Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

Kate Atkinson is one of my favourite authors, so a new release from her is always exciting! She has taken a break from her popular series of crime novels featuring Jackson Brodie to write this extraordinary and thought-provoking novel. The premise of the novel is simple, and is right there on the back  cover:

“What if you had the chance to live your life again and again, until you finally got it right?”

This is what literally happens to Ursula Todd.

Ursula is born on a snowy night in February 1910. The first time she is born, she dies before she has even taken a breath. The second time she is luckier and survives. Ursula is born, lives and dies under different circumstances as she experiences her life over and over, through the turbulent events of the 20th century. In many lives she faces the same turning points and a different choice she makes, or her reaction to an occurrence, changes the outcome for her and those around her. She doesn’t consciously remember her earlier lives, but often has strong “premonitions” when faced with a situation that has ended badly in a previous life. Despite Ursula often facing the same crossroads moments, the story never feels repetitive and is always satisfying – a testament to Kate Atkinson’s inventiveness. Some lives are subtly different, and others radically so, but the characters and the bonds between them are convincing and immediate.

Original, inventive and engrossing, this is a book about family, love, war, history, hope and possibilities. After all, who amongst us hasn’t ever wondered “what if”? A wonderful novel, thoroughly deserving of it’s place on the shortlist of this year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction. Trade paperback, $32.95

A Light Shining in the Forest by Paul Torday

A Light Shining the Forest is Paul Torday’s latest and is a winner!   Set in the north east of England it tells the story of some missing children which the police are calling ‘missing persons’ but which the parents call ‘abductions’

Three people are brought together in an unlikely alliance.  Norman, the Children’s Czar, is a  lifetime bureaucrat who has reached a high position in the public service doing very little and taking no risks.  Although he is Commissioner for Children he is unmarried and has no experience of children!

His secretary Pippa, studying part time,  spends a lot of time arranging his lunch appointments and meetings ,fetching coffee and making eyes at Willie.

Willie is an ambitious reporter on the local rag who hopes for a story after the first child disappears and the police seem indifferent. When more disappear he smells an even bigger story that will ” make his career”, so he goes to see the Children’s Czar!!

The three of them struggle against the police attitude, the parents and Willie’s editor to find out what happened.  What starts out as a tale of incompetence, selfishness and indifference becomes a tale of passion, commitment and bravery.  The story twists when people start having unusual dreams and seeing things that disappear.

The culmination in the forest is unexpected and thrilling!  $30 large PB

10 Futures by Michael Pryor

Michael Pryor has departed a bit from his recent magic and fantasy series.  This book introduces Sam and Tara, close friends, who are living, surviving, enduring, coping  with and enjoying ten different futures of our world.

There’s 2020, not far away and there are robots in a high-tech world;  there’s 2040 where genetic selection has become a reality; there’s 2090, not in our life time [as far as we know now, that is] and global warming is real causing many challenges.   There’s 2100 where artificial intelligence rules.

Each of the ten futures has a root in the present day – for example, Global Warming, Financial Crises, population pressures etc.  Michael gives us a snapshot of that future, through the eyes of Sam and Tara, best friends.  The book reads like a collection of connected short stories.Each snapshot is intriguing and thought provoking.Sam and Tara are cleverly the same people throughout, although affected by each of their futures in subtle ways.  This is highly recommended reading but also gives interesting points for discussion.

10 Futures Book Trailer:

10 Futures by Michael Pryor

$18.95 PB

Michael Pryor has departed a bit from his recent magic and fantasy series for yound adults/teens.  This book introduces Sam and Tara, close friends, who are living, surviving, enduring, coping  with and enjoying ten different futures of our world.

There’s 2020, not far away and there are robots in a high-tech world;  there’s 2040 where genetic selection has become a reality; there’s 2090, not in our life time [as far as we know now, that is] and global warming is real causing many challenges.   There’s 2100 where artificial intelligence rules.
Each of the ten futures has a root in the present day – for example, Global Warming, Financial Crises, population pressures etc.  Michael gives us a snapshot of that future, through the eyes of Sam and Tara, best friends.  The book reads like a collection of connected short stories.Each snapshot is intriguing and thought provoking.  Although targeted at teens, it’s fine reading for all.Sam and Tara are cleverly the same people throughout, although affected by each of their futures in subtle ways.  This is highly recommended reading but also gives interesting points for discussion.

Sound of Gravity

$32.95

Joe Simpson is well known in book circles for his epic true story of adventure, disaster, mateship and survival; Touching the Void, which was made into a thrilling movie.

Now he’s turned his hand to fiction but has stayed with what he knows best.

The Sound of Gravity is an atmospheric story, similar in some ways to the true life story of Touching the Void. The book opens with the main character climbing in cold places with his girlfried, fighting gravity all the way.

The author describes the cold, the ice, the storms, the dangers and the loneliness of mountain climbing. He’s obviously writing from first hand experience.  The main character, Patrick suffers terribly for his passion.  He suffers loss, hardship, storms, torment and pain.  As the story unfolds we’re introduced to some of the many kinds of people you find in high places!

The book is written in parts, separated in time but connected throughout.

Highly recommended

D4RK INSIDE

$18 PB

Jeyn Roberts was born in Canada and this is her first novel.  It’s an engaging and thrilling post-apocalyptic story.  It’s released as ‘young adult’ but it’s very good reading for all ages from young teens up.   The story is told in a series of episodes about a number of young people, all affected by  several huge earthquakes shake every continent on Earth.  Something strange starts happening to some people. Michael can only watch in horror as an incidence of road rage so extreme it ends in two deaths unfolds before his eyes; Clementine finds herself being hunted through the small town she has lived in all her life, by people she has known all her life; and Mason is attacked with a baseball bat by a random stranger. An inner rage has been released and some people cannot fight it. For those who can, life becomes an ongoing battle to survive – at any cost!

Since mankind began, civilizations have always fallen – now it’s our turn!

Sanctus by Simon Toyne

$30 large format PB

A great thriller from new British writer Simon Toyne
You’ll be intrigued from the beginning. An ancient conspiracy is at the centre of what seems to be just another suicide but could also be a ‘suspicious death’! But the modern world certainties seem threatened by an ancient conspiracy!

A man throws himself to his death from a mountainous Citadel in the historic Turkish city of Ruin. This is no ordinary suicide but a symbolic act and although it is witnessed by the entire world through the media, few understand it.  Kathryn Mann, a charity worker and a few others have been waiting for something like this. The secretive people that live in the Citadel suspect it could mean the end of everything they have built and they’re prepared to fight vigourously to prevent it. For Liv Adamsen, New York crime reporter, it brings news of her brother, thought dead, and starts her on a bizarre journey. And at that journey’s end lies a discovery that will change EVERYTHING !

SANCTUS is an apocalyptic conspiracy thriller like no other — it brings intrigue, excitement and
fascination, and is Mark Toyne’s debut.

Enjoy your FREE coffee with this bean-inspired tale…

The Little Coffee Shop Of Kabul

by Deborah Rodriguez

rrp $32.95

This is the second novel set in Kabul by Deborah Rodriguez, the first was

the much-enjoyed Kabul Beauty School, and 2011′s Little Coffee Shop Of

Kabul is no less a treat.

Once again, the story is set around the dangerous hub of Kabul, where flying bullets and falling rubble is a part of everyone’s day as much as the ritual of morning coffee.  The story centers on five enigmatic women with individual secrets and troubles who meet at the coffee shop, run by the indomitable Sunny.

There’s young Yasmina, alone and pregnant, Isabel, the journalist, Candace, the rich American pursuing an Afghan lover, and Halajan, the 60 year old matriarch-type figure who has lived through many terrible events.

Whilst an engaging and hugely delightful novel, full of well-written and and intelligent prose, this is no mere throw-away book group read.  The author does not shy away from the horrors of life in a war-torn, ravaged and starving country full of frightened and suspicious people.  The strength and love the characters show for each other and fellow Afghans is life-affirming and spiriting, this book will stay with you long after the last page has turned.

While stocks last, each copy comes with a voucher for free coffee at your nearest Jamaica Blue Coffee Shop, to savour with this fine novel.

Enoy!

In store now.

Never Let Me Go

by Kazuo Ishiguro

rrp $23

The haunting and mesmerising story of three children who grow up in an exclusive and secluded boarding school in the English countryside will stay with you long after you’ve finished the last page.  Author Kazuo Ishiguro, of The Remains of the Day fame, was nominated for a Booker Prize upon its release five years ago.

Never Let Me Go is narrated by Kathy, a “carer” in her late 20s who is thinking back to her seemingly idyllic upbringing at the Hailsham estate and her two best friends, Ruth and Tommy.  The students are taught about the world and their role in society, but never venture outside the school grounds.  Their already-set future on the outside is always alluded to by their teachers (called ‘guardians’) and it builds quite a portentous feeling.  The denouement is equally shocking and thought-provoking, which questions the meaning of life and the nature of humanity.

Ishiguro’s simple and minimalist prose, in the voice of Kathy, never quite prepares us for the heartbreaking events later in the novel.  This beautiful book has recently been adapted to film, and is due for release in Australia in late February.

Read the book before you see the film!

In store now.

Heroine of Historical Fiction!

The Distant Hours

Kate Morton is a renowned local author who has made quite a name for herself with her beautifully written novels set in by-gone eras that evoke an authentic feeling of a historical period.  From war-torn Britain and the search for identity in Victorian times in The Forgotten Garden, to fading aristocratic families in Edwardian England in the 1930s in The Shifting Fog, Morton is adept at drawing the reader into her rich, gothic tales.

Her latest novel, The Distant Hours (hb $40), sticks to similar themes of family secrets and discovery.  Edie Burchill receives a long-lost letter from her mother whom she was never close to, detailing her evacuation from the London Blitz in the 1940s to live with the mysterious and eccentric Blythe family at Milderhurst Castle in Kent.  Juniper Blythe and her twin sisters live with their father, Raymond, the author of the 1918 children’s classic The True history of the Mud Man.

Starting as an idyllic relocation to the beautiful countryside for Edie’s mother, the enigmatic Blythe family soon show a captivating and disturbing undercurrent.  Formerly celebrated, now verging on mad, Raymond roams the vast and chilling castle with its locked doors and hidden passages.  Is Raymond being haunted by his own creation, the Mud Man?  What event caused Juniper to be damaged for the rest of her life?  Why was the moat surrounding the castle filled in?

Jumping back and forth between Edie’s day and the past, the novel grabs your attention with its intrigue and baffling mystique and does not let go till the very end.  A truly enthralling and worthwhile read, Kate Morton’s latest offering can sit proudly along side her previous novels in a genre she has perfected.

Out now in a lovely hardback edition, $40.