Book after Book

Welcome to the blog tour for Under The Light of The Italian Moon by Jennifer Anton! Please join me in conversation with the author… Hi Jennifer! First of all, I would like to congratulate you on the publication of Under the Light of the Italian Moon ! Can you please briefly tell us what it is about? A: Under the Light of the Italian Moon is a story of love and women’s resilience during the rise of fascism and Italy’s collapse into WWII. It is inspired by the lives of the Italian women in my family who I have been researching for the past 14 years since 2006 when my daughter was born and my Italian grandmother died within two weeks of each other. It tells the story of Nina Argenta, the daughter of a strong-willed midwife, who falls in love with a man who has emigrated to America. She stays behind to help her mother, but has dreams of joining her husband that are put at risk when Mussolini’s fascists cause turmoil and Nazis occupy their northern Italian town. Did you have the plot enti

Welcome to the blog tour for The Shadowy Third by Julia Parry. More about the book… A sudden death in the family delivers Julia a box of love letters. Dusty with age, they reveal an illicit affair between the celebrated twentieth-century Irish novelist Elizabeth Bowen and Humphry House – Julia’s grandfather. So begins an intriguing quest to discover and understand this affair, one with profound repercussions for Julia’s family, not least for her grandmother, Madeline. This is a book about how stories are told in real life, in fiction and in families. Inspired by Bowen’s own obsession with place and memory, Julia travels to all the locations in the letters – from Kolkata to Cambridge and from Ireland to Texas. The reader is taken from the rarefied air of Oxford in the 1930s, to the Anglo-Irish Big House, to the last days of Empire in India and on into the Second World War. The fascinating unpublished correspondence, a wealth of family photographs, and a celebrated supporting cast that

Welcome to the blog tour for Things We Didn’t Say by Amy Lynn Green. More about the book… Headstrong Johanna Berglund, a linguistics student at the University of Minnesota, has very definite plans for her future . . . plans that do not include returning to her hometown and the secrets and heartaches she left behind there. But the US Army wants her to work as a translator at a nearby camp for German POWs. Johanna arrives to find the once-sleepy town exploding with hostility. Most patriotic citizens want nothing to do with German soldiers laboring in their fields, and they're not afraid to criticize those who work at the camp as well. When Johanna describes the trouble to her friend Peter Ito, a language instructor at a school for military intelligence officers, he encourages her to give the town that rejected her a second chance. As Johanna interacts with the men of the camp and censors their letters home, she begins to see the prisoners in a more sympathetic light. But advocating

Welcome to the blog tour for When Harry Met Minnie: A true story of love and friendship by Martha Teichner. Published by Aster, below you will find an extract that will hopefully capture your full attention! One o’clock came and went. No Carol. No Harry. No Stephen. I fussed. I petted Minnie. I looked out my front windows. I checked my cell phone. I paced. I tried to read the newspaper. Two o’clock came and went. My fussing notched up. Finally, I got a text from Carol. Stephen was late. I heard from her again. Horrific traffic on the West Side Highway. There are other routes, but normally, as long as it’s not rush hour, this expressway along the Hudson River was the quickest, twenty minutes between Carol’s place and mine, no more. At two thirty, she texted to say they were still on the West Side Highway. They were stuck. No way to exit. I began pacing and fussing all over again. Where were they? Why was I so anxious? Finally, just before three, Carol phoned to tell me they  were on my

Welcome to the blog tour for The Mind’s Eye by Miles Hudson . Get yourself comfortable and read on to discover the behind-the-scenes of the sequel to 2089 . Hi Miles! First of all, I would like to congratulate you on the publication of The Mind’s Eye ! Can you please briefly tell us what it is about? A: Thanks Silvia, and thanks for inviting me on to your book blog. Hopefully, this will give you some idea about the story, but I didn’t want to give too much away as there are many twists and turns. The year is 2091, and a universal system for remotely tapping into the optic and auditory nerves of all humans is in place. Everything that people see and hear is detected, and the feeds of this information are published publicly online. Nothing can be secret. It is the ultimate surveillance society but, as everybody’s sights and sounds are publicly viewable, there is a different atmosphere from most fiction concepts of an oppressive, surveillance-based dystopian society. The surviving popul

Welcome to the blog tour for The Other Daughter by Caroline Bishop ! Synopsis: When Jessica discovers a shocking secret about her birth, she leaves her London home and travels to Switzerland in search of answers. She knows her journalist mother spent time in the country forty years earlier, reporting on the Swiss women’s liberation movement, but what she doesn’t know is what happened to her while she was there. Can Jess summon the courage to face the truth about her family, or will her search only hurt herself and those around her even more? How did this book end up in my hands? I was gifted a copy of the book by the publisher so that I could review it. Was it a page-turner? Yes, absolutely. In general, I find dual timeline novels hard to put down as I keep wanting to find out how one timeline affects the other. In this case, the broad spectrum of emotions that Jess goes through made it even more unputdownable as I felt totally invested in her life. Did the book meet my expectation

Welcome to the blog tour for The Heart Stone by Judith Barrow , who generously dedicated some of her time to join the Q&A you’ll find below. Hi Judith! First of all, I would like to congratulate you on the publication of The Heart Stone ! Can you please briefly tell us what it is about? A: Thank you, Silvia, launching a new book is an exciting time. The Heart Stone begins in 1914, on the day the First World War is declared in Britain, and the story centres on sixteen-year-old Jessie Jenkins. Her friend, Arthur Dawson, lies about his age to enlist in the local Pals Battalion. Before leaving he and Jessie become lovers and Arthur places a love note under a heart-shaped stone, on the wall of the field where they meet, for her to read until he returns. The note plays an important part in the story. Jessie’s widowed mother, Dorothy, marries Amos Morgan, a vicious, spiteful man. In 1915, Jessie becomes a vulnerable outcast after finding herself pregnant and being made homeless by her s

Welcome to the blog tour for The Dressmaker of Paris by Georgia Kaufmann ! About the book… Rosa Kusstatscher has built a global fashion empire upon her ability to find the perfect outfit for any occasion. But tonight, as she prepares for the most important meeting of her life, her usual certainty eludes her. What brought her to this moment? As she struggles to select her dress and choose the right shade of lipstick, Rosa begins to tell her incredible story. The story of a poor country girl from a village high in the mountains of Italy. Of Nazi occupation and fleeing in the night. Of hope and heartbreak in Switzerland; glamour and love in Paris. Of ambition and devastation in Rio de Janeiro; success and self-discovery in New York. A life spent running, she sees now. But she will run no longer. About the author… Georgia Kaufmann studied Social Anthropology and Demography at Cambridge, LSE and Oxford. She currently lives within cycling distance of central London with her husban

Hi Ameya ! First of all, I would like to congratulate you on the publication of Ritu Weds Chandni ! Can you please briefly tell us what it is about? A: Thank you so much, I am grateful to Yali Books for putting this story out in the world! Ritu Weds Chandni celebrates a same-sex relationship of two women and is set against a colourful backdrop of a big fat Indian wedding. It is seen from the point of view of young Ayesha, who is excited to see her cousin Ritu marry her girlfriend Chandni and wants to dance in her baraat (procession). However, some people are not happy and have vowed to stop the wedding; and it is up to Ayesha to save her cousin’s big day. Congratulations are also in order because Ritu Weds Chandni  was nominated a  Best Picture Book of 2020 by Kirkus Reviews. That is an incredible recognition. How does it make you feel? A: It is honestly unbelievable! We are thrilled by all the love the book has received so far. I am hoping that the recognition facilitates the book t

Happy publication day to Flynn Meaney! Bad Habits is out now and it promises to be a riotously funny novel about the importance of friendship and finding your voice. Intrigued? More about the book… Hilarious, bold and sparky, this is the funniest book you'll read all year. Perfect for fans of Sex Education and Derry Girls . * Alex is a rebel with a purple fauxhawk and biker boots. St Mary's Catholic School is the strict boarding school where she's currently trapped. Despite trying everything she can to get expelled, she's still stuck with the nuns, the prudish attitude and the sexism. So Alex decides to take matters into her own hands. She's going to stage the school's first ever production of The Vagina Monologues... Trouble is, no one else at St Mary's can even bear to say the word 'vagina' out loud! More about the author… Flynn Meaney is the author of The Boy Recession and Bloodthirsty . She studied marketing and French at the University of No

Hi Charlotte ! First of all, I would like to congratulate you on the paperback publication of If I Can’t Have You ! Can you please briefly tell us what it is about? A: Thanks Silvia! Yes, it’s about Constance Little, an emotionally damaged young woman, struggling to cope with the loss of her mother. When she begins an intense affair with Samuel, the new doctor at the medical practice where she's a receptionist, she's finally found the love and security she craves. But for Samuel, it is just all a bit of fun, and when he ends things, Constance is unable to let it go. The novel is a letter to Samuel, an explanation of her increasing obsession and unravelling. Although it has thriller elements, it's not a typical psychological thriller. There's some dark humour too! It's been described as Eleonor Oliphant meets YOU , which I think is a good summation. Did you have the plot entirely figured out when you started writing the book or did it take an unexpected turn as the