‘Dan had been commandeered by Stella Lastings (what was a History bod doing here?) I try to give Stella a wide berth, and not just because she is a size eighteen and needs wide-berthing.

I can’t understand how someone who teaches History is so caught up in the present, as in staff room goings-on.

There is no subject to do with anything or anyone in the university that she hasn’t got some take to add to the drama. If she can’t find any fresh gossip, she makes it up. She once started a rumour that Lee was having an affair with Mike Orme, our deputy dean, on the premise that the speed at which information flows accelerates in direct relation to the strength of the rumour i.e. the more likely a piece of gossip, the faster it would spread through the faculty.

And although nothing could be more unlikely than Lee having an affair with anyone, let alone someone who wears knitted tank tops, this particular rumour spread rapidly.

Meanwhile, Stella was doing her squirming act for Dan. She is pretty with silly blonde curls, and she squirms in a girlish way when talking to men as though she is an insecure six-year-old.

Having a visceral dislike for women like that, I couldn’t bear to watch. I know that’s judgmental of me, but why do girly women think squirmy/flirty is attractive?

Men apparently fall for it.’

One of the joys of belonging to a book group – besides talking books with friends – is discovering literary gems that might have passed you by otherwise.

My book group has been going for almost six years.

Time enough to have read some stunning books – although we don’t always agree about what makes a good read.

But that’s the fun of being in a book club, isn’t it? Continue reading →

Former magazine journalist Karen King, whose writing career started on the iconic teen magazine Jackie, is hoping for a perfect summer with the re-publication of her debut Young Adult novel, Perfect Summer.

The book, a futuristic thriller set in a society obsessed with beauty and perfection where it is a crime to be disabled, was runner-up in the Red Telephone Books YA novel competition in 2011.

Now re-published by Accent Press, Perfect Summer is the story of what happens when 15-year-old Morgan’s younger brother Josh is kidnapped. Continue reading →

Let me begin by listing the things I like about Bad to the Bone, first in a new crime thriller series by Tony J.Forder.

One: it’s well written.

Very well written.

Forder is clearly a writer, who cares about words and getting them in the right order and using the right word in the right place.

And he’s good at painting word pictures too. Continue reading →

It’s a long time ago but I can’t now remember whether I met Jane Eyre before or after being introduced to Lizzie Bennett.

One thing’s for sure though: both were the first book women of my acquaintance who considered themselves the equal of any man.

In fact, both thought themselves far superior to some of the men they knew.

Even on the cusp of the 70s that was a revolutionary idea so goodness knows what the 19^th century reader must have thought. Continue reading →

Whet your appetite for The Book of Air, a new post-apocalyptic fantasy, by Joe Treasure.

A virus is wiping out most of the human population. In this passage, Jason is describing his departure from London. He tells his story to his dead wife, Caroline, or Caro for short.  

We hit a road block near Chiswick. Hard men in gas masks, playing at soldiers, keeping the neighbourhood clean. Waving their guns at microbes. The real soldiers had buggered off weeks before. Or keeled over. Same all over London, same everywhere. Containment was the Continue reading →

As a little girl I loved silent movies – oh, the edge of the seat excitement when the dastardly villain tied the  platinum blonde heroine to the rail track and gleefully ran off as the puffing Billy engine advanced inexorably.

Would the beautiful blonde perish?

Or would the hero save her in the nick of time?

As a bloodthirsty nine-year-old I never really understood the fatal, bloody implications of the what if…which, perhaps, made the opening chapter of Rachel Amphlett’s new crime thriller Will to Live, the Continue reading →

Timing is everything.

Martin McGuiness, Northern Ireland’s controversial former deputy first minister, died after a short illness on the same day I finished Roger A Price’s new crime thriller Vengeance, which, coincidentally, features a former IRA commander-turned-politician.

And, as I write this review, the terrorist attack on Westminster Bridge is the subject of every news bulletin.

Price couldn’t have made his novel more topical if he’d tried. Continue reading →

Meet Sheryl Browne, whose psychological thrillers After She’s Gone and Sins of the Father, books one and two in the DI Matthew Adams series, are out now.

Find out about the holiday that never was, why there’s room on her sofa for George Clooney and why he can expect to be tempted with cupcakes.

My name: Sheryl Browne.

My family: consists of my son, partner and a selection of odd dogs (I foster disabled dogs and invariably end up keeping most of them).

I was born in… Birmingham, UK, but moved around Continue reading →

It’s a tribute to the authenticity that James L. Weaver brings to his reformed mob enforcer Jake Caldwell in his new thriller Ares Road that I’ve just spent ten minutes deliberating whether I’d want to live with his hard man with a heart of gold.

Common sense suggests men like Jake are TROUBLE.

It’s a tough call, though, because Jake, like his alter ego Jack Reacher in the Lee Child books, is a good guy with a chequered history, who is trying to re-invent himself.

But, Jake, unlike Reacher, is not afraid of commitment and, having re-discovered his former Continue reading →