Come and meet best selling crime author Rebecca Tope as she talks about her life in rural Herefordshire, her new Lake District mystery series, and the much loved Cotswold mysteries at the Women’s Institute in Moreton-in-Marsh, Tuesday 14 February, 7.30pm.
What book/s shall get the honour of featuring in the first Wednesday Cover Story for 2013? Well, it’s going to have to be the utterly beautiful designs for the Nicholas Bracewell series by Edward Marston – murder and mystery set around a theatre company in Elizabethan London. The next three books in the series have […]
They say that things come in threes. Good things. Bad things. Buses. And in my case, the recurrent theme is Lobbyists. Over the Christmas break, I watched the brilliant documentary Food Inc. , which I simply must recommend – eye-opening, shocking and important viewing (will be getting the book!). Anyone who knows me, knows I get […]
It’s Monday. And the first full week of work after the Christmas holidays. Bound to be some Monday blues lurking about. Which inevitably means…time to hit the sales for some retail therapy! But no, I hear you say, the post-Christmas bank account can not endure more frivolous spending! Understood. But surely you can spare 99p? […]
It’s the time of year when everyone’s talking about New Year’s Resolutions – January has only just begun, and the determination to keep fit / try a new hobby / not stuff your face with chocolate is still fresh. Personally, I haven’t really set myself any specific resolutions this year, knowing that trying to stick […]
Come and celebrate with local crime-writer Alanna Knight as she launches Murders Most Foul, the latest release in her much-loved Inspector Faro series, at Blackwell's in Edinburgh on Tuesday 29th January, 6.30pm
It’s the start of a new year and the office is abrim with optimistic resolutions. Sophie is leading the charge with her post covering exercise (a 10k race on the horizon), self-improvement (more poetry reading) and social (more live music ). Similarly, among my let’s-see-how-long-this-lasts resolutions is to see more theatre in 2013. Working in […]
And so here we are, back in the office and with the start of 2013 comes New Year’s resolutions! There are so many things I want to achieve, its hard to narrow it down and keep it realistic. My three main resolutions are: 1. To run a 10K race in spring 2013. My Sunday run […]
This Christmas time I have accumulated a tottering (or should that be teetering?) TBR pile. And that’s before I get my itchy fingers on any of the obvious books-shaped parcels underneath the tree. But I don’t hold out much hope of crossing many of these beauties off before the end of January for the simple […]
I have spent an amazing few weeks here at Allison & Busby (a huge thank you to all theA&B women) and wanted to leave you with this. CBC Radio has a brilliant show called the Vinyl Café hosted by Stuart Maclean. Nearly every episode features as its highlight a story about a couple called Dave […]
Some books are just better in winter. They portray the cold dark nights and frosty winds that keep us huddled indoors. Nothing does this quite the book I am reading now: Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow, by Peter Høeg. Set in snowy Denmark, the protagonist Smilla Jasperson investigates the death of a young boy using […]
The delightful memoir, Three Houses, by Angela Thirkell will be read by actress Sian Thomas on BBC Radio 4’s Book of the Week beginning on Christmas Eve (24 – 28 December)
So, it’s my last blog entry before Christmas, and I feel obliged to include some festive cheer. One thing that got me in the sleigh-bells-and-twinkly-lights mood recently was seeing the new Christmas stamps unveiled by Royal Mail, which I discovered on the BBC website. They’ve been illustrated by Axel Scheffler, famous for his drawings in classic […]
I’ve been mulling over a conversation that cropped up in the A&B office a few weeks ago; the issue of translated books. There is the long debated question of whether meaning is lost in translation. It’s not something I can personally testify about since I unfortunately only speak English and rather broken German. But I […]
As we reach the end of 2012, the bicentennial year of Charles Dickens’ birth, we’re in the true Dickensian season: there’s hoar frost on the trees and people are scurrying through the city’s streets desperate to reach a cosy corner. If Dickens is the man for putting you in the mood for the festive season, […]
I was browsing through The Bookseller earlier this week and my eyes happened upon the thumbnail for the cover of Foursome, by Jane Fallon. The American Kindle cover, to be exact – which is pictured below. And, I stopped to look at it because, and this can only be due to my half-Italian blood, but […]
As winter draws in, I am reminded of the time I spent earlier this year above the Arctic Circle near the end of the Dempster Highway in Inuvik, Canada, where despite the glorious sunshine the lingering snow meant it was still mostly -11° during the days. As such, you could only be outside for so […]
Last week the Guardian website published a list of writers’ favourite classic book illustrations, as part of a joint campaign with the Folio Society to celebrate beautiful books. Many of the illustrations were from children’s books, and I remember a few from my own childhood – it’s surprising what memories they can evoke. This one, […]
Thursday 28 march, 7.45pm ESSEX BOOK FESTIVAL, WITHAM LIBRARY In an engaging talk called ‘Five Red Herrings and a Flock of Hens’ Aline Templeton talks about following in the footsteps of Dorothy L Sayers with her DI Marjory Fleming crime series set in Galloway, and her latest book Evil for Evil. Part of the Essex […]
The internet is full of wonderful, interesting things. You can literally spend hours just surfing from one website to the next. And I currently have two websites that keep me entertained on a rainy Sunday afternoon: Stumble Upon and Life in Publishing. The first, Stumble Upon, is a website where you join for free and […]
If I look on Twitter I’m surprised that #Scandinavian is not trending at the moment, because recently everything I come across has a Scandivanian bent. And it’s not suprising, because, let it be said, the Scandinavians truly know how to do Christmas. I had the fortune to spend six years of my childhood in Copenhagen […]