Michelle

Some of the topics in this section are closed - this is because we invited the author in question to visit the forum for a certain amount of time, and they no longer visit. I've kept them closed so that there's no confusion. Other posts are author interviews which have been carried out over time. These have been left open for comments and discussion. It's possible that the author may pop in, but obviously there's no guarantee!

Yep.. if regular chats can be arranged, and are worth doing, I don't mind paying the extra. I just don't want to if it's not going to be used.

We're ok at the moment, the bigger licence runs out the end of June.

frankie, I agree so much on the hoodies - they're so complex to wear when you're older! Hayley, how old's your daughter? I'm so jealous she likes to read - my 13 yo can't be bothered!

I'm not really sure about Fracture - I remember enjoying it whilst reading it, but when I started to think about a review, I realised I couldn't remember it - and that can't be a good sign, surely? I've just flicked back through it, and yes, it was an interesting story. Delaney falls into ice, and by the time she's rescued, she should be dead. When she wakes up in hospital, the doctors are amazed that she's recovered so well. But Delaney knows something isn't right, as she finds herself drawn to people who are dying. There's a romance going on, as is fund in most YA stories these days, and some tension provided by Troy, as we're never sure who he is, or what he's doing. The ending is satisfactory, and it seems to be nicely wrapped up. So why did I find it so forgetful?!

The Traitors by Tom Becker

Two reviews done... Heart Shaped Bruise by Tanya Byrne The Last Echo by Kimberly Derting - http://www.bookclubforum.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/10078-the-bodyfinder-series-by-kimberly-derting/page__pid__296532#entry296532

I've just finished the third book in this series, and I loved the direction it's now taking. Apparently I didn't start a thread for it after the initial book, so here's one now! The Body Finder The Last Echo

I am! I was really surprised that copies would be available, but the publishers were lovely. I've only just started it.. and it's huge!

Oh dear, I keep neglecting this poor little thread! Let me see.. Read... Fracture - Megan Miranda Swan Song - Robert MacCammon (audio) The Last Echo - Kimberly Derting A Waste of Good Paper - Sean Taylor Heart-Shaped Bruise - Tanya Byrne The Traitors - Tom Becker I'm hoping to get some reviews done this weekend. In progress: Mistborn book 3 - Brandan Sanderson (audio) Into The Darkest Corner - Elizabeth Haynes (audio) The Name of the Wind - Patrick Rothfuss (audio) (I'm flicking between these three) All Fall Down - Sally Nicholls Shadow of Night - Deborah Harkness Understand Psychology - Nicky Hayes Phew!

Just bumping up this thread, as I've just started this one as an audiobook. I'm finding audio a good medium for long fantasy books.

Hi Andie - there's an exisitng thread about this.. http://www.bookclubforum.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/1069-how-many-books-do-you-read-at-once/

Different people have different favourites - I liked Carrie, but I read it a long time ago. Salam's Lot I didn't find very scary. Maybe try Pet Semetary or The Shining - I think the latter is my personal favourite.

I like the way VF thinks!

I doubt it - I have a feeling it will be one of those with no review copies, and publishers sworn to secrecy - it helps to build the hype, and keeps the sales high at the beginning before the reviews come in.

Andie, which ones have you tried, and what sort of horror do you like? As has been said before, I don't think you can call King just a 'horror writer', and even then it depends on what you like.. because to me there are different sorts of horror novels.

If anyone fancies getting hold of the most recent spreadsheet, or the iphone app, use the banner you'll find at the top of the forum.. then come back and tell us your stats! Mine are too low to share!

orangeprize.co.uk Esi Edugyan Half Blood Blues The aftermath of the fall of Paris, 1940. Hieronymus Falk, a rising star on the cabaret scene, was arrested in a café and never heard from again. He was twenty years old. He was a German citizen. And he was black. Fifty years later, Sid, Hiero’s bandmate and the only witness that day, is going back to Berlin. Persuaded by his old friend Chip, Sid discovers there’s more to the journey than he thought when Chip shares a mysterious letter, bringing to the surface secrets buried since Hiero’s fate was settled. Anne Enright The Forgotten Waltz The Forgotten Waltz is a memory of desire: a recollection of the bewildering speed of attraction, the irreparable slip into longing. In Terenure, a pleasant suburb of Dublin, in the winter of 2009, it has snowed. Gina Moynihan, girl about town, recalls the trail of lust and happenstance that brought her to fall for ‘the love of her life’, Seán Vallely. As the city outside comes to a halt, Gina remembers the days of their affair in one hotel room or another: long afternoons made blank by bliss and denial. Now, as the silent streets and the stillness and vertigo of the falling snow make the day luminous and full of possibility, Gina walks through the weather to meet a girl she calls his ‘beautiful mistake’: Seán’s fragile, twelve-year-old daughter, Evie. Georgina Harding Painter of Silence Iasi, Romania, the early 1950s. A man is found on the steps of hospital, frail as a fallen bird. He carries no identification and utters no words, and it is days before anyone discovers that he is deaf and mute. And then a young nurse called Safta brings paper and pencils with which he can draw. Slowly, painstakingly, memories appear on the page: a hillside, a stable, a car, a country house, dogs and mirrored rooms and samovars in what is now a lost world. The memories are Safta’s also. For the man is Augustin, son of the cook at the manor at Poiana that was her family home. Born six months apart, they grew up with a connection that bypassed words. But while Augustin’s world remained the same size, Safta’s expanded to embrace languages, society — and love, as Augustin watched one long hot summer, in the form of a fleeting young man in a green Lagonda. Safta left before the war, Augustin stayed. But even in the wide hills and valleys around Poiana he did not escape its horrors. He watched uncomprehending as armies passed through the place. Then the Communists came, and he found himself their unlikely victim. There are many things that he must tell Safta that may be more than simple drawings can convey. Madeline Miller The Song of Achilles Greece in the age of Heroes. Patroclus, an awkward young prince, has been exiled to Phthia to live in the shadow of King Peleus and his strong, beautiful son, Achilles. By all rights their paths should never cross, but Achilles takes the shamed prince as his friend, and as they grow into young men skilled in the arts of war and medicine, their bond blossoms into something far deeper — despite the displeasure of Achilles’s mother Thetis, a cruel sea goddess. But then word comes that Helen of Sparta has been kidnapped. Torn between love and fear for his friend, Patroclus journeys with Achilles to Troy, little knowing that the years that follow will test everything they hold dear. Cynthia Ozick Foreign Bodies The collapse of her brief marriage has stalled Bea Nightingale’s life, leaving her middle-aged and alone, teaching in an impoverished borough of 1950s New York. A plea from her estranged brother gives Bea the excuse to escape lassitude by leaving for Paris to retrieve a nephew she barely knows; but the siren call of Europe threatens to deafen Bea to the dangers of entangling herself in the lives of her brother’s family. Travelling from America to France, Bea leaves the stigma of divorce on the far side of the Atlantic; newly liberated, she chooses to defend her nephew and his girlfriend Lili by waging a war of letters on the brother she has promised to help. But Bea’s generosity is a mixed blessing: those she tries to help seem to be harmed, and as Bea’s family unravels around her, she finds herself once again drawn to the husband she thought she had left in the past. Ann Patchett State of Wonder Among the tangled waterways and giant anacondas of the Brazilian Rio Negro, an enigmatic scientist is developing a drug that could alter the lives of women forever. Dr Annick Swenson’s work is shrouded in mystery; she refuses to report on her progress, especially to her investor’s, whose patience is fast running out. Anders Eckman, a mild-mannered lab researcher, is sent to investigate. A curt letter reporting his untimely death is all that returns. Now Marina Singh, Anders’s colleague and once a student of the mighty Dr Swenson, is their last hope. Compelled by pleas of Anders’s wife, who refuses to accept that her husband is not coming home, Marina leaves the snowy plains of Minnesota and retraces her friend’s steps into the heart of the South American darkness, determined to track down Dr Swenson and uncover the secrets being jealously guarded among the remotest tribes of the rainforest. What Marina does not yet know is that, in this ancient corner of the jungle, where the muddy waters and susurrating grasses hide countless unknown perils and temptations, she will face challenges beyond her wildest imagination. Marina is no longer the student, but only time will tell if she has learnt enough.

Noll, is it all going to be wrapped up by the end of the season, or will there be a further season?