Malasz

In their townhouse in Richmond, Blue and her family are as happy and as close as can be - well, on the surface at least. But with the arrival of a young, destitute woman hoping to escape her abusive husband, they must finally confront the rifts that keep them apart. When they welcome Delphine into their home - and their hearts - they think it's for her benefit only. But what they don't realise is that she will bring them together in ways they never thought possible. I fell in love with Tracy Rees’s writing after discovering her novel Florence Grace so I had high hopes for her latest release Darling Blue. On Blue Camberwell’s 21 st Birthday her father makes an embarrassing announcement, whichever gentleman can woo his daughter Blue in the form of a letter will earn her hand in marriage. Delphine is in such a desperate position trying to flee from her husband, but her original plan fails when an accident results in all her belongings being washed away down river. With no where t...

--> Fiction Secrets in the wilderness LEAVE NO TRACE By Mindy Mejia 337 pp. Atria People disappear. Some, like the Maine hermit of North Pond, Christopher Knight, drive away from society, park their car, and vanish into the woods for 20-plus years. Others, like the Lykov family of Russia, flee persecution and live off their wits and the few seeds they took with them into the Siberian wilds. Or, like Ho Van Thanh with his son, they flee the violence of combat and aren't discovered until years after a war has ended.  Author Mindy Mejia pivots off these and other cases of the disappeared in her page-turner of a novel,  Leave No Trace , told in first-person by her flawed hero, Maya Stark. The story begins at the Congdon Psychiatric Hospital in Duluth, Minnesota, where Maya is an assistant speech therapist. A remarkable feat considering she was once a patient there, back in the days after her mother left, her abandonment issues, the acting out, and her ...

Becky Sharp has big dreams and no connections. Determined to swap the gutters of Soho for the glamorous, exclusive world behind the velvet rope, Becky will do anything to achieve fame, riches and status. Whether it’s seducing society’s most eligible bachelors, or befriending silly debutantes and rich old ladies, Becky Sharp is destined for great things. Because it might be tough at the top but it’s worse at the bottom. From London to Paris and beyond, Becky Sharp is going places – so get the hell out of her way… I had heard a lot about The Rise and Fall of Becky Sharp by Sarra Manning but have to admit I was a little hesitant about picking it up as many reviews I had read had all mentioned that this was a retelling of Vanity Fair which ( ok smack my wrists ) I have never read, so I didn’t think I would be worth me reading. As a surprise my sister actually brought me a copy for my birthday present so I settled down to see if I would be able to follow the storyline. Becky Sharp has lived...

Eve Glace  - co-owner of the theme park Winterworld - is having a baby and her due date is a perfectly timed 25th December. And she’s decided that she and her husband Jacques should renew their wedding vows with all the pomp that was missing the first time.  But growing problems at Winterworld keep distracting them …  Annie Pandoro  and her husband  Joe  own a small Christmas cracker factory, are well set up and happy together despite life never blessing them with a much-wanted child.  But when Annie finds that the changes happening to her body aren’t typical of the menopause but pregnancy, her joy is uncontainable.  Palma Collins  has agreed to act as a surrogate, hoping the money will get her out of the gutter in which she finds herself.  But when the couple she is helping split up, is she going to be left carrying a baby she never intended to keep? Annie, Palma and Eve all meet at the ‘Christmas Pudding Club’, a new directi...

--> --> Nonfiction Trading syphilis for smallpox GET WELL SOON History’s Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them By Jennifer Wright 320 pp. Henry Holt and Co, New York. Reviewed by David E. Hoekenga, M. D. Plagues have killed more humans than anything else. In fact, nothing else comes even close. Yet the author writes with unreserved humor and grace, beginning with her dedication: “For Mom and Dad, Would it kill you to go to the doctor now and then?” The author cleverly uses a picture of a Chili’s restaurant which holds 180 adults, to graphically illustrate just how 168 Spaniards (without guacamole) could conquer 80,000 Incas who were weakened by disease and misled by their gods. She remarks when describing encephalitis lethargic that the neurologist Oliver Sacks was the coolest man who ever walked on the earth. With this judgement I totally concur. In chapter after deadly chapter Wright catalogues the deadly effect of plague after plague, accurately describing a v...