From the Book Elf

 Less Dreadful With Every Step  by Clive Woolliscroft Less Dreadful With Every Step by Clive Woolliscroft was published on 28th May 2023 by The Book Guild. My thanks to the author and the publisher for sending me a copy to review and to Random Book Tours for inviting me to take part on the tour. Synopsis In August 1914, the lives of two young people seem mapped out in front of them. Frank, happily employed as a bank teller, is to marry his fiancée in the spring. Emily is also to marry around the same time. Both are natives of Jarrow. Their homes are about a ten-minute walk away – but they have never met. Then, everything changes. Carried along with the jingoistic national celebration that follows the declaration of war, Frank enlists in the army, leaving his family and fiancée behind. Shortly after this, a devastating loss leaves a massive void in Emily’s life. To help fill that void, she volunteers with the Voluntary Aid Detachment. By the end of summer 1916, both Fr...

  The Murder of Anton Livius by Hansjorg Schneider The Murder of Anton Livius by Hansjörg Schneider, translated by Astrid Freuler is published on 15 June 2023 by Bitter Lemon Press. My thanks to the author and publisher for sending me a copy to review and to Random Book Tours for inviting me to take part on the tour. The latest in the international crime series featuring Inspector Peter Hunkeler, to follow on from the success of prize-winning The Basel Killings and Silver Pebbles, selected by the FT as a thriller of the month.  Hunkeler is a legendary figure in German language crime fiction, often compared to Simenon, gruff, intuitive, endowed with a deep sense of psychology and a horror of social injustice.   The city of Basel and neighbouring Alsace are evoked with great love by Schneider, who in real life lives on the same street and frequents the same bars and restaurants as Inspector Hunkeler Synopsis Inspector Hunkeler is summoned back to Basel fro...

 There is a light that never goes out  by David M Barnett There is a light that never goes out by David M Barnett was published on 8th June 2023 by Orion. My thanks to the author and the publisher for sending me a copy to review and to Compulsive Readers for inviting me to take part on the tour. Synopsis How do you find love . . . when you have the loneliest job in the world? This is the story of Gayle and Martin, who fall in love over the course of ten years- over a yearly visit to a tiny, isolated island off the Welsh coast. Gayle is a teacher and each year she brings her class to the island to see the local flora and fauna, from sea birds to playful seals. Martin, the island's caretaker and only human resident, lives in and maintains the lighthouse, which opens to the public for just this one day a year. Gayle is effervescent but feels trapped, while Martin is lonely and isolated. As their love slowly builds over time, they both yearn for the annual field trip where t...

  The Rose of Florence by Angela M Sims The Rose of Florence by Angela M Sims was published on 16th January 2023 by Romaunce Books. My thanks to the author and the publisher for sending me this beautiful book to review and to Random Book Tours for inviting me to take part on the tour. Synopsis Prologue: (1460): Gianetta is born in a farmhouse in Fiesole. Her mother dies in childbirth. The unnamed father is distraught but leaves her in the care of her grandmother and returns home.  The Story : (1478): Gianetta grows up and moves to Florence, where she is in service to a wealthy family of textile merchants - the Rosini. They are friends to and supporters of the powerful Medici clan. In the small, tight-knit group of staff, we meet Eleonora (cook), Luigi (Signor Francesco Rosini’s private assistant), Antonio and Lucia and our hero, Matteo. Gianetta and Matteo are in love and have a happy, peaceful life with the kind and generous Rosini family. They enjoy entertaining at Pala...

  The Last Lifeboat  by Hazel Gaynor ‘Life has been reduced to fragments – a few inches of space, a dipper of water, a sliver of food. She inhabits minutes and hours now, anything bigger impossible to grasp. And yet she must imagine a time beyond the lifeboat; another life, a second chance. Without that, without hope, she may as well slip into the water now and let it carry her away.’ The Last Lifeboat by Hazel Gaynor was published on 8th June 2023 by Harper Collins. My thanks to the author and the publisher for sending me a copy to review and to Random Book Tours for inviting me to take part on the tour. Synopsis September 1940. In the immediate aftermath of a U-boat attack on an evacuee ship, one lifeboat of terrified survivors endures a fierce storm in the Atlantic. May 1940. Four months earlier, two very different women – Alice King, a teacher, and Lily Nicholls, a young widow- confront life-changing choices as Britain prepares for German invasion and the devastating...

 In The Summertime  by Maeve Haran In The Summertime by Maeve Haran was published on 8th June 2023 by Pan Macmillan. My thanks to the author and the publisher for sending me a copy to review and to Random Book Tours for inviting me to take part on the tour. Synopsis With her marriage falling apart and her longed-for holiday cancelled, Georgina Greenhills gets an unexpected offer: a holiday in the small seaside town nestling in the beautiful South Downs where she grew up. There is only one catch: she must try and solve the mystery of the valuable antiques disappearing from the remote manor house belonging to an old lady called Maudie. Gina gathers her childhood friends, scatty Ruth and feisty Eve, to help her. In the middle of a blazing summer they swim, sunbathe and share cocktails as they watch the sun sparkling on the sea and Gina realizes how much she missed them and how happy she is to be back here in the summertime. Not least because of bumping into Daniel Nap...

  From Cornwall with Love  by Cressida McLaughlin From Cornwall with Love by  Cressida McLaughlin is published on 08 June 2023 by HarperCollins My thanks to the author and the publisher for sending me a copy to review and to  Random Book Tours for inviting me to take part on the tour. Synopsis Sunshine awaits in the beautiful coastal town of Port Karadow where a romance and a Cornish cream tea are always on the menu… There’s no place like home. There’s no place like Cornwall. Maisie Winters has everything she could ever want. She lives in the idyllic Cornish town of Port Karadow, has a jammy job in her dad's shop, adores her rescue mutt, and has time to take the landscape photos she loves. While her best friend and sister left the town to chase big dreams in London and New York, Maisie stayed – she wouldn't leave her favourite place for anything … or anyone. When her long-time crush, Colm Caffrey, returns from a decade abroad, old feelings start to resurface. ...

  The Pawnshop of Stolen Dreams  by Victoria Williamson The Pawnshop of Stolen Dreams by Victoria Williamson was published on  11th May 2023 by Tiny Tree.  My thanks to the author and the publisher for sending me a copy to review and to  The Write Reads for inviting me to take part on the tour. Synopsis In a strange little village called Witchetty Hollow, eleven-year-old Florizel is the first to run into the curious visitors who've come to open a brand new Daydream Delicatessen and sack-baby factory. At first, it seems the daydream confection and cheap sack children are the best things that could have happened to the poor folk of the Hollow - after all, who has the money to rent their child from Storkhouse Services these days? But after a few weeks, Florizel starts to notice something odd happening to the adults of the town. First, they seem dreamy, then they lose all interest in their jobs and families. Soon they're trading all their worldly goods in t...

 I Know You by Russell Govan I Know You by Russell Govan   was published on 01 June 2022  by Guernica Editions. My thanks to the author and publisher for sending me a copy to review and to Random Book Tours for inviting me to take part on this tour. Synopsis Eilidh, bright, headstrong and feisty, gets sparkling exam results that confirm her university place. Her boyfriend reveals he has deceived her. In the ensuing argument she is knocked unconscious. She arrives in 1984, in an Ethiopian refugee camp, where she nurses a dying child, then a wounded aid worker before wakening back home in present-day Scotland. Three days later, at an isolated beauty spot trying to come to terms with her ex-boyfriend’s betrayal and her experience in Ethiopia, she encounters Walter, who is in the early stages of dementia. He is there because of a tattoo on his wrist that simply states the date and location of the beauty spot. Eilidh recognises Walter’s symptoms, takes him home and contacts...