Algernon Arbuthnot Arrives

 

Algernon Arbuthnot Arrives is a wonderful story for children. 

P. G. Bogle tells what happens when a suitcase is opened after their family has arrived back from a cruise on an ocean liner and Luke and Lexi meet Algernon Arbuthnot, who has arrived at their home, with them.

The remarkable thing? Algernon Arbuthnot is a small white mouse who can talk.

He reveals that he has descended from a popular Hollywood movie star, who had been on a Grand Tour of Europe.

The children convince their parents to allow  Algernon Arbuthnot to stay with them (as their pet white mouse) after an interesting first night Luke and Lexi introduce Algernon to their Aunt Rita who has a background in fashion and is able to turn her skills to creating an absolutely stunning wardrobe of clothing for his trip.

So, what on earth could go wrong? Unfortunately quite a lot. In fact, a great deal, because Algernon has the ability to bring chaos and confusion when there was none!

The family join him on the Grand Tour. Algernon boasts about the great and daring deeds of his ancestors, but are they really what happened? 

This is a fantastic present for any child of nine and above, or younger if they are an advanced reader.

It's from Matador at £6.99 and will be ideal for family reading sessions and bedtime stories.

 

Child X

 

In Child X former private investigator and gambler Mick Lee brings his readers a new novel, this time he has penned a psychological thriller.

What happens to a child who kills but who feels absolutely no remorse? Does he deserve a second chance? 

What if there is a second child who did not do anything to prevent a murder, who is offered redemption? What should happen?

The novel opens in 1999 at the cusp of the new millennium. We are introduced to Ray. Ray is a private investigator who is having something of a hard time both professionally and personally. He is addicted to gambling and his debts are dangerously out of control. Why dangerously out of control? Because Ray owes money to some very, very dangerous people who would not hesitate to use violence against him now that he has stretched their already very slim patience beyond breaking point.

However there comes a chance of redemption for Ray from a rather unlikely source. A gangster (a retired gangster, to be more precise) comes to Ray with a business proposition. If Ray will use his experience and resources to find a man, he will pay off all of his gambling debts.

I mean, what could possibly go wrong? But Ray really has no choice in the matter under his current perilous circumstances and he begins to track the man down. He discovers that the man is hiding within a cult that is pretending to be nothing more than an ordinary telemarketing outfit.

The man has employed several different identities over the years but is now enmeshed in a death that means he will become much more visible.

As Ray closes in on the subject of his investigation he finds a dark secret from the man's childhood. However, there is a eerie link to something in Ray's past. 

The story will end badly. But for whom?

It's a rapidly paced, dark novel that will be in the Christmas stockings of many fans of psychological thrillers.

It's published by Matador at £8.99.  

Gethsemane Revisited

In Gethsemane Revisited James Brophy, in his debut novel introduces us to a fairly ordinary young man, Jerome.

But Jerome is not as ordinary as he might appear at first sight. Because Jerome has a remarkable and very special gift. Jerome can travel back through time.

However, there are certain rules that affect Jerome's adventures. He will never be able to prove to anyone else what he can do, only he can remember his visits and he is unable to change history. 

Obviously his visits to the past mean that anything he does or says has already taken place in the past.

He finds that he can meet historically famous people and ask them questions that he has always desired answers to. 

However, eventually as one would expect, Jerome has a strong need to actually share his secret of being a time traveller with other people. Obviously his family should know of his wonderful gift, right?

So Jerome shares his secret with members of his own family, by telling his brother. But his family are concerned about Jerome's stories of time travelling as they are convinced that he is suffering from some sort of delusional condition.

Are they right? Or is Jerome right? Is he a genuine time traveller or someone who is suffering from a delusional mental disorder?

Jerome realises that he needs to set off one one last time travelling adventure to settle matters once and for all. Is he right? Or is his family right?

It's a stunning debut novel filled with adventures and well told at a rapid pace that keeps the attention of the reader.

The ending is truly stunning and very, very moving but I will not spoil it by letting slip what it is.

The book will make an excellent Christmas gift. It's published by Matador at £10.00.

Hopefully this novel will be the first of many from James Brophy.

Some of Millions

 

In his book Some of Millions Jethro Bor brings together the stories of a number of people from all walks of life who have undergone mental health breakdowns and other mental health issues.

He has carefully collated and edited their stories in a sensitive and constructive fashion. The book also has a forward by Patrick Cockburn.

Jethro is no stranger to the problems brought about by problems with mental health, having suffered with the impact of mental illness for many years himself, he wanted to shine a powerful but friendly light upon the impact of mental health issues on sufferers and their families. It's a sobering fact that at least one in four of us will have to cope with a mental health problem in their lives.

We read of the problems faced by journalist Patrick Cockburn when his art student son became mentally ill when Patrick was reporting on the war in Afghanistan. 

There is the story of Charlotte, who was shocked to be diagnosed as having bipolar disease, because as she points out, she had always considered herself a level-headed person.

We read of the first panic attack suffered by Rebecca in her twenties. The rages she had felt after her parents had divorced when she was seven were to have serious consequences in her adult life.

There's Edward, who had been diagnosed as having paranoid schizophrenia in 1990. He began talking back to the voices he was hearing, a bad thing to do, he would be told, later.

There's Pic, who became depressed at age eight or thereabouts, who began cutting herself as she became older, something she kept secret until she became married.

There's also cases where the mental illness of others can impact upon family members or close friends. For example Andrew's father committed suicide when Jim was 17, although nobody was quite certain why he had done it. Andrew was stoical about it for the sake of his mother, but later on he became depressed and attempted to take his own life.

The book contains highly relevant and helpful advice from Jim,  who offers sage and helpful advice.

There are some beautiful illustrations throughout the book by people who have been through the mill of life. as it were. 

This book is important as it enables the reader to have a glimpse into the lives of people who suffer from a wide range of mental health issues.

It will make a perfect gift for someone who has mental health issues or for every nurse and doctor in the land, so it deserves to be in Christmas stockings up and down the land. I think mental health professionals might like to order multiple copies for their practices.

It's published by The Book Guild at £9.99.

Perfectly Imperfect Mum

 

Perfectly Imperfect Mum is a new book from mum and author Sheena Tanna-Shah.

It's sub-titled: A Fun and Inspirational Guide for Busy Mums to Staying Mindful and Thriving Amidst the Chaos.

And that's exactly what this jolly and very helpful book is.

As well as being a mother, Sheena is ideally qualified to provide fellow mums (and future mums, too) with her mixture of wise and thoughtful advice because she has a wide variety of expertise. Her skillsets range from being an optometrist, an NLP practitioner, a rapid transformation therapist, a life coach, and a practitioner of mindfulness and meditation. If that wasn't enough, she's also a nutritionist who specialises in vegan nutrition.

So, what will mums (and dads!) learn from this book?

How you can feel calmer in even the most stressful of days, how to help you actually enjoy being a mother, but more importantly stuff you can do to help you get back on track when you are beginning to think that things are getting a bit much for you.

You'll learn coping skills, different ways to deal with difficult situations, how you need to master your thoughts and not let your thoughts master you.

Find out what foods help boost serotonin and dopamine levels in your body (both good for helping you boost your mental health) and other nutritional hints and tips for you and your family.

Learn how not to wave goodbye to your own identity, find out about yoga and other exercises, how to keep in touch with your social circle and how to be a great mum to your children, whilst still  being everything else you want to be.

It's nicely illustrated with fun line drawings.

It's published by The Book Guild at £9.99 and deserves to be in the stocking of every mum, mum to be and grandparents this Christmas.

The Mathematical Murder of Innocence

 

The Mathematical Murder of Innocence is a new courtroom drama, more chilling as it is based on a real miscarriage of justice.

Michael Carter brings us a harrowing case of a mother who, after losing two children to cot deaths, becomes wrongly accused of murdering her infants.

The court case becomes electrified when the judge invites a juror to cross-examine an expert witness, a professor who claims that the chances of a cot death is extremely rare, standing at only one in seventy-two million.

But was that the truth? Was the professor as "expert" as he claimed? Or was it the case that the professor was claiming expert knowledge that was well beyond his purview?

Was it that his knowledge of statistics so badly lacking that he risked accusing an innocent woman of committing murders that were not murders at all?

One field of expertise possessed by the author Michael Carter is that of statistical analysis. He immediately realised that the claim expressed by the expert witness in the trial was, as Michael Carter, opined: "The assassination of statistics."

He began to wonder what would have happened had he been on the jury and able to cross examine the "expert" witness?"

The result is a compelling story that, sadly, is based on a genuine case and a very real blunder that condemned an innocent woman to a living hell.

This book is of interest to more than (like your reviewer) lovers of mystery and "crime" novels. It should be read by every judge, magistrate, solicitor, barrister and legal executive in the country as it shows that sometimes what you are told in a court case might not, by accident, be the truth or correct. And as a result, it should be a Christmas gift for the law person in your life.

It's published by  The Book Guild at £8.99.

An Extraordinary Charge Against a Clergyman

 An Extraordinary Charge Against a Clergyman is an excellent account of the fascinating and perhaps bewildering life of the clergyman the Reverend  Edward Muckleston MA by Janet Mackleston.

I was already aware of the Reverend Edward Muckleston and his unusual life so I was intrigued to read this biography of his life.

We learn that he was a self-centred and rather selfish man who behaved in ways that seem, even to modern eyes, to have been antipathetic to his calling and vocation as a priest in the Church of England. 

For example, how was he able to square with his calling and his own conscience the extraordinary fact that he declined to pay his washerwoman, was an inveterate dodger of fares on the railways or that he had deliberately and maliciously damaged the trees owned by a neighbour?

Edward was born into a family of well to do Shropshire landowners. But he managed to lose all of it, resulting in terrible suffering for his own family. Due to his rather unfortunate ways (to put it mildly) he was forced to resign from the parish in Shropshire and he was able to find a position in a smaller parish in the county of Warwickshire.

Despite the fact that he was the parish priest there for nearly 50 years (48 to be exact) he was forced to attend court many times to defend the validity of his appointment to that parish. In fact he died whilst serving as the priest there.

Janet Mackleston (who has a family connection to this story) is a member of the Shropshire Family History Society and was able to piece together his rather extraordinary life using stories from contemporary newspapers and local history archives.

She was surprised about what she found and is able to share this with her readers who will be as intrigued as I was.

This book is another of my picks for an ideal Christmas gift.

It's published by The Book Guild at £9.99.