Kell

Author: Mark Haddon ISBN # 0099456761 Christopher is 15 years old & lives with his dad. He likes logic, maths & science because he understands them. What he doesn't understand is people - he hates being touched & cannot respond in the "normal" way to the emotions of others. In his opinion, animals are much better - they don't tell lies because they can't talk. So, when his neighbour's dog, Wellington, is mysteriously murdered with a garden fork, Christopher takes it upon himself to decipher the curious incident of the dog in the night-time & solve the crime in the style of his hero, Sherlock Holmes, & write a book about it as he does. In doing so, he unravels more secrets than he had bargained for & embarks upon a voyage of self-discovery that will take him away from the small town where everything is as he likes it, into a wider world where everything is confusing, scary & strange. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time has won the Whitbread Book of the Year award, the Guardian Children

Author: Ben Elton ISBN # 0552772976 Bruce Delamitri is a movie director on a mission - winner of the Best Director Oscar, he's the hero of the MTV generation for his violent films which, he claims, simply hold up a mirror to real life & portray the lives of ordinary Americans. But in a world where explosive & extreme violence is becoming common-place, is it time to admit that art doesn't only imitate life - it influences it. Enter Wayne & Scout - the notorious Mall Murderers. They've got a plan & they might just get away with murder - literally! Popcorn is Elton's satirical take on the shallow inhabitants of Hollywood & the movie-culture of the nineties. Delamitri is a fictional characterisation of Oliver Stone & his movie Ordinary Americans is his Natural Born Killers. The apathy of the American film industry & the refusal to accept responsibility for one's own actions comes under sharp attack here & Elton asks us what the world has come to when we can blame everything on our upbringing, social circumstances or personal tragedy rather than admit we may be at fault ourselves. It encourages you to examine the motives behind the denial - is it as unconscious as we would have others believe? Or is it coldly calculated as a way to defer responsibility onto others? Elton's brutal honesty & acerbic wit are perfectly suited to the subject matter & although cynical, the dark humour is never far beneath the surface& the reader is left with no doubt as to how the author feels. We are, however, left with questions about the validity of media claims that movies are the cause of wide-spread violence as it champions the free-thinking individual as able to make up their own minds, make their own decisions, & accept responsibility for their own lives. One of Elton's earlier forays into writing, it remains one of his strongest pieces to date, bested only, in my opinion, by the likes of Dead Famous (where he examines the phenomenon of so-called reality TV, in particular, Big Brother), & Past Mortem (a murder/mystery for the computer-age). His style, although jarring in places, never holds the reader back from the plot, letting us see the story from all angles as it unfolds.

You never know - I have a thing about so-called kid's books - they get all the god ones these days - LOL!

Author: David Baddiel ISBN # 0349117462 Gabriel Jacoby has problems: His flat-mate is going crazy, he's in love With his brother's wife, he's having trouble hitting the deadlines for his sports column & to top it off, he just can't get any sleep. What's a guy to do? David Baddiel (half of the Newman & Baddiel comedy duo & a quarter of The Mary Whitehouse Experience) really comes into his own with this, his debut novel. Large parts of it are obviously based on his true-life Experiences with his then flat-mate, Frank Skinner (who now partners him on Baddiel & Skinner, Unplanned) & the air of honesty lends itself well to the fictional elements with which it has been seamlessly interwoven. The focus is entirely on Gabriel Jacoby & his skewed view of the world As he battles with insomnia & his unrequited love for his sister-in-law, Alice - until he remembers that she has a sister! As he struggles even to stay awake, how can he deal with the roller-coaster of emotions & with the fact that his best friend is clearly going gaga after a bender involving some mind-bending drugs & an encounter with the highly unusual Fran, who brings everyone together in a cataclysmic fashion. Time For Bed also explores the importance of heritage within a Jewish family living in London & the lengths to which people will go when they fear a loss of cultural identity, set against a backdrop of a curious love-triangle (of which only one of the participants is aware!) & other affairs of the heart. It shows how enlightenment can be reached by many different approaches & how none of it matters if you can't actually get your head round your own problems first. Smart, funny, witty & written with an affection for the characters & subject matter, this is a superb debut novel from a comedian who has turned his hand to another medium & excelled. It paves the way nicely for his darker novel, Whatever Love Means, as well as his latest, The Secret Purposes; a semi-fictional/semi-biographical account of the Jewish settlement on the Isle of Man during WWII. A must-read book of the highest calibre, Time for Bed delivers everything you could possibly want from a rom-com & leaves the audience wanting more.

Author: Simon Scarrow ISBN # 0755330684 Under the Eagle follows the fate & fortunes of Macro, a battle-hardened Centurion of 14 years service, & Cato, a 17-year-old freedman, until recently a Palace slave, made Optio (Macro

Author: Dan Brown ISBN # 0552150738 Although not quite so well-known or talked-about as The Da Vinci Code, Angels & Demons is now being more widely publicised along with the rest of the Brown back-catalogue - & rightly so. Angels & Demons, like Da Vinci, features Robert Langdon as the lead character

LOL - sorry, missed that, but I know there IS actually a book called The Tooth Fairy aimed at kids too - my 4-yr-old neice has it

Author: J K Rowling ISBN # 0 7475 4629 0 Harry is about to return for his third year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry, but tensions are high as Sirius Black, convicted mass-murderer, is on the loose after escaping from Azkaban, the horrifying prison of the Wizarding world. The Dementors

Author: Lindsay Ashford ISBN# 1 870206 69X Not bad at all. A murder/mystery with the balls to push the envelope a bit with the psychology behind the storyline. Ashford obviously really knows her stuff & it comes through in her writing along with a genuine affection towards the characters she's created. A nifty plot, excellent set-pieces & unexpected red herrings, this one keeps you guessing & then guessing again. A real pleasure to read.

Author: Jim Butcher ISBN # 1 84149 398 8 I can feel nothing but major disappointment over a book that has taken me the best part of a week to get through & yet was less than 600 pages long. Let's just say it's not exactly a gripping read. I was 3/4 way through the bloody thing before anything really started happening & even then, it wasn't terribly exciting - no page-turner! Actually, having visited the official site of Jim Butcher, I wish I'd got hold of the talking book instead, as it appears to have been read by James Marsters (who I adore, even though he sounds like he's putting on an accent when he speaks American, which is weird coz he's American - I think I just got used to his British accent as Spike in Buffy the Vampire Slayer - LOL!). Anyway, having wasted �6.99 on this book, I can't see me picking up the following 6 sequels as I was bored from start to finish. If you want a really well-written, gripping tale of murder, mystery & magick, you're far better off getting hold of the Rowan Gant Mysteries by M R Sellars. http://www.mrsellars.com/indexB.htm[/url]

Author: James Herbert ISBN # 0 340 41616 5 I'm a pretty big fan of James Herbert but this is not one of his better tales. Truth be told, I was several chapters in before I realised I'd actually read it years before & forgotten as it's pretty unmemorable (unusual, because I'm usually completely immersed in the worlds he creates). This is one of the rare occasions where I preferred the movie to the book (it was on just a few days prior to me picking up this book & it bears little resemblance to the plot he wrote, but in this case, they managed to improve on it a fair bit - sorry, Mr Herbert!). Nah, I definitely prefer his later novels such as Once or The Magic Cottage which have far more of his famous atmosphere & mastery of words than this does.

Author: E. E. Richardson ISBN # 0-385-73263-5 Continuing with the theme of missing children, I picked up a copy of this book which caught my eye in the shop (although I borrowed it from the library) as it looked incredibly sinister - I was right! It's incredibly dark & a gripping read from start to finish. A local legend - that of The Devil's Footsteps - has been turned into a childish skipping rhyme: One in fire, two in blood, Three in storm & four in flood, Five in anger, six in hate, Seven in fear & evil eight, Nine in sorrow, ten in pain, Eleven death, twelve life again. Thirteen steps to the Dark Man's door, Won't be turning back no more. But what sinister secrets are behind it that's keeping the adults of the town blind to the children that have disappeared over the decades? Why is it that the children know that there's more to be afraid of in the woods - & in other places - than meets the eye? Why weren't books for kids written like this when I was the age you're supposed to be when you're reading these books? Everything else seems to be watered-down mush by comparison! This is another author of so-called teen-fiction that I will most certainly be keeping an eye on!

I get the feeling it's a different book - this one's definitely for adults & features a bit of sex & a lot of violence...

Author: Celia Rees ISBN # 0 439 98232 4 This was originally published as one of the Point Horror series of books for teenagers & has since been republished. Nevertheless, this story remains rather chilling & is incredibly well-written. More raw than Rees' later Witch Child & Sorceress (which, you'll remember, I have already read & loved), but still showing some of her power with words. It's has some of the usual elements - new kid in town with a dark secret in his past, childen vanishing without a trace left, right & centre, & it's down to the new kid, along with his two new buddies from the school paper (they've been working on the psi-files to increase flagging sales) to find out what's been going on & who is the mysterious Billy with whom all the stories seem to originate? I'm going to have to get hold of all her other books now as that's three out of three so far & that's unusual for me!

Author: Tom Holt ISBN # 1-84-149087-3 It took what felt like forever to read this hideously tedious book. I'll admit to not exactly being a Tom Holt fan. I want to be, as everyone always says "If you like Pratchett, you'll love Holt", but that simply isn't so - I adore Pratchett but so far I've only been able to find one book by Tom Holt that I even remotely came close to enjoying & it wasn't this book, it was Snow White & the Seven Samurai. Falling Sideways is a confusing jumble of nonsense, barely strung together, to form an incomprehensible hash-job of a book. I hated it. I couldn't see any point to the story at all. I mean, I know it's supposed to be in the Sci-fi/Fantasy genre, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't make any kind of sense at all! So, yes, I hated this book & I severely regret that I will never gain back the time I wasted in reading it. Mr Holt, I don't suppose you'll ever see this, but I won't be bothering with any of your books again as I'm always disappointed by them. I'm sorry, but there it is - I just can't see the point in getting into overly complicated plots which go nowhere, characters I just can't bring myself to care about, & confusion just for the sake of it. In fact, the only positive thing about reading this particular offering is that I've now found something that strips the Kim Harrison debacle of its "Worst & Most Dull read Ever" title. Mr Holt, you've made that experience seem like a dream by comparison. Thank you. It's been dire. Never again!

Author: David Ambrose ISBN # 0-7432-3070-1 Take a dash of Coincidence & a pinch of Superstition & what you come up with is A Memory of Demons. I'm not saying the book wasn't good, I'm just saying Ambrose already covered ghosts & self-created synchronicity, all he added here was a little reincarnation & revenge for good measure. Suspensful - check; moody - check; dark - check: He got all the right ingredients, but the recipe just wasn't quite as tasty as his previous offerings. Still, I've not been put off - I'll still keep my eyes peeled for any other titles & see what they have to offer.

Author: David Ambrose ISBN # 0-7432-0690-8 Isn't it always the small, insignificant, seemingly inconsequential things that lead to the bigger picture? Well, that's what this book does - strings together all the little things to create a whole larger than the sum of its parts. We follow the story of a writer as he decides to the subject of his next book will be coincidence, which sets him down a strange path that may, or may not, be of his own devising. Is he affecting the world around him as he makes his choices? Is it really all just synchronicity? Or is there something, or someone out there making all the moves for him? It could be seen as slightly coincidental that I even read this book, as it was only because I enjoyed Superstition so much that I purposely looked for another by the same author & this was the 1st of the two I picked up (I've just started Memory of Demons now) & I certainly wasn't disappointed. Slightly harsher in feel than Superstition, slightly edgier & faster-paced (& with good reason, as it's only half as many pages, so Ambrose had a lot to squeeze in there!), this one sped past; my eyes moving down the page quick as lightening. I actually managed to sit down & read this one in just a couple of hours. If Demons is half as good as these two have been, I'll be a very happy bunny!

Author: Graham Joyce ISBN # 0312868332 In a word; bizarre. A nightmarish tale of innocence corrupted, minds infiltrated & lives turned up-side-down as childhood gives way to adulthood. To tell the truth, I'm not altogether sure I understood the point of the story, but I can't say that made any difference in my enjoyment of the tale which is fiendishly well-told. If anyone ever thought the Tooth Fairy was nice, they should read this book - it will give them an entirely new view on the subject!

Author: Ben Elton ISBN # 0552146641 Whenever I know I'm not going to have much reading time, I like to nip back to an older favourite, most often one I've read many times. On this occasion I was actually looking for my copy of Past Mortem, but I found Blast from the Past first & decided to re-read it instead. I wasn't disappointed. All those little plot twists I'd forgotten were recognised & welcomed like old friends as they approached & I'll admit I found myself grinning from ear to ear every time I picked up the book to continue, as I knew, from experience, exactly what was coming next. This is actually the first book I read by Ben Elton & it still manages to hold up against some of his later, more polished offerings; the sparkling wit & punchy plot are there, all set out with a simplicity that is perfection. I still honestly believe that this is one of his best novels to date. Even if it weren't, it served as a reminder of how clever Mr Elton can be when he puts his mind to it & makes up for me being bored to tears throughout High Society last week!

Author: David Ambrose ISBN # 0330367447 In a word: Gripping. Want another one? How about intriguing? Or engrossing? An absolutely absorbing page-turner. Altogether un-put-downable. To start with, I wasn't sure I was going to enjoy this book, despite it being on a subject which has most often provided me with hours of reading pleasure - the supernatural & the power of the mind. A group of eight volunteers agree to take part in a scientific experiment to create a ghost with spectacular results. Then things take an unexpected turn, leaving the group in a most unusual position as the thing they have created decides it has a mind - and a life - of its own. I'd never even heard of this author before picking this book up by chance in the library, but Mr. Ambrose has made quite an impression on me & I shall be looking out for more of his work on my next visit.

Author: Ben Elton ISBN # 059304939X I've never thought much of Mr Elton as a stand up comedian, but I love his work as a writer (both script-wise & novels). Unfortunately, this particular offering was rather a let down in comparison to his previous literary outings. The interconnected stories of too many people jumped around all over the place & I found I didn't really care about any of them in particular. It wasn't even as funny or clever as his other books - his usually sparkling wit completely buried under the politics, which is a shame, because a lot of what he was trying to say made plenty of sense. It's not one I'd recommend - more on the heavy side than the others (I know it's a heavy subject matter, but then, so was global warming & environmental disaster & that was handled incredibly well in This Other Eden. If you want his sarcasm at its very best, read either Past Mortem or Dead Famous - absolute gems, both of 'em - but give High Society a miss.

Author: William Goldman ISBN # 0345418263 I've been a fan of the movie ever since I first saw it - who wouldn't be? After all, it has everything - Fencing. Fighting. Torture. Revenge. Giants. Monsters. Chases. Escapes. True love. Miracles. High Adventure - it does everything it says on the tin. And so does the book. Like many, I believed the story that the movie was made & shot in the way it was because the writer had been read the book by his father when he was sick as a young boy. Complete with interruptions ("She does not get eaten by the eels at this point..." except in the book, it's sharks!), it made for a touching & believable tale in itself. Here's where I got the surprise - the book is actually written that way. It's written supposedly as an abridgment of a lengthier novel, apparently penned by someone by the name of S Morgenstern. And I completely bought into that. Then I got a little suspicious, as I was fairly sure that there was no such real location as Florin - that both it & Guilder were pre-Euro cash from the Netherlands. I did a little research &, hey presto, it conspires that the whole thing is a myth. But it's a bloody clever one! The wit & dark humour of Goldman is the thing that strings the whole tale together - his satirical style brings moments of wonderful drama & hilarious comedy completely to life & I found myself completely engrossed in the story. In both stories actually - the story of The Princess Bride, & the story of this wonderful tale being told in stilted English, being lovingly abridged, by a father to entertain his son with "the good bits" while he is sick in bed. I have completely fallen in love with this book & I can see it being read & re-read over & over in the future.

Author: J K Rowling ISBN # 0747538484 Not bad. Not bad at all. This one picks up where The Philosopher's Stone left off (as if there's anyone on the planet who doesn't already know that!), in the summer holidays between Harry's first & second year at Hogwart's School of Witchcraft & Wizardry. All the favourites from the previous book with a few extras thrown in for good measure, most prominently Ginny Weasley (younger sister of Ron & the seemingly millions of other Weasley boys); the ghost haunting the girl's loos, Moaning Myrtle, & the flamboyant new teacher of Defence Against the Dark Arts, Gilderoy Lockhart. My main gripe is that Professor Snape is barely mentioned at all. He was my favourite character in the last story (although, even in that one, was criminally underused) & I only wish he'd featured more heavily in this one, but he hardly graced the pages at all. My greatest wish is that he be given the coveted Dark Arts teaching post he so richly deserves in the sequel.

Author: Celia Rees ISBN # 0747555680 Written in a different style to Witch Child (this is the sequel), but no less captivating for it. This picks up Mary's story as seen through the eyes of one of her descendants who also has some of the same gifts as Mary had. We're also given some information on what happened to some of the other characters in Witch Child after Mary left them - shown as the results of research made by a fictional author, Alison Ellman, who is a character in this new story herself. This really highlights the difference between two cultures - that of the Puritan settlers (accusing Mary of Witchcraft) & the Native Americans (revering her as a healer - a Medicine Woman of great power) - & shows that both had people who were sympathetic to her plight, as well as those who feared her & saw her as an enemy. I really enjoyed both these books & may well look out for other titles by this author.

It's excellent - I'm just about to post the review to it's sequel - Sorceress...