Love in a Time of Pestilence

Love in a Time of Pestilence Is the fifth collection of poems from author and poet Heather Goddin.

It touches on a wide range of subjects, from being trapped at home during lockdown, how the phone became our dearest friend, how we kept in touch with friends and family some of them many, many miles away. How hugs became virtual simulations of the real thing.

Heather writes of flowers and of a caged bird, trapped whilst yearning to be free, of pleasures both small and large, taken when and how we could during the lockdown.

Heather muses on a humanist funeral, and ponders on hair cuts that just couldn't happen due to the lockdown. The village, she realises, will soon know who is or isn't a natural blonde! I hadn't actually thought of that!

Heather touches on many other matters, including rituals of ancient days and of dreams both futile or otherwise, of wishes wished and promises promised.

I like writing poetry. I only wish that I had the facility for writing poetry that Heather Goddin posses!

It's published by Troubador at £8.99.

Igor and the Twisted Tales of Castlemaine

Igor and the Twisted Tales of Castlemaine. You probably know about Igor. Igor was the assistant to Victor Frankenstein's dedicated but troubled assistant who worked with Frankenstein in his laboratory. 

But who was Igor? Where did he come from? What were his origins? And what happened to Igor when he managed to screw up enough courage to leave his abusive master and Frankenstein's Castle?

So pleased you asked Igor wound up in the village of Castlemaine. If you thought Frankenstein's Castle was weird, then wait until you see what happens in Castlemaine! 

The village is set deep within the Carpathian Mountains and appears to be subject to a curse. Or several.

There are ghostly happenings a-plenty and almost all the inhabitants seem to be perverted on one way or another.

Igor meets up with Esmerelda, the stunningly beautiful daughter of the homicidal local innkeeper. Esmerelda is also prone to the occasional outbursts of violence. Only natural, given the circumstances.

Esmerelda and Igor soon find themselves with a more than plentiful amount of trouble and fun. Maybe fun. 

They find themselves tangling with mediums, monsters, maniacs and murderers (that's the Ms covered!) a nun (oh dear! That nun!) and things spiritual and also demonic. Oh, yeah and some Zombies, of course.

Readers follow the duo as they stumble and stride through a variety of amazing adventures together.

It's written by long-term friends and horror movie fanatics Ian J. Walls and Richard L. Markworth.

If you ever thought "That's odd! Whatever did happen to Igor after all the fun and frolics with that Count?" buy this book (from Troubador, £9.99) and you'll learn more than you ever thought possible.

The method of reducing funeral costs is particularly enlightening. Or something.

The Madness of the Faithful

The Madness of the Faithful is a new novel from R H Williams.

All over the world a mysterious incident renders everyone to lose their consciousness for a brief moment in time.

But when everyone returns to awareness every aspect of whatever faith they had previously adhered to was stripped from them.

Those who had previously believed in God were left feeling bereft and numbed.

The cause of the event was unknown, but some people believe that the only possible cause of this cataclysmic event must have been a single, powerful outside agency.

However, some people are resentful of those who still seem to have some religious symbols in their life and wish harm on them, including violence.

We are introduced to Paul who is a middle-aged widower who is a recovering alcoholic. He had leaned very heavily on his religious beliefs to help him deal with the tragic loss of his wife.

However, after the incident that cost everyone their faith Paul begins to see his wife again and she leads him to a coastal village in Wales that holds particular significance to him and his wife, as it's a place that held great significance for them based on a visit during their honeymoon.

Paul becomes an important part of village life and together Paul and the other inhabitants work together to help each other deal with their altered world.

However, those who support the External Force are a danger and Paul needs to help protect what his now his new family from them before it is too late?

It's a beautifully moving book that explores many important themes and raises some important questions. Including what would we do under such circumstances?

It's published by Troubador at £10.99.

New Brighton

New Brighton is a new science fiction novel from the pen of Helen Trevorrow.

It's evening and Robyn Lockhart, resident of Brighton, which is a coastal city in East Sussex and some 47 miles south of London, is meeting up with her boyfriend Vincent. They are getting ready for a night on the town, but a storm is threatening. 

Robyn works as a waitress, she lives with her mother and her sister, Alice. In fact, Robyn often looks after her sister.

Whilst they are in the nightclub the storm breaks with a ferocity not seen in living memory. 

During the storm a large and rusting ship is washed up onto the beach. Early the next day the ship has already been removed from the beach and taken to a dock area where it is guarded. But why? Why would the authorities be interested in restricting access to an old, rusting hulk of a ship?

With the connivance of a friend of Vincent they manage to access the ship and Robyn finds something that seems, on the fact of it, to be utterly impossible. Almost magical, in fact. She pockets it before they have to flee the ship.

However, afterwards Robyn learns that her mother has had to travel to the hospital in London with Alice because Alice's illness has struck again.

Vincent decides to travel with Robyn to London. They learn that the trains to London are all cancelled due to the storm. No problem! They'd get the coach. but the coaches are all cancelled, too. 

On the spur of the moment Vincent decides that he would steal a motor scooter for them and they would ride to London. When they discover that the road to London has also been cancelled, that it ceases to exist not many miles out of Brighton they realise that all they know and remember about their lives including remembered trips to London probably never really happened.

The land between Brighton and where London should be is filled with row after row of polytunnels in which plants are growing.

If there is no London where have her sister and her mother gone? And why does Robyn keep meeting people who she thinks she should know, but doesn't?

After Vincent is savaged and seriously wounded by a polar bear which Robyn is able to kill, with Vincent's shotgun, she finds herself in hospital and meets her sister.

Suddenly Robyn is back in reality. Or is she? She has split up from Vincent (apparently) and Robyn begins to realise that things are just not right. And what's wrong with feeding the penguins of Brighton with the odd muffin or two? 

She keeps on being able to look back into the past and begins to learn that things just don't look right and that she and her new (old?) friends must work together to combat a dreadful, evil enterprise. And what is the role of her mother in this? And what did happen to her father? 

But now Robyn has to fight for her new cause, for Vincent, her sister and the baby girl that Robyn is now carrying.

The book is published at £8.99 in paperback and £14.99 by Red Dog Press https://www.reddogpress.co.uk.

You can buy it direct from Red Dog Press, Amazon and other retailers.

This is the best science fiction novel I have read in many years. I think British Science Fiction has an important new voice in Helen Trevorrow.

How good is it? I would wake up in the middle of the night and instead of going back to sleep I thought "I'll just turn the light on and read a couple more chapters."

Survivors of Origin

In the new novel from Paul Swaffield, Survivors of Origin, we meet Fred and Mary Quicklock. Times for Fred and Mary are, alongside many of their contemporaries, suffering from hard times in 17th century England.

However, their dire situation shows some signs of improvement when the son of Edward Buckingham, a wealthy ship owner, is brought into their lives.

Meanwhile the evil slave trade is making the participants of that dreadful enterprise very wealthy indeed. And others are eager to muscle their way into this vile but lucrative industry.

For some reason their son Ezra is drawn to a life on the seas. 

Due to a bad decision he swiftly finds himself in a world of greed, danger and violence. However, he also found companionship and love.

Captain Isaac Dunsmoore is in command of a brand new and sleek ship called the Rebecca-Ann. It's first voyage was a trans-Atlantic voyage from England to Belem, a port in Brazil, on the Amazon Delta mouth.

Rothwell Spurt is a ruthless pirate who is fleeing from the British Admiralty. He wants the Rebecca-Ann, as does the corrupt rulers of Belem, Garcia Paz. It looks possible that the maiden voyage of the Rebecca-Ann could be its last.

But Captain Dunsmoore has a new recruit to his crew, Ezra Quicklock and he and the first mate Horace Clunk, Taylor Potts seek out the help of the indigenous peoples of the area, the Tupi tribe and the enslaved Africans. 

Can the crew and their allies defeat Spurt and Paz and save the Rebecca-Ann from the clutches of Spurt and Paz? 

And can they restore peace, harmony and order in the port of Belem?

This is a swashbuckling novel which deserves a place on the bookshelf of every fan of this type of salty seagoing novel.

It's published by The  Bookguild at £8.99.

Burning Secret

Burning Secret is an exciting novel by R J Lloyd that is based on the extraordinary true life story of one of his ancestors.

R J Lloyd was working hard to trace his family tree. he had managed to trace it back to the 16th century. But he was unable to find any trace of his great-great-grandfather Enoch Thomas Price. It seemed that he had vanished without trace.

So, what had happed to him? After many years of false starts and dead ends a cousin called him with some exciting news. His cousin had found evidence of what had happened to Enoch Thomas Price all those years ago. 

A Californian called Susan Sperry had recently taken her retirement and finally had the time to search through a box of documents that her mother had given her three decades previously.

Susan Sperry found references to her great grandfather, Harry Mason, a wealthy hotelier from Florida who had died in 1919. What possible link could there be between poverty-stricken Enoch Thomas Price and wealthy hotelier Harry Mason? It transpired that they were the same person!

The story that writer R J Lloyd uncovered was one of poverty, violence, betrayal and triumph. And he has used his skills as an author to fill in the blanks.

It's 1844 and Enoch Price was born into grinding poverty. However, Price was an ambitious young man and he travelled to London to seek his fortune as a bareknuckle fighter. However, bareknuckle fighting was a murky world operating at the edges and often beyond of lawful society and soon Price finds himself in the clutches of an unscrupulous illegal moneylender well-known for his use of violence. 

He is, by now, a married man with three daughters and he is facing ruin and imprisonment. He decides to flee England for Jacksonville, Florida. The decision to abandon his wife and three little girls reportedly haunted him for the rest of his life.

By the time he arrived in Florida, Enoch Price is no more, replaced by Harry Mason.

By a series of adventurers in his new country, Harry Mason plays a vital role in the development of the growing city of Jacksonville, all through a variety of schemes and risk-filled enterprises. 

However, he is wracked with guilt over the callous way he abandoned his wife and three daughters and he makes contact with his wife, pleading with her to join him in Florida. However, she feels she cannot trust him and declines his offer.

Mason weds again, though bigamously, and he fights to keep his true identity a secret. However, his public life is one of significance and success and he achieves political prominence, becoming a member of the Florida State House of Representatives in 1903.

His business enterprises he boosts via a range of practices, not all of them honest and there is talk of him becoming the Governor of Florida. However, what good is it if a man gains success in his business life if his personal life is filled with bitter self-recrimination? 

He planned to return home to England and face the music but the intervention of the Great War and the subsequent virulent Spanish Flu put paid to his plans.

It's a well-written, poignant story of how one decision can change the outcomes of the lives of many.

It's published by Troubador at £10.99.

From Wolf to Supermutt

From Wolf to Supermutt and everything in Between is a book by canine behaviourist Erika K Goshi.

Erika adopted a dog called Mila and, perhaps naively, believed that because Mila was a mature dog and not a puppy that she wouldn't really have to do very much with regards to training Milla. Oh, how wrong she was!

She quickly learned that Mila had a passion for chewing expensive Persian rugs. And decided to annex the living room for use as her personal canine toilet area.

When someone asked her to do anything, sit, come, stay, etc, Mila wouldn't comply. Instead she would greet each command by hurling herself onto her back in a submissive pose and decline all requests to even consider moving.

Loud noises, such as thunderstorms and firework displays would send her into a total panic and she would run around manically. 

And even the merest sight of another dog caused a very extreme reaction.

Erika had to learn about canine behaviour in order to try to work out how she could help her rescue dog. In fact she got s deeply interested in the field of canine behaviour that she eventually qualified as a canine behaviourist herself.

In her comprehensive and information packed book readers will learn about how to deal with pee and poo, how to deal with smelly dogs, the chewing of carpets, house soiling, how to cope with demodex mites and your canine companion.

There's canine obedience, training and the like. Play and even the unwillingness to play, how to choose the right breed for you, the right types of food to buy, special diets that might be required, healthcare for canines and so much more are crammed into this 482 page book.

It's an excellent book and is well worth buying, especially if you or someone you know has a rescue dog. It is published by Matador at £13.99.

However, a puzzling omission is that there are no illustrations at all, no line drawings or photographs.