Sentenced

Sentenced is a memoir written by two apparently vastly different people; Victoria Oak, a London housewife with four children and Andrew Hawke, a British man  imprisoned in a notorious jail in Thailand. The ironically named Bangkok Hilton. Or, to use its correct name, the Bang Kwang gaol.

Victoria was travelling with her friends Alex and Alice, backpacking around the world. After five months of travelling they reached Bangkok. A 19-year-old British man called Michael hade tried to smuggle 3,000 pills out of Bangkok. Of course, he'd been caught and had been given a life sentence. Because his parents didn't have the financial resources to fly out to Thailand to visit him, they'd asked two British girls to visit him.

However, due to a mix-up they weren't able to meet him and they had asked Victoria and her friends to visit him in their stead. 

Victoria, Alex and Alice decided the next morning to make an impromptu visit to Michael, but as they'd arrived on the wrong day they were unable to see him as it was the visiting day of a different block. But without knowing the name of a particular prisoner, they wouldn't be allowed in.

Victoria decided to 'phone the British Consulate for advice and the extremely helpful receptionist there quickly gave them the names of three British prisoners who were being held there. 

So, they decided to visit one of the British prisoners who was being held there. The prisoner Victoria spoke with for that hour, the hour that proved to be very fateful for both of them, soon passed.

When Victoria returned home they began to correspond with each other in long, detailed letters. And this was the start of a lifelong relationship.

Victoria studied drama and English at Birmingham University and she married, became a housewife and had four children.

Victoria and her husband shared several passions, the chief ones being travelling and sports.

Victoria was able to complete the pilgrimage to Santiago in May 2012 and placed 2,000 prayer stones along the Camino asking for her friend Andy to be released from his incarceration.  

She had realised that her marriage had faltered and, in her mind, died, so when she returned she asked for a divorce. But this wasn't to be an easy, simple divorce, because it became a wearying five-year fight through the courts.

During this dreadful time Andy was released from jail and came to stay with Victoria at her home for almost two years. And during this time they collaborated together to write Sentenced. 

After her divorce Victoria took time out to do some more exploring, in South America, New Zealand and Australia.

Victoria then spent four years editing the manuscript, preparing it for publication. Just before the world was virtually shut down by COVID, she contracted pneumonia and Lyme's disease which left her weak and hardly able to function, this debilitation gave her the impetuous to get Sentenced ready folr publication within a year. Which she did.

It's a remarkable book well-written telling the life stories of two remarkable people and other people in their lives. It is also illustrated with a collection of photographs.

It's published by Grosvenor House Publishing at £10 in paperback, plus as an e-book. 

It's available from good book retailers and Amazon and will make an excellent Christmas gift.

The Fly and the Tree

In his new mystery novel The fly and the Tree, author and consultant neurologist Dr James I. Morrow brings lovers of mystery novels a great new read. 

So if you are looking for a suitable Christmas present for the mystery novel lover in your life (or maybe you are looking for a sneaky little self gift for yourself?) this is the ideal book for their (or your!) Christmas stocking!

We are introduced to a young and dedicated medical biochemist, Baz ("Don't call me Barbara!") Clifford. 

Baz makes a vital discovery during the course of her research work. But there's something wrong, or at least there's something that doesn't seem to add up.

Because the discovery that Baz has made casts doubt on the received wisdom that a young woman had died in what was nothing more than a terrible and tragic accident. 

However, the husband of the young woman and even the police themselves are not interested in what Baz has to say on the matter. They are all apparently convinced that her death was an accident.

But Baz has a very strong conviction that Cathy Marsden had, in reality, been the victim of a murder. 

However, there is one person who does believe in the theory that Baz is putting forward. A 16-year-old boy. What is his interest in the matter? He is convinced that Cathy Marsden was his own long-lost mother.

But who would have had the motive and the means to murder Cathy? And will Baz stir up problems when she continues her unofficial investigation? 

This is a very exciting, pacey read and it's a must read book!

It's published by The Book Guild at £8.99

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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