When I came across a description of One Step Too Far on Netgalley a couple of weeks ago I was sufficiently interested to request an Advance Readers Copy (ARC) and take a closer look. The well-written opening scene of this novel…
Recently I reviewed the Douglas Kennedy novel, Five Days. I wondered if Richard the main male character might have been bipolar and whether Kennedy had considered having Richard not pay the hotel bill that he and Laura ran up during their weekend away. Thanks to Bookbrowse.com who gave me the opportunity to ask Douglas Kennedy these questions.
Wolves and dodgy insurance salesmen come together in a thriller about a mentally ill young man who takes up a post as an intern at a company specializing in purchasing life insurance policies from the terminally ill and then collecting…
“She didn’t know that preparing for the end of the world would make it that much more likely to come.” Amaranth and her daughters Amity and Sorrow are fleeing from a religious cult led by Amaranth’s husband, Zachariah. Amaranth is…
There is something about the apparent gaiety and glitter of the years immediately preceding WW1 that is somehow alluring to contemporary readers — “a world both distant and near to our own” as Hugh Brewster puts it in the prologue…
“Secret babies and the people who made them” is the theme addressed by Irish author Margaret Hawkins in her new novel Deny Me Not which tells the story of Hannah Casey, a 40-year old nurse raised in a County Wicklow children’s home…
Fans of Douglas Kennedy will know that “happenstance” — those moments in life where everything changes because we were in a certain place at a certain time — is a recurring theme in his work. Set mostly in Berlin, The…
“Is midlife inevitably marked by the onset of regret?” I imagine most middle-aged people struggle from time to time with feelings of self-entrapment. The ordinary family dramas that make up our daily existence often involve responsibilities that are the price…
Siblings Ralph and Emma Eldred grew up in a dour, oppressive family where their creationist father, Matthew, ruled the roost while their mother acquiesced, receiving each day “a used opinion from him.” Ralph and his father differ on the question…
Life is a continuous process of change but at times almost all of us find change difficult to deal with. Whether through bereavement, health concerns, financial and career problems or other disappointments, there are times when we all become anxious,…
When you want to download something to read on your Kindle but your budget doesn’t stretch to paying very much it can be hard to find decent recommendations. Most lists focus either on 19th century literary classics or on contemporary ‘free’…
When Chief Inspector Erik Winter was called to Room No 10 in a decrepit Gothenburg hotel where a young woman has apparently hanged herself, he realized that he had been there before. In the first case he worked on as…
Lucie Walker comes to in the cold water of San Francisco Bay with no idea who she is or how she got there. Rescued by the emergency services and brought to hospital, she is diagnosed as suffering from “dissociative fugue”.…