Book after Book

For a chance to win a copy of A Kind of Vanishing by Lesley Thomson simply follow me on Twitter and RT my competition-related message. www.twitter.com/BrightonBlogger For one extra entry become a follower of this blog too! Two copies available. The competition ends on May 17th at 14:00 GMT. Winners will be chosen at random and contacted on the same day. If you missed my review of the book, please click here: http://bit.ly/b9v8xl

By Lesley Thomson Published by Myriad Editions It is the summer of 1968. The Ramsays are spending the holidays in their majestic country house in Sussex and their youngest child, Eleanor, is introduced to Alice, the daughter of the village postman. Their parents believe that the two girls will enjoy playing together, despite the evident clash of personalities. Eleanor is as adventure-seeking and unruly as Alice is quiet and obedient. Always polite, Alice shocks herself when she starts taunting Eleanor with a secret that she discovered about Mrs Ramsay. That’s why, despite having been told not to go to there, she follows her companion to the Tide Mills. The ruins of a deserted village, they are Eleanor’s favourite playground and - with all their nooks and intricate vegetation - a perfect place to play hide and seek. When it is Eleanor’s turn to hide, Alice vanishes without trace. Lesley Thomson’s engaging writing style skilfully explores the obsession and the sense of guilt, hope and de...

By Marc Johns Published by teNeues When life gets too serious, this is a great book to have at hand. All you need to do is randomly open a page and you will find a smile spreading across your lips! If the title could be misleading, the picture on the cover will reassure you that the adjective associated to these drawings is not to be taken literally. The men and the strange creatures that populate the world of Canadian artist Marc Johns might never be found smiling but they actually help us not to take life too seriously. Fashion, consumerism, religion… nothing is off-limits for Marc Johns and his drawing tools! Divided between ink and watercolour drawings on paper and drawings on yellow sticky notes, we find two-headed men, pipes that are trying to quit smoking, advice on how to wear antlers, hovering people and oddly-shaped creatures with their own dreams and fears. Not to mention flying moustaches and beards that grow pretty much anywhere! Simple and terribly communicative, you will...

For a chance to win a copy of This is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper simply follow me on Twitter and RT my competition-related message. www.twitter.com/BrightonBlogger For one extra entry become a follower of this blog too! Three copies available. The competition ends on March 18th at 14:00 GMT. Winners will be chosen at random and contacted on the same day. If you missed my review of the book, please click here: http://bit.ly/9B0teN

By Jonathan Tropper Published by Orion Books Jonathan Tropper, bestselling author of How to Talk to a Widower , returns with a book that explores all the facets of family life – marriage, divorce, love and compromises being only a few of them. A death in the family is the starting point of the narration, the reality that the reader is plunged into from the opening line. Although bringing with itself sadness for the loss of a loved one and, possibly, regrets for things done - or not done - in the past, death in this book is not a dark event looming over the living. It is rather an opportunity to come together. Siblings Judd, Paul, Wendy and Phillip are informed by their exuberant mother that the unexpected last wish of their non-religious father was for them to sit Shiva. That means that, rather than leaving the house as soon as possible after the funeral - which was certainly what each of them was planning - they will have to spend seven days together in the same house, behaving like a...

By Carol Ann Duffy Published by Picador Carol Ann Duffy’s Love Poems, a poetry collection published by Picador at the beginning of the year, will conquer you from the moment you lay eyes on its book jacket, deliciously decorated with dream-like patterns. However, you need to beware: the contents of this little volume are not as romantic as the cover might suggest. Or at least, not romantic in the conventional meaning of the word. The thirty-four poems selected were drawn from previous collections, such as The World’s Wife and Rapture, as well as the forthcoming The Bees, to be published in 2011. All the poems are joined by a common thread: love. This however, can take many shapes and appear in different nuances and combinations. Love and desire, as in Girlfriends: ‘That hot September night, we slept in a single bed/ naked, and our frail bodies the sweat/cooled and renewed itself’. Love and truthfulness, as in Valentine: ‘I give you an onion/ Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips/ poss...

By Tony Diamond Published by QueenSpark Books On 28th April 1965, Barnardos took a group of children to Australia, in search of a new life and better opportunities. Aged 16, Anthony Roy Bates was one of those children and this is his story. Through the pages of Pebble on the Beach, that same boy, now in his sixties and with a new name, Tony Diamond, recalls his adventure. He might have only spent 9 months away from his home in Hove but they were most certainly 9 action-packed months. After the flight from London Heathrow, young Tony spends a few days in Sydney before being sent to work on a farmhouse at Scone, New South Wales. That is only going to be the first of several jobs and several places that see him becoming more and more determined to go back to England, even if that means having to stow away on a ship, failing in his escape plans and being arrested in New Zealand. You will follow him to the other end of the world and back, you will meet all the people that enriched his exper...