Vermilion Skies

Vermilion Skies is an unusual and moving love story by Wendela Lumley.

It is described as "A love story that will stay with you forever."

It tells the story of the life of Milana, a young Chilean girl who is the resident of a mean shantytown.

But Milana is no ordinary shantytown dweller. Although she is struggling with the impact of the abuse from her vile stepfather, she is a girl of indomitable willpower and strength of character and wants to make something of her life.

Although she could give herself to the local drug dealers who taunt her as they lust after her body, she decides to keep away from them and instead she reads books that she finds in charity bags. She reads these books and uses them to fuel her powerful imagination.

Her precarious life was ripped to shreds by a terrible tragedy, but a stranger by the name of Santiago comes into her life when he discovers her working on the banks of the river.

He makes her a stunning offer. A perfect way of escaping from her life.

But is the aristocratic and handsome Santiago all he appears to be? Or do some dark secrets lurk in his past?

He is an artist teetering on the edge of great fame and fortune and together their secret love spurs them on to travel across continents all over the world, challenging the status quo and the time-honoured conventions of the world.

But will the past catch up with them. destroying the cosy world they have carved out for themselves against all the odds?

Or will they be able to continue as the loving couple that they are?

It is published by Matador at £7.99 and is available via the Amazon-powered That's Books Bookshop, to the right of the site.

Kinch

Kinch, a novel by Laurie Evan Owen, tells the story of Kinch, who is 14, and his compatriots, Pigeon and Brownie and how they cope and, to some extent, strive and thrive, in a place which could be now, or at some point in the future, it could be taking place here or anywhere else, for that matter.

The whole of society is corrupted to gargantuan depths.

Kinch is looking to find a way to avenge the death of his father who had been an anarchist, Pigeon, well Pigeon is naife, though of a literary bent and as from Brownie, Brownie is an old-styled itinerante actor, who is also a frustrated poet. And to complicate matters a little, Brownie is also a paid informer for the "religio-political hierarchy."

The story of Kinch and his companions takes place in and around the cathedral city of Axton, during one tumultuous and white knuckle week of a ride.

And for the price of £9.99 this is a fantasy/allegorical tale that you really don't want to miss.

It's published by Matador and is available from the That's Books and Entertainment  bookshop, powered by Amazon and to the right hand side of this site.

The Father's House

The Father's House is the debut novel by former barrister and Cardiff-based author Larche Davies.

It tells the story of Lucy, who, at 14, has been born into and raised in a secretive and sinister religious cult.

The aim of the cult, which is controlled and led by a shadowy figure who insists on being referred to as the Magnifico, is to take over the world.

Families do not exist in the cult, children are raised in communes by men who are dubbed "father."

For some reason Lucy and another child, a boy called Paul, are raised not in one of the communes but in a house that is split into flats, under the control of a strict "aunt" called Sarah, who is no relation to either child. They live in the ground floor flat with Sarah, whilst the Father lives upstairs. There is a mystery tenant who occupies the second floor of the house, which is owned by the Father.

All Lucy knows are the prayer meetings of the sect and her attendance of the special school operated by the Magnifico with the aim of training them to become able to insinuate themselves into the outside world and to infiltrate important and influential positions within society.

Either that or they are doomed to work endlessly as skivvies for the sect, or to be nothing boot breeders to create babies for the Holy Cause of the Magnifico.

But Something happens to Lucy. She is subjected to cruel humiliation during one school assembly, and this one, thoughtless act of cruel folly begins the destruction of her faith and trust in the religion she has been raised in and as her faith begins to collapse, through two of her school friends, she learns some of the secrets of the sect.

She then resolves to leave the sect before her 16th birthday, when she will be married off to one of the sect fathers in the name of the Magnifico, or disposed of as being "unsuitable to further the Holy Cause."

But how can Lucy escape? Who can she trust? Who should she trust?

But fate intervenes one day when enemies of the Father invade his house and she has no option other than to flee for her life.

But still the sect would not let her and Paul be. It still attempted to control or to destroy what it could not control.

This is a very compelling psychological thriller that gives an accurate look into how a cult works, how it controls people even above and beyond whatever real power it might possess.

It is published by Mastador at £9.99.

It is to be hoped that this will be the first of many more novels by Larche Davies.

It is, of course, available via the That's Books and Entertainment bookshop, powered by Amazon., on the right hand side of this site.

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.