $10 (US) per year or $25 (US) for life.

You can just use it to catalogue your own collections but you can also check for reviews or check under the Zeitgeist section to see what the rest of the world is reading.

Thursday, November 27, 2008

Salt on Our Skins


Benoite Groult

“Exploring the realms of desire, sexuality and love with uninhibited candour, Benoite Groult’s extraordinary novel charts the lifelong affair between a Parisian intellectual and a Breton fisherman, a couple divided by everything but he flame of passion which burns between them.

They first meet as children. As the years pass they are separated by a path each feels compelled to follow. She pursues an academic career in France, Canada and the United States, while he marries a local girl and settles down to the stifling narrowness of family life. Yet, despite the torment of separation, and the obligations that bind them to others, their improbably perfect love endures.” – book cover.
Contact the library to request this book

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Endless Chain


Emilie Richards

The story covers the events in a small town, Toms Brook in the Shenandoah Valley, Virginia, which occur after Sam Kinkade, the minister of the local church, plans to welcome the area's growing Hispanic community.

The story is woven around the activities of the local Quilting Bee. The title of the book refers to the pattern being used to construct a hand-made quilt.

Contact the library to request this book

Thursday, November 6, 2008

Earth, Air, Fire and Custard


Tim Holt

"J.W. Wells seems to be a respectable establishment, but the company paying Paul Carpenter's salary is in fact a deeply sinister organisation with a mighty peculiar management team.
Paul thought he was getting the hang of it (particularly when he fell head over heels for his strangely alluring colleague Sophie), but death is never far away shen you work at J.W. Wells. Unlike the stapler - that's always going AWOL. Our lovestruck hero is about to discover that custard is definately in the eye of the beholder. And that it really stings.
Tom Holt's exceedingly comic fantasies are populated with evil goblins, annoying sprites and people like us. However, it's not always possible to tell the difference." - book cover.
Contact the library to request this book

The Apprentice Lover


Jay Parini

"When Alex Massolini's brother is killed in Vietnam, Alex drops out of Columbia University and leaves his conservative family behind for Capri, There, he becomes secretary to Rupert Grant, a famous British novelist and poet, who dominates the island like a latter-day Prospero. Alex soon finds himself ensnared in a web of love affairs, friendships and rivalries within the eccentric community that inhabits the idyllic beauty of the isolated Italian island.
As Alex stumbles upon intrigues and secrets, he tries to balance what others demand of him with his own nascent desires. His apprenticeship in love, literature, and life unfolds with a combination of Mediterranean clarity, wry humour, wit and emotional power that only a master of fiction could orchestrate." - book cover
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In Honour Bound


Gerald Seymour

"Barney Crispin, SAS Captain, is sent urgently to the Afghanistan border on the direct order of the Foreign Secretary. His mission - to organize the destruction of one of the new Soviet helicopters and to bring its secret parts back to Britain. But the Guerillas he trains and sends in are killed, and in defience of his orders he goes in himself to challenge the Russian gunships in the remote Afghan valleys." - back cover
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Hollywood Lies


David Ambrose

"Seven suavely bewitching stories, all with a Machiavellian twist at the end: Marilyn Monroe as virtual reality's most valuable asset..a fading film producer who considers the news of his impending death as the ultimate career break...a screenwriter terrorized by the character he creates - a force that refuses to die, either on screen or off. Against a backdrop already larger than life, each scenario mixes the surreal with the supernatural in a toxic cocktail. Hollywood glitter balancing on the scalpel edge of madness." - book cover.
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The Hunt for Red October


Tom Clancy

"Silently, beneath the chill Atlantic waters, Russia's ultra-secret missile submarine, the Red October, is heading west.
The American want her. The Russians want her back. With all-out war only seconds away, the superpowers race across the ocean on the most desperate mission of a lifetime. The most incredible chase in history in on...
A spellbinding battle of nerves, above and below the waves. An up-to-the-minute thiller unrivalled in its authenticity and breath-stopping suspense." - book cover.
Contact the library to request this book

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

A Walk Through the Fire


by Marcia Muller.

"When documentary film-maker Glenna Stanleigh suspects sabotage on set,she calls Sharon McCone. Only too pleased to travel to the sunny Hawaiin island of Kauia, McCone anticipates business mixed heavily with pleasure. But as vandalism escalates into large-scale violence, and McCone's personal and progessional life come under attack, she finds herself at the centre of a blazing fire of emotion and terror ... [book cover]

Contact the library to request this book

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Wild Silk


By Elizabeth Warne

A rags to riches story – unwed mother flees forced marriage only to escape to the slums of Bristol , from there through her fierce determination she works her way to establish a successful business, earn her fortune, and to seek for true love.
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Thursday, October 2, 2008

Katey


by Lucinda Hawksley
The prospective reader on seeing the subtitle "The life and Loves of Dickens's Artist Daughter" might, might assume that it will be deadly dull but they couldn't be more wrong. The author, the great-great-great niece of Dickens, has produced a thoroughly entertaining insight into the family life of the Dickens family, who were among the A-listers of their generation. Far from being fuddy-duddy Victorians we are introduced into a family life full of complexities and problems,passions and pain. -- A good read for a long summer's day.


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Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Kickback


by Val McDermid

Kate Brannigan, feisty Manchester-base PI, is back, investigating the bizarre case of the missing conservatories. Before long she's up to her neck in crooked land deals, mortgage scams, financial chicanery - and murder. But when a favour for a friend puts Kate's own life in dander, bizarre is not the first word she thinks of...


Contact the library to request this book