Books and Reading in Leeds - Recently Updated Pages

Kate Morton

Anonymous — Wed, 06 May 2009 08:10:10 CDT

THE HOUSE AT RIVERTON
A rich and compelling story of love, loss and a long-buried family secret Summer 1924: On the eve of a glittering Society party, by the lake of a grand English country house, a young poet takes his life. The only witnesses, sisters Hannah and Emmeline Hartford, will never speak to each other again. Winter 1999: Grace Bradley, 98, one-time housemaid of Riverton Manor, is visited by a young director making a film about the poet's suicide. Ghosts awaken and memories, long-consigned to the dark reaches of Grace's mind, begin to sneak back through the cracks. A shocking secret threatens to emerge; something history has forgotten but Grace never could. A thrilling mystery and a compelling love story, The House at Riverton will appeal to readers of Ian McEwan's Atonement, L.P. Hartley's The Go-Between, and lovers of the film Gosford Park. Biographies Kate Morton was born in 1976 and grew up in the mountains of South East Queensland, Australia. She has degrees in Dramatic Art and English Literature, and is currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Queensland. Kate lives with her husband and young son in a hundred-year-old house in Brisbane. This is her first novel.

Books & Reading in Leeds

cath01 — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 06:56:39 CDT

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Read any good books lately - why not give these a try?

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cath01 — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 05:39:19 CDT

Books we think you might want to try!!
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Readers Comments & Thoughts

Anonymous — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 08:16:44 CDT

In development

Recommend a Book

Anonymous — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 06:42:26 CDT

ADD YOUR FAVE BOOK (or least favourite) BELOW
(click on the easy edit button above to edit this page)

Name of Book
The Historian - Elizabeth Kostova

Comments
This book is awful, heaven knows how it got published in the first place, managed to read about 300 pages then lost the will to live - Kostova goes in to detail about various places such as Instanbul and Romania which is a little bit interesting but the characters actually have no 'character' so is very hard to relate to them.

Name of Book
A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

Comments
This is an extraordinary book – one that completely changed my usual reading habits. I usually like to read in long, intense passages of time, really getting my teeth into what is going on. This novel dictated the pace at which I read it – somehow, a short passage was enough, and had to be digested before more could be taken in. Rather like a very rich meal, one had to take breaks so that one could recover enough to go on.
It is hilarious throughout – I almost wrote ‘hysterical’ because hysteria is never far from the surface. Ignatius J Riley is enormously fat and lives with his mother in crumbling squalor in New Orleans.
As the result of a drunken foray into a bar in downtown New Orleans (and the city as a setting is important), Ignatius causes his mother to crash her car. This necessitates him getting a job to pay off the damage to a shop front – first in a trouser factory office where he tries to incite the black workforce to revolution – and then as a hotdog salesman where he ends up unwittingly hiding pornographic pictures in his trolley.
Every character in this novel is the product of genius for comic possibilities, but none of them are solely comic. It is black humour at its most rebarbative and uncomfortable. It is wonderful – a real masterpiece.
I certainly want to read this book again some time because it is packed full of incident – like one of those classic films that you know you will reliably enjoy, no matter how many times you’ve seen it. The thought is telling for this book has a cinematic feel to it. It is rich and strange indeed.

Name of Book Hatchett and Lycett - Nigel Williams

Comments
A very enjoyable and funny book, this tells of the two eponymous friends, both in love with prim and pretty schoolteacher Norma. Set at the start of WWII it evokes the naivety and privation of pre-war England, as experienced in a country village in Kent. Beautifully judged writing with believable, engaging characters – village life, school life, each given a solid treatment – with the children particularly shown in all their pathos and primitive ferocity.
The plot involves the rescue of a fugitive from Hitler, mass hysteria in a girls’ school, thwarted love and fulfilled love – and it gallops along with tremendous verve and pace. This book had me laughing out loud several times. Williams writes knowingly about men’s strange inability to talk about their emotions and women’s even stranger inability to talk about little else. A tremendously good job done here.

Name of Book A Child's True Book of Crime - Chloe Hooper

Comments
Pulling you inexorably closer from the first page, Chloe Hooper delineates the feelings and fears of a small Tasmanian community, still touched by a crime that left one woman dead and another missing, never to be found. Strange inconsistencies haunt those left to remember the events of that night. For instance, if Margot stabbed to death her husband’s young lover, Ellie Siddell, and all the facts point to her guilt, why was there not a trace of blood in the car she supposedly drove afterwards to Suicide Point? There she is thought to have stepped out of her shoes and into the dark, swirling air, to tumble into the sea below, but her body was never recovered.
If this sounds like a straightforward whodunit, it certainly is not. It’s also a treatise on infidelity, but teasingly so, with not a spare adjective or one false note. A parallel story begins several years later, when a provocative young teacher, Kate, joins the staff of the local primary school and the town’s married lawyer begins to take an inordinate interest in the education of his young son. Events rapidly take a somewhat predictable turn that ends – well, it would be wrong to spoil the suspense, except to say it is not a predictable book. It is beautifully written. Not all readers will appreciate the passages that give the commentary of the animals, some of which are extinct, but they’re not cute - not at all. .
The novel is also partly about women (and girls) as victims, but don’t let that put you off. There is no lecturing or polemic, but a cleverly poised subversion of expectations. Slightly unhinged, perhaps, but a deliciously entertaining read.

Name of Book The Little Friend - Donna Tartt

Comments
Fans of Donna Tartt’s The Secret History will not be disappointed. This time she nails down a whole town, from the faded gentility of the upper class suburbs, to the redneck, downtown, trailer-trash poor. The novel is both deeply absorbing and breathlessly exciting as Ms Tartt once again faultlessly explores a time (the early 70s), a place, (small-town southern U.S.A.) and a murder.
Harriet Cleve Dufresnes is 12 years old. Ten years ago her elder brother Robin was brutally killed in his own back yard as the family gathered for Thanksgiving. No one was caught for the crime, the police were baffled and it became accepted that this was one of those random, horrific killings that descend arbitrarily because that’s the way of the world. But Harriet, bored, clever, neglected, thinks she’s found a clue in the photograph of one of Robin’s classmates and a combination of gossip and coincidence. At the start of her summer holiday, Harriet decides that she will be the agent of revenge.
The plot is rambling, exhausting, yet wholly, delightfully, readable, and the characters, every one of a very large cast, stand out strongly as believable, fallible, rounded human beings. It’s a very long book (555 pages of sheer compulsion) but I wished it were longer and several of the characters have stayed with me, living on in my imagination as I wondered, particularly of the children, what they would become as they grew up. It took Tartt ten years to write this book – let’s hope the next one comes faster

Name of Book The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Comments
It is impossible not to be moved by this story which centres on a small town in Germany at the outbreak of war, and follows the fortunes of a small girl, Liesel, whose ailing mother gives her up to be fostered by Hans and Rosa Hubermann. The wonderful, emotionally saturated narrative is written by Death himself, who visits terra firma to take up souls. Naturally, in times of war he visits often and a mixture of mischief and poignancy gives his personification a biting, tender integrity.
The Hubermanns are not typical as their politics runs counter to the mainstream in a land in the grip of Hitler’s mad promises, but they are in thrall to the prevailing social milieu. They dare not stand out and much of their lives must be lived in secret as they try to help a young Jewish man, Max, who is sent to them out of desperation. Max and Liesel become friends, but the danger of discovery for Max and the Hubermanns is great.
It is largely a story made up of Liesel’s childhood and adolescence and depicts the town with stunningly imaginative complexity – yet it is a supremely good read, largely free of the sentiment to which such an appalling story might be prey. Beautiful poetic imagery and unflinching realism can rarely have mixed so successfully in any novel. I strongly recommend this marvellous book.

Name of Book

Comments

Elisabeth Hyde

cath01 — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 06:08:18 CDT

THE ABORTIONIST'S DAUGHTER
When a dark secret reveals a fatal obsession . . .
‘The problem was Megan had just taken the second half of her ecstasy when her father called with the news’ Nineteen-year-old university student Megan Thompson is beautiful, cool, clever and sexy – the kind of girl boys fall in love with. She’s mostly steered clear of family life since the death of her younger brother. That is until the day she hears her mother, Diana, has been found floating face down in their swimming pool. Diana, as Director of the Center for Reproductive Choice, was a national figure who inspired passions and made enemies. Detective Huck Berlin is brought in to investigate the case when it becomes clear that Diana was murdered. Several people have quarrelled with Diana on that fateful day, not least Frank, her husband of twenty years, and her wayward child. Now father and daughter are thrown together in an unexpected twist of family life. Set in a small town in Colorado, The Abortionist’s Daughter is an utterly compelling novel of family secrets, dark passion and, ultimately, catharsis for those whose lives have become so strangely entwined. 'A remarkably lucid and authoritative novelist' John Irving

'Like Anne Tyler, Hyde captures the quirky, heartbreaking core of a character and puts it on the page

Kate Long

cath01 — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 06:05:19 CDT

SWALLOWING GRANDMA
IF YOU THOUGHT MOTHERS WERE BAD, WAIT UNTIL YOU MEET THE EVIL GRANDMA
Katherine Millar is eighteen and desperate to be less fat, less swotty and to have cooler friends. But most of all she wishes she had two parents, instead of one grandma, Poll. Poll is pushing seventy, half blind and utterly poisonous. She has looked after Katherine since she was a baby, when her father was killed in a car crash and her mother vanished. Poll's ambition is for things to stay exactly the same for ever, and for Katherine never to leave their pit village of Bank Top. Katherine has other ideas, and she can feel change is coming; the omens are all around her. In the meantime, she cleans up after Poll, revises for her exams, watches daytime television and surfs the net at the library trying to find out how to be bulimic. What she doesn't quite realize yet is that life won't always wait for you to catch up with it. Swallowing Grandma is a perceptive, vivid and painfully funny novel about the ties of love and loathing, and the ways in which our versions of the past can thwart our visions for the future. In Katherine and Poll, Kate Long has created two unforgettable characters locked in an epic battle over whose side of the story will prevail. 'Wise, warm and witty . . . Will keep you reading until the very last page' Red, Book of the Month

Kate Kerrigan

cath01 — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 06:04:01 CDT

RECIPES FOR A PERFECT MARRIAGE
A wonderful portrait of marriage, love and relationships
"They say there is no such thing as a perfect marriage, but of course there is. A perfect marriage is where two people live together for most of their lives until death separates them. What there is no such thing as is an easy marriage. And when it comes to love, people have somehow come around to equating love with ease”. New York food writer Tressa returns from honeymoon worried that she has married her impossibly handsome new husband Dan out of late-thirties panic instead of love. In 1930’s Ireland, her grandmother, Bernadine, is married off to the local schoolteacher after her family are unable to raise a dowry for her to marry her true love, Michael. During the first year of her marriage, Tressa distracts herself from her stay-or-go dilemma by working on her grandmother’s recipes, searching for solace and answers through their preparation. Through the stories of these two women RECIPES FOR A PERFECT MARRIAGE challenges the modern ideal of romantic love as a given and ponders whether true love can really be learned. 'This story is written with so much heart, its beat is palpable in every word on every page'

Monica McInernery

cath01 — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 06:01:19 CDT

FAMILY BAGGAGE Monica McInerney

A funny, warm and searching story of family secrets and dilemmas from the bestselling author of THE ALPHABET SISTERS Harriet Turner knows all about journeys. After all, she's arranged hundreds of them for the travel agency her family runs in the Australian coastal town of Merryn Bay. But when her work colleague and foster sister Lara disappears on the eve of a big overseas trip, Harriet finds herself in uncharted territory. Left alone in England with a coachload of eccentric tourists on a themed tour of locations from the Willoughby TV detective series, Harriet has her hands full. But as the bus trundles through the picturesque Cornwall countryside, the tour becomes another kind of journey for her. She finds herself facing big questions about her family and her childhood, about her feelings for the guest of honour on the tour, star of Willoughby, Patrick Shawcross - and the biggest puzzle of all: what has happened to Lara? Praise for The Alphabet Sisters 'Big-hearted family saga set in Australia, Ireland and London' DAILY EXPRESS 'Tender and well-observed...there is also plenty of McInerney's trademark wit, but have the hankies ready for this, probably her best novel yet.' IRISH INDEPENDENT

Mark Mills

cath01 — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 05:59:21 CDT

The Whaleboat House

Mark Mills

An enthralling crime novel set in post World War II Long Island.
Long Island, 1947

The men of Long Island have fished the wild Atlantic waters over the centuries. For Conrad Labarde, recently returned from the Second World War, the nets hold a sinister catch – the body of Lillian Wallace, a beautiful New York socialite.

Is it an accident or murder? Police chief Tom Hollis is convinced the roots of the tragedy lie in the twisted histories of local families. But the enigmatic Labarde insists on pursuing his own investigation. It seems the fisherman may have powerful reasons for wanting answers to the questions surrounding her death. And in this strange place where tradition meets power and riches, the truth is a rare thing indeed…
Praise for The Whaleboat House:

'Crime fans know they're in the hands of a master of the art of murderous storytelling' Sunday Times

‘A very rich book – rich in detail and history and local color; rich in characters and conflict and mystery; and, most importantly, rich in wonderful writing’ John Grisham

'Paced to perfection… a rich layering of character. Labarde in particular is a joy… a highly enjoyable murder investigation set against a backdrop of sumptuous local detail' The Times

‘A striking and assured first thriller… worldly and impeccably researched' William Boyd

'This is an intriguing, atmospheric, literary crime novel. The uneasy juxtaposition of two communities is brilliantly evoked by Mark Mills' Daily Mail

'A remarkable first novel. Written with all the wit, lyrical language and slow character development one would search for in the literary department, the book is as rich in time frame and location as any you'd find in the best historical fiction. Mills' tale gently yet persistently pulls readers in' LA Times

'Atmospheric thriller… good, strong characters and an intricate plot give this impressively written novel its gritty edge' Woman and Home

'Beautifully written, character-driven book, with its exotic Long Island sound locale and lyrical descriptions… Mark Mills has written a first novel that reverberates in the mind with the force of a literary epiphany' Irish Times

Camilla Way

cath01 — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 05:58:34 CDT

The Dead of Summer

Camilla Way

A strong contemporary novel; a debut from an author with a brilliant, highly original voice. Now shortlisted for the CWA New Blood Dagger award.
It was hot everywhere that year. During the long summer holidays the days rolled by in blue and gold, the sun bouncing off the dustbins and burning into windscreens.

By the end of that summer, three of us were dead.

Anita's mother has just died. The family has moved to a new town, a new home, and a new neighbourhood. The long school holidays are about to start and the summer stretches out interminably in front of them.

Kyle lives across the road from Anita. Cool, surly, laconic, he knows all the places to hide. He says the area between the houses and the river is littered with hidden, disused mines; a perfect playground for restless kids with nothing better to do.

But what they don't know is that these mines will form the scene of the most unsettling crime this community has ever known. This summer everything will change. This summer, the dead days have come home to stay.

‘A modern day classic in the making’ Dazed & Confused

‘A beautifully written descent into darkness’ Glamour

‘So addictive you’ll devour it in one greedy gulp’ Cosmopolitan

‘Creepy, clever, compelling…a cross between The Cement Garden and The Long Good Friday…absolutely superb' Arena magazine

'Prepare to be gripped by this brilliantly haunting novel' Grazia

‘An amazing debut’ New Woman

‘This compelling psychological thriller is a real hair-raising read thanks to the gritty realistic writing' She magazine

'It's hard to say what's more impressive: Way's plot, Anita's utterly convincing voice or the evocation of the strange, eerie atmosphere. Whatever, it all adds up to something truly exciting – Way has just 'Got It'. The London Paper

Gautam Malkani

cath01 — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 05:57:39 CDT

Londonstani

Gautam Malkani

‘Londonstani’, Gautam Malkani's electrifying debut, reveals a Britain that has never before been explored in the novel: a country of young Asians and white boys (desis and goras) trying to work out a place for themselves in the shadow of the divergent cultures of their parents’ generation.
Set close to the Heathrow feed roads of Hounslow, Malkani shows us the lives of a gang of four young men: Hardjit the ring leader, a Sikh, violent, determined his caste stay pure; Ravi, determinedly tactless, a sheep following the herd; Amit, whose brother Arun is struggling to win the approval of his mother for the Hindu girl he has chosen to marry; and Jas who tells us of his journey with these three, desperate to win their approval, desperate too for Samira, a Muslim girl, which in this story can only have bad consequences. Together they cruise the streets in Amit's enhanced Beemer, making a little money changing the electronic fingerprints on stolen mobile phones, a scam that leads them into more dangerous waters.

Funny, crude, disturbing, written in the vibrant language of its protagonists – a mix of slang, Bollywood, texting, Hindu and bastardised gangsta rap – ‘Londonstani’ is about many things: tribalism, aggressive masculinity, integration, cross-cultural chirpsing techniques, the urban scene seeping into the mainstream, bling bling economics, 'complicated family-related shit'. It is one of the most surprising British novels of recent years.
‘The aspirational gangsta swirls us into a bhuna of gang-fights, inter-faith romance and organised crime, and the dizzying humour that underpins his voice is sharp, clever and convincing…In a linguistic politics redolent of Sam Selvon, Victor Headley and Irvine Welsh, Malkani conveys with élan and expertise, through a sub-urban “desi-dialect”, the absurdity of adolescence and the complex self deceptions of contemporary cultural dynamics in the UK.’ Independent

‘Malkani has some interesting observations about identity and the way in which the culturally oppressed can take strength from their exclusion. The end is a complete surprise and forces the reader to question the skin-deep assumptions we make about race.’ Sunday Telegraph

‘”Londonstani” is a bold debut, brimming with energy and authenticity.' Observer

‘If you’re going to read one yoofy, “urban” book this summer, make sure it’s “Londonstani”!’ Arena Magazine

'With “Londonstani”, Gautam Malkani has written one of the most vibrant and fresh first novels in years, innit.' BBC Collective magazine

Rosie Thomas

cath01 — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 05:56:39 CDT

Iris and Ruby

Rosie Thomas

Rich and alive with descriptions of the bustling streets of old Cairo, and the vast, foreboding desert surrounding it – ‘Iris and Ruby’ is a stirring story of mothers, daughters and the distance between three generations of one family.
Stiflingly quiet and claustrophobic, Iris Black's Cairo house is suddenly disturbed by the unexpected arrival of her troubled and wilful granddaughter, Ruby. Teenage Ruby has run away from England to seek solace with the grandmother she hasn't seen for many years. An unlikely bond is formed as the two open themselves up to one another.

Ruby helps Iris document her deteriorating memories of the glittering, cosmopolitan Cairo of World War Two, a time when she lost her heart to her one true love – the enigmatic Captain Xan Molyneux – and then lost him to the ravages of the war.

Iris’ early devastation shapes her own heart and that of her daughter and granddaughter in turn.- and leads the two women into terrible danger in the Egyptian desert.
Praise for Iris and Ruby:

‘Thomas can write with ravishing sensuality.’ KATE
sAUNDERS, The Times

‘Her evocation of the wartime [Cairo] has all the raffish, glittering brittleness of life on the edge… touches on the varieties and nuances of love betweeen men and women, and the power of family relationships to enhance and destroy lives.’ ELIZABETH BUCHAN, Daily Mail

‘Whether brilliantly conjuring the past – the colour and life of wartime Cairo, the loves and the losses, the friendships made and severed – portraying Lesley’s stifled life or capturing Ruby’s tangled emotions, Rosie Thomas creates unforgettable characters and settings. She’s a superb writer.’ Choice Magazine

‘Rosie Thomas is both a subtle and realistic author and her portrait of Iris is never less than absorbing.’ Elizabeth Buchan, Daily Mail

Nada Awar Jarrar

cath01 — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 05:55:46 CDT

Dreams of Water

Nada Awar Jarrar

Set during the 1980s civil war in Lebanon, ‘Dreams of Water’ is compulsively readable, deceptively simple and overwhelmingly moving.
'If you could tell me just one thing about yourself, what would it be?'
She begins, 'I would say that I once lost a brother.'

As a young man disappears, his family is left wondering, hoping, fearing for what may have become of him. It is only through his loss that they begin to truly understand the deep bond of love that ties their family together.

Aneesa, his sister, feels the loss of her brother intensely and, unable to live in the vacuum left by his disappearance, she leaves her home and all she holds dear. She moves to London seeking a new life, new friends, and a release from her sorrow. There she meets an older man, another exile who reminds her of home. Brought together by their shared feeling for their homeland, they form an unlikely friendship. Yet, Aneesa finds she cannot mourn without knowing the truth about her brother's death, she cannot get on with her life without some certainty.

Meanwhile, back home, Aneesa's mother is grieving for her son. Unable to cope with his loss, she resorts to her community's traditional beliefs and imagines he has been reincarnated. Aneesa reluctantly returns home, determined to uncover the truth behind her brother's disappearance, and rekindle the sense of belonging that she left behind.

‘Dreams of Water’ is a moving story of love, loss and family. Set against a backdrop of upheaval and violence, it reminds us of the importance of hope, of love, and of the strength of family.
Praise for ‘Dreams of Water’:

‘The beauty of this novel lies in its images which are vivid and strange, sometimes even fantastical…There is comfort in reading about characters, all of whom are withdrawn and inhibited, yet who are shown as capable of great tenderness.’
Times Literary Supplement

‘A slow-burning, powerful story of loss and grief’
Good Housekeeping

'Twenty years ago, when civil war broke out in Lebanon, Nada Awar Jarrar was forced to flee with her family. Her novel Dreams of Water recasts this experience in a tale about a family whose son goes missing in war-ravaged Beirut'
Vogue

‘This beautifully written book is powerfully evocative of the human cost of war and the longing for love, that despite the shooting and shelling, never fades.’
Economist

Joint Readers Group Wiki

cath01 — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 04:42:03 CDT

READERS EVENT AT LEEDS CENTRAL LIBRARY - 28/07/2007

Project Background and Readers Questions

Readers Comments & Thoughts

THE BOOKS

Bitter Sweets by Roopa Farooki

Meet the Author Roopa Farooki

Characters in Bitter Sweets

Roopa's Recipes

Souvenir by Therese Fowler

Meet the Author Therese Fowler

Characters in Souvenir

Therese's Blog

LEEDS READERS COMPETITION

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cath01 — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 06:35:40 CDT

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Characters in Bitter Sweets

cath01 — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 08:10:03 CDT

Click on Easy Edit button above to share YOUR thoughts on the characters in Roopa's book Bitter Sweets
Characters Comments

Henna Rub - A lying lazy Wife
Ricky Rashid - Downtrodden husband who turns to bigamy for happiness
Shona - Daughter who elopes to England with Parvez
Parvez - Adoring Husband
Omar & Sharif - Twin Boys: Omar is studious and sensitive and Sharif is a dreamer & womaniser.
Verity Kareem - Ricky's adoring second wife in England
Candida - Ricky and Verity's beautiful daughter
Dermot - Shona's rescuer

Author - Therese Fowler

cath01 — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 06:05:49 CDT

After years of working part-time, writing in her spare time and almost giving up, Therese stumbled across an idea close to her heart. She took inspiration from her events in her own life: the untimely loss of her mother, the wish that she had left some of her own words behind and her belief that there is such a thing as true love. Souvenir was the subject of a frenzied bidding war and rights have been sold in 8 countries.

Events in Libraries

cath01 — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 04:42:08 CDT

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Alice in Wonderland Lantern Slide Show

cath01 — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 02:38:21 CDT

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