Monday 18 December 2017

TEASER TUESDAY: Smoke City by Keith Rosson

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme hosted by
It is very easy to play along:
• Grab your current read and open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! 
• Share the title & author, too, so that other participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Here are my "teasers":
Three, four years old. I noticed the people parting for us, I remember that, but not the revulsion in their eyes, the contempt. I would realize later, of course, just what it was the townspeople had shied away from, had leered at: my father’s coat, and the stitched image of the sword on the back. The executioner’s mark.

Title: Smoke City by Keith Rosson
Expected publication date: January 23, 2018
Published by Meerkat Press
Synopsis:
From the author of The Mercy of the Tide comes another gorgeously written, genre-defying novel.
Marvin Deitz has some serious problems. His mob-connected landlord is strong-arming him out of his storefront. His  therapist has concerns about his stability. He's compelled to volunteer at the local Children's Hospital even though it breaks his heart every week.
Oh, and he's also the guilt-ridden reincarnation of Geoffroy Thérage, the French executioner who lit Joan of Arc's pyre in 1431. He's just seen a woman on a Los Angeles talk show claiming to be Joan, and absolution seems closer than it's ever been . . . but how will he find her?
When Marvin heads to Los Angeles to locate the woman who may or may not be Joan, he's picked up hitchhiking by Mike Vale, a self-destructive alcoholic painter traveling to his ex-wife's funeral. As they move through a California landscape populated with "smokes" (ghostly apparitions that've inexplicably begun appearing throughout the southwestern US), each seeks absolution in his own way.

My Thoughts:
I have just started to read what promises to be an entertaining and interesting book. One which appears to be intelligently well written with the maturity of an accomplished author, and I am thoroughly enjoying it thus far.

Review to follow in due course.

Tuesday 12 December 2017

TEASER TUESDAY: All The Beautiful Girls by Elizabeth J. Church

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme hosted by
It is very easy to play along:
• Grab your current read and open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! 
• Share the title & author, too, so that other participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Here are my “teasers”:
‘It was the Depression,” Mama once said. “It made your Aunt Tate hard. Deprivation made her think that being rigid was the only way to survive. But there’s a soft centre there; she has a heart, I swear.” Still, Lily thought that even Mama had been more than a little cautious when faced with her sister’s perennial judgment.’

All The Beautiful Girls by Elizabeth J. Church
Expected publication: US March 6, 2018 & UK April 5, 2018
Ballantine Books (Random House Publishing Group) & 4th Estate (Harper Collins Publishers)

Synopsis:
The dazzling, powerful story of a gutsy showgirl who tries to conquer her past amongst the glamour of 1960s Las Vegas - finding unexpected fortune, friendship and love.
Now, as Ruby Wilde, the ultimate Sin City success story, she discovers that the glare of the spotlight cannot banish the shadows that haunt her. As the years pass and Ruby continues to search for freedom, for love and, most importantly, herself, she must learn the difference between what glitters and what is truly gold.

My Thoughts:
I absolutely loved and devoured Elizabeth J. Church’s debut novel, The Atomic Weight of Love’ which through the storyline also introduced me to the wonderful world of birds, in particular crows.  I’ve loved seeing and watching these amazing creatures ever since. This is still a book that I cannot bring myself to part with and on completion of reading desperately wanted to read another of Church’s novels and here it is at last.

All The Beautiful Girls, feels a slightly different novel but it is still reminiscent of Church’s intelligent exquisitely written prose and full of her charming, or misunderstood damaged personalities. These female characters are vividly painted gutsy women striving to achieve their gaols in an extremely competitive glamourised entertainment industry run and controlled by men.

Halfway through and I already know it’s another keeper.

My review will follow in due course. 

Thursday 7 December 2017

TEASER TUESDAY: The Night Market by Jonathan Moore


Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme hosted by
It is very easy to play along:
• Grab your current read and open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! 
• Share the title & author, too, so that other participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Here are my “teasers”:
‘Carver crouched, holding his light close to the small bird’s broken body. Its left eye had been smashed. A thin steel ring was visible in the back of the socket. Tiny shards of black glass lay on the floor and in the empty socket. Its feathers were threaded with shiny black strands that Carver guessed were photovoltaic filaments. There was no blood.’

(Yeah I know, it’s 6 sentences but they’re very short so I added a few!)

From The Night Market by Jonathan Moore
Expected publication: January 11, 2018 by Orion Publishing Co

Synopsis:
'Do you ever think there's maybe something that's gone wrong with the world?'
A man is found dead in one of the city's luxury homes. Homicide detective Ross Carver arrives at the scene when six FBI agents burst in and forcibly remove him from the premises.
Two days later...
Carver wakes in his bed to find Mia a neighbor he's hardly ever spoken to, reading aloud to him. He has no recollection of the crime scene, no memory of how he got home, and no idea that two days have passed. Carver knows nothing about this woman but as he struggles to piece together what happened to him, he soon realizes he's involved himself in a web of conspiracy that spans the nation. And Mia just might know more than she's letting on...'Moore has a great gift for the macabre and the creepy.' The Times’

My Thoughts:
With such an explosive and heart pounding opening scene, The Night Market had me riveted to the edge of my seat.

It is the final in a loosely connected trilogy with all three set in San Francisco at different time periods and genre category. The Poison Artist is a taut noir psychological thriller; The Dark Room more a police procedural storyline, and The Night Market being the first I’ve read is set in the near future with a dark, tense, creepily claustrophobic sci-Fi setting.

Definitely readable as a stand-alone novel, the writing and world building is incredibly vivid and frightening plausible.  With a likeable cast of complex characters, and strong storyline The Night Market is an absolutely recommended read for 2018.

Full review to come.