If I Die Today

Readers of the The Flowers of the Grass series of novels by N L Collier set during the First World War, which began in 2016 will welcome the last novel in the series, If I Die Today.

Time has moved on and readers next meet up with Max Schelling, who is now a veteran of the First World War.

He is a deeply disturbed man, suffering greatly from flashbacks to his time in the trenches of the war, plus dreadful nightmares, which are a result of the dreadful fighting that he was involved in at Verdun back in 1916.

He is married to Frieda and has two young sons, Peter and Ernst. He realises that his wartime experiences are having having a deleterious impact on his family and he is thinking dark thoughts that perhaps their lives would be better, somehow, if he were dead.

Frieda is concerned about her husband and she made the suggestion that perhaps it would be helpful if he returned to Verdun to see if he could come to terms with what happened to him there.

He is not happy with the idea and he rejects it out of hand. But with his condition still as bad as ever, if not worse, he desperately comes to the conclusion that he must make that trip after all?

Because Max is employed at the Imperial Archives, assisting in the writing of the official history of the battle at Verdun, he is able to get his bosses to agree with the idea of Max making at official trip to Verdun.

When he reaches Verdun he walks over the ground, looking at the war-ravaged landscape, which was still marred with shell-holes and the detritus of the battle.

As he looks at the battlefield he realises that he left part of himself there as he thinks of his comrades who never made it out alive, as he did.

Could Max return to his job at the archives? Could he return to his family? If he did, what next?

This is a very moving novel. It's published by Matador at £9.99. It will make an excellent stocking filler for those interested in the history of World War 1. 

More Taste & Less Waste

More Taste & Less Waste is a new cookery book form the Dairy Diary publishing company.

It offers readers the opportunity to prepare and serve utterly delicious meals, whilst at the same time cutting down on food waste.

As well as page after page of utterly mouth-watering dishes, it gives the modern home owners detailed advice on how to better and more economically shop for food ingredients. Also, readers will learn how to store food ingredients and how to prepare them.

The recipes will offer cooks the opportunity to find out about meals with perfect portions, servings for two and also servings for three or more in some instances.

There's also a section on meals that you can prepare and then freeze for consumption at a subsequent time.

Each recipe also comes with a very handy QR Code which you can scan to provide you (or someone else) with a very handy ingredients list for when the shops must be visited or an online shopping order put together.

Recipes include a Speedy Beef Stew, a Pea & Prosciutto Gnocchi, a Vegetarian Toad in the Hole, Stuffed Chicken Thighs Wrapped in Bacon, Five-Spiced Lentil Soup to name only a few.

There is also a fantastic range of desert recipes, including Candy Rice Pudding, Marmalade Pancakes (wow!) Golden Ginger Cakes, Marshmallow Mango & Lime Pies and Ice box Caramel, Peanut & Banana Pies.

Each recipe tells you how much it serves, how long it takes to prepare and the cooking time. All recipes have been triple tested and tasted(!) so you can be sure of perfect results, when you follow the recipes. 

It is a perfect Christmas gift for the cookery buff in your life.

You can purchase it in cookshops, good bookshops and also direct at https://www.dairydiary.co.uk/product/more-taste-less-waste-cookbook/ where it costs £12.49, including postage and packing.

  

Pushing Cotton

Pushing Cotton by Darran Nash is sub-titled A Modern Fairy Tale.

A man, a complete stranger, approaches Nelson Hitchcock and implores that Nelson comes to his assistance whilst Nelson is on a school trip to a museum.

The reward? That Nelson can receive anything his heart should desire. 

What's the one thing that Nelson's heart desires? The return of his father, who vanished in mysterious circumstances three years before.

But for ever action there is a reaction and there's always a price to pay. And what heavy prices is demanded? By the end of the next Halloween, the stranger will be dead. This gives Nelson a very short time in which he must keep to the bargain he struck with the stranger.

But that's where the story becomes interesting. Because exactly 100 years previously a local police sergeant called Caleb Fitzgerald was taking part in a desperate, but utterly vain, search to find his own son, one of four children who were snatched in the night in 1903. 

The only clue? A mysterious calling card left at each scene.

Whilst a family party is underway the journal of Sergeant Fitzgerald is discovered. Nelson is certain that he has left clues to help him unmask the presumed killer of the missing children.

Despite his motives for good, Nelson unwittingly is to set about the animation of a terrible blood feud that is 100 years old. 

It's a supernatural vendetta where past and present life will collide together with catastrophic and cataclysmic events.

It's a somewhat dark book with elements of the paranormal and psychological thriller. It will make a very good Christmas present.

It is published by The Book Guild and costs £8.99

Poetic Justice: The Inheritance

In Poetic Justice: The Inheritance by Fran Raya, readers continue to enjoy learning about the life of Randal Forbes.

Forbes has extraordinary powers that make him a very scary person indeed. He believes his extraordinary telepathic powers are "the gift." Yet others, victims of his powers, would be more likely to describe it as a curse rather than a gift.

Randal Forbes's special child has been born. The child, a result of a one time assignation with his artist Maxine Hale, is something of a bitter pill for him to swallow down.

Maxine Hale is married to Saul Curtis so she is able, at present, to pass the child off as the progeny of Curtis.  

But Maxine is all too aware of who the child's real father is. She finds the gaze of her eyes to be frightening. She is also disturbed by what she perceives as her unusual behaviour.

Forbes is protected by his constant companion and lover, Clive Hargreaves.

Fortunately or unfortunately for them, Randal's children and their mother, Alison, are completely in the dark to his true, evil nature.

But now he has the desire and need to develop the power that is growing within Roxanne, his daughter.

However, even with his special, dark powers the life of Forbes is not without risk. Because what if he were to face a challenge from someone with powers equal to his own or even stronger? Could Carlton Flint be that man? 

But there's another stunning twist in this narrative. Will I reveal it? No. To learn what it is you'll need to buy the book, it's published by The Book Guild, at £8.99.

It will make a perfect Christmas present for the lover of paranormal thrillers in your life.

The Fairy Tellers

The Fairy Tellers by Nicholas Jubber is a book that is specially significant to me. Because after many years I returned to University (University of Wolverhampton for those readers who are curious) and as part of my BA (Hons) in Creative and Professional Writing as part of my coursework I helped first year students with work they were doing on fairy-tales.

With that out of the way, please let me continue with the review of the book.

Far too many people are over eager to merely dismiss fairy tales as being only suited for children and whilst that is true, to a certain extent with some bowdlerised versions, the truth about fairy-tales is that they are often actually records of historical events. 

A careful reading of them (in context) can reveal something of how a civilisation was formed.

Nick Jubber (who you might have come across in his role as an award-winning travel writer) explores the backgrounds to the fairy-tales, their secret histories, the people who related them, the cultures in which they were formed and the landscapes that gave birth to them.

Readers will almost certainly heard of Hans Christian Anderson or the Grimm Brothers (or Brothers Grimm, if you prefer) in relation to fairy-tales. But Jubber calls attention to other tellers of fairy-tales who are long forgotten. I have to admit that I was unaware of the Wild Sisters of Cassel, or of the  Syrian storyteller Youhenna Diab. 

In fact, had not Dortchen Wild told her stories to Wilhelm Grimm, it's almost certain that these stories would probably be unknown today. A very sobering thought.

Jubber traces the origins of fairy-tales to Italy, the countries bordering on the Mediterranean Sea, the Black Forrest and even as far as the Siberian tundra and up into Lapland.

This will be a wonderful gift to anyone with an interest in fairy-tales from the academic to the person who recalls being told these stories as a child.

It is published by John Murray on Thursday 20th January.

I'm Going to Find You

 

In 1976 there was the longest heatwave in decades. And in I'm Going to Find You J D Pullan brings her readers the story of the disappearance of Cerys Morgan a very attractive young student. She was camping with friends and vanished without trace from a crowded Cornish beach.

Her disappearance brought about the biggest police operation of its kind at the time. But despite the assistance of hundreds of local volunteers to help in the intensive searches, not even a trace of her was ever discovered, despite the story being in the news headlines for several weeks.

But in 2010, 34 years later Emily Harrison suddenly remembers something that she had observed back in the blistering hot summer of 1976 as a young child. 

But now, as an adult, Emily realises the dreadful significance of what she had witnessed all those years ago.

She immediately goes to the police to tell them what she witnessed as a child, giving them all the details she can recall.

But will she be believed? After all, her own parents put no stock in what she told them back in 1976, so why would anyone believe her now, all these years later?

But Emily is not the kind of person who can easily let something like this go, so she becomes obsessed with finding out the truth of what happened to Cerys. after all, don't her elderly parents deserve to find out the truth at long last?

But who is sending her some rather sinister and nasty threats? Why don't they want the truth to come out? And why is her own, apparently happy life, spiralling out of control? Can Emily discover the truth before it becomes too late?

This will make a nifty Christmas present for the mystery lover in your life.

It's published by Matador at £8.99. 

Cut the Crap and Feel Amazing

Cut the Crap and Feel Amazing is an important new book from Ailsa Frank who is a highly regarded hypnotherapist, motivational coach and self-help writer and author.

Feel as if you don't know where you are, where you should be? Or perhaps you think you know where you should be, but haven't a clue how to go from where you are to where you should be?

Have goals, dreams and aspirations but can't get motivated to reach them?

If so, then through her book Ailsa will, be able to help you get to where you deserve to be.

Everyone has negative habits, things they do (often without realising it) that hamper them in getting to live their best possible life.

In her book Ailsa helps you identify things in your life that you do, but shouldn't be doing. Or stuff that you should be doing but haven't yet got around to doing? Or perhaps they are key techniques that you hadn't even thought of?

Learn how to make small changes to your life and the way in which you think, because these small changes will help bring about the larger changes that you want to bring about.

It's published by Hay House at £10.99 and will make a fantastic Christmas present.