The Powder Man

Paul Youden's The Powder Man tells the story of dedicated young journalist, Peter Kingston.

A good journalist always follows his nose and follows the news story, take him, or her, where it might.

However, an older and wiser journalist might swiftly walk right on by.

But Peter is young, ambitious and eager to make his mark in the world of journalism, wanting to move on from covering mundane stories for his regional weekly newspaper. who wants to cover driving offences, council minutes, petty crimes and village fates when there is a whole world of real news stories out there?

A fellow journalist has an unfortunate and devastating encounter with the shadowy Powder Man, an international and highly dangerous drug baron.

/this turns out to be a blessing for Peter as he gains the opportunity to travel throughout Europe with his gorgeous photographer girlfriend Sue and for them to be paid for the travel privilege, too.

They travel through the Alpine loveliness of  wintertime in Austria and Switzerland and are enjoying themselves immensely.

But all is not what it seems. Because unbeknown to Peter and Sue their lives are in mortal danger as they are being tracked and followed by the Powder Man. And he is getting closer and closer to them.

They realise that they have fallen into the rabbit hole and emerged, shocked and terrified, into an alien world of international corruption, global organised crime, kidnapping, mistaken identities and for the potential of a ruthless and bloody death.

Will Peter and Sue escape the clutches of the Powder Man? For a very reasonable £8.99 you can find out in this thrilling book which is published by The Book Guild.

The book is available via the That's Books and Entertainment bookshop to the right hand side of the site.

The Stealers

What could be easier? Just steal another car, in this case, a funky red 1966 classic Ford Mustang.

I mean, what could possibly go wrong?

In this particular occasion the gang rather stupidly targeted the 1966 red Ford Mustang owned by Jack Crane. You might remember Jack Crane from the other two novels by Charles Hall, Bad Faces and Sea Fort.

Oh. That Jack Crane? Jack Crane the highly trained and utterly truthless recently retired SAS officer?

The gang of car thieves had stolen his beloved car and he was going to get it back. One way, or another.

But the gang of car thieves were more than just a gang of car thieves, they were far, far worse than that. And they had made the -often fatal- mistake of making themselves noticeable to a man who was even more capable of causing mayhem, destruction and death than they could dream of.

The dangerous man hunt traverses Europe from Eastern England to France and beyond as he begins to understand the true nature of the vile gang that stole his car.

They appeared to be implicated in child abduction too and as the body count begins to rise Crane realised that if he wanted to reclaim his car, escape with his life and crush his new-found enemies, he'd have to remember all of his SAS training to make sure that he got his car and escaped with his life.

This is a genuinely fast-paced crime thriller of a novel with many twists and turns in its 369 action-packed pages.

It is published by Matador at a rather modest £9.99 and is available from he That's Books and Entertainment bookshop powered by Amazon to the right of the site.

According to the Daily Mail

According to the Daily Mail is a satirical novel by advertising agency executive Laurence Simpson.

The protagonist of the novel, Jonathon, is outraged by what he sees as the excesses of the tabloid press.

He decides that all the evils of society can be attributed to the fact that "impressionable" members of the public are being lied to and deluded by the tabloid press.

Jonathon decides that the only possible course of action in to employ a group of mercenaries in the form of disaffected ex-military types to blow up their printing presses, whilst he employs a hacker to take down their websites.

Suspicion falls upon Jonathon, but he has an alibi, so seems to be safe from the long arm of the law. For now.

The successes emboldens our hero who employs someone else to pirate TV programmes with messages demanding to want to know why people are watching the programme concerned.

He finds a new and somewhat naughty girlfriend and  galivants about the place having adventures with her and his two children.

But the redoubtable Inspector Foot is on his trail and is determined to bring him to justice.

Will Inspector Foot succeed?  Or will Jonathon get away with it and pull off one last outrageous coup?

The book is slated for publication in January 2016 at a cost of £10.95.

Out of Bounds by Bruce Hugman

Out of Bounds by Bruce Hugman is an exceptionally well-written autobiography by the noted published author.

It is the story of how Bruce Hugman grew up as a child who was kept within strictly enforced parameters that were designed to create a young man who would perfectly conform to what post-war society and his family would expect of him.

But that wasn't what Bruce wanted to be about at all!

He wanted to explore his own nature, to seek out variety and adventure and to find out his own destiny in terms of himself as a human and in terms of his sexual identity.

He did very well at both Solihull School and at Oxford and began to learn what life was really about during his time working with so-called delinquent teenagers at a residential school in Scotland.

He finds himself conforming during his first "real" job, though a decision to retrain and a new career as a probation officer in Sheffield helps him learn more about life and himself, through his associations with his clients, described as "drug-takers and prostitutes."

Eventually he moves south and find a variety of different jobs working in the kitchens of a well-appointed restaurant and later a six month stint as a farm labourer until he finds gainful employment more in line with his previous experience and his formal qualifications.

He describes himself as "gifted, sociable and restless."

The fact that at a time of considerable opposition and often open hostility to people who were gay, makes the three decade struggle for Bruce Hugman to come to terms with his sexuality all the more moving and poignant.

The book takes the read through until the 1970s.

It is a thoughtful book and is profusely illustrated throughout with a variety of photographs.

It is published by the author at £14.99 and good value as it covers over 430 pages.

The stunning cover art is by Paradorn Warrapinyaporn.

The ISBN is 9781 782 804 352 .

It is, of course, available through the That's Books and Entertainment online shop, situated to the right hand site of the site.

Sewing the Shadows Together by Alison Baillie

Sewing the Shadows Together by Alison Baillie is a murder mystery set in a seaside town in Scotland

It is over three decades after the death of 13-year-old Shona McIver.

But, of course, nobody who knew Shona, her family and friends, have ever really got beyond what happened to her. How her life was cruelly taken from her and how cruelly she was taken from them.

But life, after a fashion, must proceed.

Eventually, her brother Tom and Shona's best friend Sarah meet, once again, at a school reunion and naturally, the dreadful fate of Shona is at the forefront of both of their minds.

They had believed that justice had been served all those long years ago, but this comfort blanket id savagely ripped away from them when it is made known that modern advances in DNA science proves that the wrong man was convicted of Shona's murder.

As a result of this devastating, but highly important revelation, the lives of both Tom and Shona are thrown into disarray and uncertainty.

They both feel a need for justice to be served for Shona and they decide to seek out the real killer.

But the search to identify the real killer makes suspicions fall on their nearest and dearest. In his search for the truth, Tom begins to discover some dark an unpleasant secrets.

The perfect life of Sarah begins to develop some rather deep fault lines.

The two seekers after the truth of what really happened to Shona all those years ago find themselves enmeshed in a spider's web of intrigue, deception, love and death.

And the truth. But what if the truth is too horrible for at least one of them to learn?

Could they cope with this truth?

This is an exceptionally well told story and is published on 28th August by Matador and costs £8.99.

It is available from the That's Books and Entertainment bookshop, which is to the right of the site.

Hidden Hamlets, Dancing Trees

Hidden Hamlets, Dancing Trees, written by Terrence F. Jones, tells the story of what life was like in the time of the Celts, when the might of the Imperial Roman armies had decided to annex the lands of the Celts on the British Isles in the name of the Roman Empire.

We read how Josin and Egan, the only survivors of a brutal and vicious attack by an attacking force of Roman soldiers on their village, decide to leave the shattered and destroyed remains of their once prosperous village.

Their purpose? To join up with other Celts and to work toward wreaking their vengeance upon the Roman invaders who has slain their kith and kin and who continued to take over Celtic Britain, their homeland.

Egan becomes renowned as an inspired fighter. He becomes known as a master strategist and an expert in deadly guerrilla tactics which he employs to deadly effect upon  the Roman army.

His fame as a military strategist becomes known to Boudicca, the Queen of the Iceni tribe and she is able to employ this master of military strategy in her fight against the Roman hoards.

And thus begins a new phase in the anti-Roman resistance and how they attempt to rid their land of the might of Imperial Rome.

There is one quibble with the publisher's description of the book. It refers to the Celts as a "rural, hunter-gatherer society." This is wrong. The Celts were an advanced agricultural society. However, this should not be seen in any way to detract from the novel which is very well researched, indeed. (http://resourcesforhistory.com/Celtic_Farming_in_Britain.htm)

The book is published by The Book Guild in paperback at £9.99 and is available from The That's Books and Entertainments bookshop to be found to the righthand side of this site.

Sea Music

Author Briege Brannigan brings a tale of tragedy, heartbreak and of dark family secrets kept for far, far too long.

Artist Jess Cooper's life has, suddenly, been beset by a series of rapid and tragic events that have shaken her to the core.

As a result she leaves for Northumberland in an attempt to recuperate and reassess her life.

She glances through the window of a local estate agent and espies a home called "Sea Music" that overlooks the North Sea, standing majestically on a high cliff.

The name enchants her and she is, apparently inexplicably, drawn toward the house.

When she arrives at the house to view it, there is something that is worrying away at her mind. She feels a certain deja vu, but how can this be? And what is it?

That evening she is visited by an apparition, the face of a woman. A woman she knows is called Lydia.

But who is Lydia? And what connection could she have with Jess?

Jess has always known that, besides her parents, she has no living relatives. But what if this was never the truth? What has been withheld from her, and why?

Shocked to the depth of her very being, Jess learns that Lydia is no phantom of her imagination. Lydia was a living, breathing person who had been her aunt, until she died in a mysterious fall at her home, Sea Music.

She also learns that Lydia had given birth to a baby boy, who had been abducted several years before her death. And that he abductor of the child had ever been apprehended or brought to justice.

Puzzled by why her parents had kept the story of existence of Lydia, her abducted infant and of her untimely death, Jess sets out to discover the truth about what had occurred.

This is a compelling book that rips appart years of lies and secrets that some thought were gone forever. But surely people should know that the truth will always surface?

It is published by Matador at £8.99 and is available via the That's Books and Entertainment bookshop, which can be found on the righthand side of this website.