helenliz

A brilliant piece of imagination. Claudius is an unlikely author of the kiss & tell memoir, but that's what Graves creates, a kiss & tell of the roman period. Told in the style of a personal memior, it is very direct and first person, which makes it feel very modern. Tells of his family history through the reign of Augustys through to his birth, youth, adult hood & on into a potential declining old age, when he suddenly gets plucked from obscurity and made emperor - much against his will. Goes to show that there really is nothing new in the world, with sex scandals galore (although they did have a few more options concerning punishment that the courts have at their disposal now!). finishes as he is proclaimed Emperor. To someone with only a passing familiarity with the Romans, it all hangs together and rings true - if there are any historical inaccuracies, they don't stand out to spoil a rip roaring tale.

This is, to my mind, one of Ms Quick's lesser works. Seems like most of the characters in here have some kind of psychic or paranormal power and I find that just plain silly. Take that element out and make it a tale of a secret society and a secret formula, and it might just work. Not to say that Gabriel isn't devastatingly attractive, but the flannel that surrounds the story makes it not worth reading more than once.

yes, well. Where to start. Black Lace is a now defunct imprint that sold erotic fiction for women. And it does what it says on the tin. It even has a smidgeon of a story behind it to back up the wide ranging, rather inventive and extensively detailed sex. Set in the mid 15th century, during the Wars of the Roses, Rosamund is married to an elderly gentleman and has little experience or enjoyment in their marital bed. But he's killed in battle, and her manor is attacked by her villainous neighbour, Sir Ralph. She's captured and is put to Sir Ralph's pleasure (guess what that might be...). Once he has what he wants from her (actually her lands, not just her body) he throws her out on the street and, by circuitous means, she finds herself in a brothel in Southwark. I'm no expert, but I'm 300 percent certain that brothels were unlikely to have been anything like as nice, civilised or clean as this one is made out to be. But hey ho, why let a fact get in the way of a good story. There is some romance in amidst the panting & probing, in that she's had one night of passion with a Squire called Geoffrey. Built like a god (aren't they all) they each believe the other to be dead, due to Sir Ralph's nefarious ways. They find each other, and there are a few rather sweet plot twists towards the end that lighten the mood somewhat.I like it, nothing too outlandish in the sex department, while sufficient variety to not get repetitive, and there's even a love story hidden in there to hold the thing together. And I will now depart and find a bucket of cold water to tip over me...

This is an excellent fictionalised account of the life of Lady Jane Gray, the 9 days Queen. Alison Weir has used the historical framework and has allowed herself to fill in the blanks, to try and get inside the characters heads, to expose their feelings and motivations. It's one of those where you know the ending, but how the events unfolded is where the interest lies. Jane is one of those pawns caught up in the ambitions of those around her. It's told in the first person, with the tale being predominatly told by Jane, her Hurse, her mother, Mary Tudor and Catherine Parr. There is a slight jarr when, mid way through the tale, the Duke of Nortumberland appears, but he is a major player. It's certainly an interesting way of telling the story.I was pleased to find that the audiobook included the author's notes seciton at the end, where she explains where the fictional element of the book lies, and that the more fantastical elements are based on documentary evidence.

*swoon*Who can resist this one. Gabriel Banner was a young man thinking to be a knight in shinning armour, just like the medieval tales he had in his library, when he helped Meredith Clayton try to escape an arranged marriage. The couple were caught, and Meredith's father ensured that gabriel was made to pay. he manages to vanish to the South Seas and is now back in England again, 8 years later, with a fortune and having come into a title. Phoebe is Meredith's younger sister and she's the family misfit - the artistic, dreamy one in a family with a mathematical bent. She also has a headstrong streak and a fancy for the Arthurian legend. And now she's after a knight errant to try and discover what happened in the South Seas to a man she was friends with. Neil is presumed dead & she feels he went to his death trying to seek a fortune so he could marry her (not that she was interested in him that way). She can think of no-one better than Gabriel, who's not exactly keen on the role she's assigned to him. He's a bit older, wiser & more cynical than he was when he helped rescue Meredith and experienced the consequences. You know there are going to be fireworks from the first chapter. And despite the trials & tribulations, you do know it's all going to work out in the end.

it's a Hercule Poiriot novel, where he gets to exercise his little grey cells on a murder and robbery of some famous rubies. The rubies in question are the focus of the start of the book, when they're bought by an American millionaire to give to his daughter. She's the apple of his eye and is currently married to the wrong man. He's been carrying on with a dancing girl, and so Papa decides that his darling Ruthie should cut her losses and divorce the dastardly Derek Kettering. However it doesn't all quite go to plan. once the background has been put in place (by way of jewel dealers, dancing girls and lots of beautiful stereotype characters) the cast is assembled and the train sets off the the South of France - only someone doesn't get there...It's a murder and robbery that leave you wondering if it is one crime or two. Are they connected? Who has motive? Some have motive for one crime and not the other, some have an alibi, others do not. As usual, Poiriot gets to the bottom of it. I did find myself wondering about one character who seemed a little bit too good to be true, but won't spoil the surprise by giving it away. It all ends with the murderer unmasked and a fine match being made. A real evocation of an era past.

OK, I wanted something to read on the bath after a hard day in the garden, and this was suitably light. he's an eccentric Earl who was badly scarred by a first marriage. She's a young lady who is seeking a blackmailer. They come together, as she's entered Society posing as his mistress, and (this being a romance) fact soon mirrors fiction. And it's about as believable as that, really, but it went well with the mood I was in.re-read 2013. Picked for a bookclub challenge, this is one of those comfort books, a bit like a favourite jumper - nothing very bad happens in it - despite all the alarms & scares on the way you just know it'll end happily ever after. Iphingia's aunt is being blackmailed, and the note says that another victim, the Earl of Masters, has been murdered because he didn't pay up. So Iphingia (a miss and former school teacher of an academy for young ladies) decides to enter society as the mistress of the Earl of Masters. I said it was comfortable, not that it made any kind of sense. She does her homework on him, creates an illusion and half falls in love with him. Which is fine while he's rusticating in the country, but does kind of cause a stir when he returns to town. They have a few run ins with the blackmailer (who is out to cause trouble) and with the passion that's stirred up between them. But you can guess the ending. These are a bit of a guilty pleasure of mine and he's one hero I'd not be throwing out of bed for eating crisps.

On one level, this is fabulous; but the the afterglow from the erotic sections wears off and you notice the gaping plot holes...Erika Todd's a sculptor with a taste for the psychic and has moved to New Orleans to move her creative career forward - and thus far it seems to be working. At the books' start, she's preparing for an exhibition in a few weeks, but is having trouble with a lopsided fallen angel. She's renting an apartment from her friend, Maggie, and her husband, Ren. And they're off on a romantic weekend away, so Erika's left on her own. At which point she meets Ren's brother Vittorio, when she thinks he's a burglar & ends up throwing her phone at him. Only he isn't a burglar he's a sort of vampire. Good oh.There is an attraction between the two, only he tries desperately not to give into it, as he's on the trail of a murderer who seems to have been killing off ladies of his acquaintance. And here it all gets a little bit strange. There's a mad mother, a curse, a pair of daemons from the 5th (or deeper) levels of hell and in between stupendous sex with Vittorio, it nearly ends rather badly for Erika. It's a swift enough read and, if you happen to go for arrogant, blond hairs, dark eyed hunks (I don't) who's a whizz at oral sex (I could be persuaded) then it's perfectly satisfying. But then there are those plot holes. The background, why & how Vittorio is a Vampire, why his mother is completely round the twist, why Ren's the unfavoured brother, what happened in the past to make Vittorio think he owes the world an apology, all this is never explained - it's brushed under the carpet, hoping you'll be too heated to notice. OK, but would be a better book with a bit more story.

Can't quite decide between 3 & 4 stars. This tells the tale of Du Maurier's great great grandmother, Mary Anne Clarke, who was mistress to the Duke of York. She was then pivotal in the investigation into the sale of commissions that took place in the House of Commons. A novelised biography, the first sections chart her upbringing in London poverty, then her hasty marriage and subsequent struggles with a lacklustre drunk of a husband. This wasnlt the life she wanted when she was in poveryt, and so her ambition rises still further. She eventually leaves him and finds her way to be mistress of the Duke of York. And here, she does actually seem to be happy, although there are perenial money problems, which is, in part, leads her into the murky issue of selling commisions. She takes a sum of money to put a name forward for a comission or exchange within the armed forces, of which the Duke is Commander in Chief. It is illegal, but it's not exactly unusual at this time in history. It all then starts to go down hill after she ceases her relationship with the Duke. There are the debts, the inability to maintain the standard of living to which she'd become accustomed. This all leads her into increasingly desparate ways of extracting money from old acquaintances, including the writing of defamatory pamphlets. This ends with a court case and the ultimate downfall. It's an interesting sotry, although the sections leading up to her period as mistress are more interesting, surprising and enjoyable to read than the book thereafter. The fall is, in part, due to her own inability to compromise and moderate herself. She thinks she has been hard done by, and never blames herself for a single part of what happens to her. But she never makes any attempt to plan for the future - she always lives for the day. This has its consequences.

My husband has several Claire Francis books on the shelf & I've never wanted to read one. For a book club challenge, this title seemed appropriate, so I gave it a go.Well.That was really very good. Claire starts the story waking up in hospital after serious accident that appears to have resulted from a break in. She's got a broken spine - with all the uncertainties that entails - and head injuries. Slowly through the book you meet her family, husband, husband's business partner and a shady character from her past. There are three men with something to hide and lose in this, Ben (the husband), Simon (the business partner) and Terry (the shady character). By turns each of them seems to have the most to gain from the situation, to have more information than he should. It twists and turns all the way, with Ben's flitting about seeming suspicious, then Simon's solicitude and Terry, who has been rebuffed before, still trying to be involved. There's money and business dealings of the shady and honest sort, there are lies being told and retold and plenty of mist and murk. Through which Claire has to see her way through. It twists and turns and facts come to light, or are presented in a new light and re-examined on a regular basis. The cast of characters is quite tight, but well presented and there are question marks over all of them at some point in the tale. All in all a most satisfactory read and I will be heading back to his bookshelves for another one at some point.

oh deary deary me. Tissue paper thin romance of a style that my granny would have loved. I do wonder what the readership for this style of novel might be nowadays.I'm not going to worry about spoilers, the plot (such as it is) is so telegraphed that you can pretty much imagine the end from the first 5 pages. Anyway, Chloe's a nurse & she starts work at a practice in a small midlands town in 1926. She's introduced to the Doctors and falls instantly, on no more basis than his green eyes, for Dr Adam Raven. After a string of polite dates and a rather impetuous kiss while acting a scene in the village play, they discuss the state of affairs. He doesn't declare his love, he says that his career is more important and the practice has a rule about fraternisation between colleagues (it is 1926). So she's about to get her heart broken and thus leaves for another post - not telling him where she's gone. They meet, he's an idiot, they part. Repeat 3 times. Finally, after getting the wrong end of the stick one more time, they do end up together. I'm not sure why she bothers with him, he's prone to jumping to unwarranted conclusions and sounds like a right selfish git. It all ends up beautifully happily ever after, and even the rival for Chloe's affections isn't really - although Adam is dense enough to get the wrong end of the stick over it. Hey ho. As I said, my granny would have loved it; for me nothing like enough dash, verve, gumption, plot, characterisation and, you know, story... OK is the best I can offer.

Difficult to pigeonhole this one. Told in 3 parts, it is the two sides of the story, then the ending. It's the story of a marriage, and on that's gone off the rails - the course of true love hasn't quite run smooth. I'm sure most people can relate to that - marriage has it's lumps & bumps & needs to be worked at. However, few of us have to ddeal with a bump the size of being framed for your wife's murder. That's what happens to Nick. Amy has vanished, there are signs of stuggle at the house and she's gone. They've been having trouble recently and slowly the evidence mounts against him. An affair comes out and is yet more fuel to the fire. He's not helped by the publicity circus that surrounds the case, being a reserved character, who buckles down & copes - stoic springs to mind. One of the detectives has her doubts, but the case gradually builds and he's arrested and due to be brought to trial. Then the scene shifts and you discover that the image of Amy you've had in the first section is fabricated by Amy herself. Then the back story fills in and you find that she's not the innocent little wife, she's actually quite a nasty piece of work and comes to entirely believe her version of events. She has planned the entire thing, and it's only that she gets herself into trouble that causes the story to play out differently. This starts to exhonerate Nick from some of the more major charges against him - the affair and the lack of care are not excused though. The ending has the pair of them both playing at being the in love couple they once were, but it's a high stakes game.The book has so many twists and turns that you wonder what sort of mind came up with this. It kept me going, as you want to know what happens next, but are half afraid to find out. I felt that Nick was the more real of the two - Amy was just so far out of left field that she was almost a charactature. That's not to say he didn't have his faults, but they were faults of human falibility, rather than being deranged.

This is a surprising subject and quality of book from Ben Elton. I've not read any of his writings, and this wasn't what I expected from his public persona. Douglas Kingsley is a detective in Scotland yard during WW1. He's also currently in court, on the charge of refusing to join the army to fight under conscription. His objections aren't moral or of cowardice, they are intellectual. He comes across badly, as an intellectual snob (but I can sympathise with that one) and doesn't gain much in the way of popular sympathy. His wife leaves him in shame and he faces the wrath of the court. That doesn't go down well and he is duly sent to prison, where it becomes a case of which set of old enemies is going to have the pleasure of doing him in...At this point the scene shifts and we meet Viscount Abercrombie, who's a lieutenant in the army about to head back to France. He's also a renown poet of patriotic and highly acclaimed, sentimental tosh including something called "Forever England". He also happens to be a bent as a nine bob note. Abercrombie enjoys a last night in London, enjoying the pleasures on offer before heading to his regiment on the front near Ypres. He's not exactly full of bonhomie, but he is welcomed by his fellow officers. In the course of his duty, he happens to put on charge a Private Hoskins, who is a Bolshevic and disobeys a direct order during a break from the front. After going over the top, these two end up in rooms next to each other at a hospital for nervous cases and it is during his stay here that Abercrombie becomes the corpse. Douglas is sent to investigate, as there are political implications to this death which wasn't (as posted in the papers) "in the line of duty". There's a lot of build up to this, it's about half way through before the murder is committed, but all that background works for the story. The characters are clearly drawn and Kingsley's struggles to reconcile himself with what he sees and experiences is well represented. There is the question of why should one murder be investigated in the middle of a war in which thousands are dying, but government sanctioned murder is different from the personal, private, murder that takes place here. You can't help but sympathise with Kingsley and his views, especially when viewed at this remove, he certainly makes a lot of sense. but war and sense don't often go hand in hand, and you can see how much he was out of step with his times. A very good read.

This is a most engaging autobiography. Written in a very accessible style, the two books take Dahl from childhood through to first job (book 1) then from job to pilot in the Middle East in WW2 until he's invalided home. it's one of those stories that does read a little more like fiction than fact. It doesn't steer clear of the bad things that happened, there's death and danger and some moral attitudes expressed. Having said that, it's not terribly in depth analysis, but I do think it would certainly appeal to boys of a certain age - and as they're the most cynical about reading that's no bad thing.

At times this was great fun, at others I wanted to scream and throw something at the car stereo, either because she was being quite so dense or because she's a 16th centuray heroine with 21st centuary attitude. But overall it was entertaining enough.This is set in at the time of Henry VIII's marriage to Anne of Cleeves and is set in a real location - Farleigh Hungerford Castle is one of the country's real fairy tale castles. Although it is in ruins now, is is under the care of English Heritage you can visit and explore. http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/daysout/properties/farleigh-hungerford-castle/. I've been previous to reading this book, but knowing it was real did add an air of authenticity. Eleanor Hungerford is born to wealth and privilidge. She is indulged by her father to an extraordinary (and likely highly unbelievable) extent. She rides astride, she is allowed to train to joust, she can read & write, she has free rein to explore the castle and has picked up some atrociaous language from the grooms. All of which is appealing to today's YA at whom this is aimed, but which did annoy me a little.All goes swimmingly until her father returned, accused her mother of witchcraft and had her locked in the southwest tower - which soon becomes known as the titular Lady Tower. Things come to a head 4 years later when Eleanor is promised in marriage to Lord Stanton, who she's never met. At this point she realises that her mother (who's life has been threatened by the Chaplain and has been poisoned before by him) would be unable to survive if she left the castle - who would provide the food & water from the kitchens? So Eleanor makes plans for them to escape. All of which is jolly good fun, but is not terribly believable. I know that there are some stunningly brave and determined women in our history, but Eleanor can barely think her way to the end of a sentence, let alone seems able to think her and her mother out of this terrible fix. Without giving away the ending, she does rather bring the world down about her ears, but also manages to survive.I wouldn't advise this should be read entirely for historical accuracy, but there are enough background details and snipets of court news to make the story sit reasonably well in its time period. (note - I found out my guidebook and there was a Walter Hungerford who was Lord at the time of Henry VIII, and he was married 3 times and his last wife did write to Cromwell claiming that she'd been imprisoned these 3-4 years with little food & water & that the Chaplain had tried to poison her. This Walter was executed for treason - as the book indicates. There's no mention in the guidebook of a daughter, nor that she was quite as depicted here.) Eleanor is the one thing that does stick out like a slightly sore thumb, but she's a 15 yr old girl - somewhat dense and self centered, like most 15 year old girls are. And that's the author's target market and I should imagine it appeals quite well.

hmm. let's get the bad bits over first - credibility is a bit like an elastic band - it can be stretched, but at some point it goes "ping" and you get hit on the nose. That's what happens here. I could accept most of what happened right up until the last section where Bee and her Dad crept of a cruise ship in the Antarctic ocean and snuck aboard a Zodiac and found Bernadette hiding out on a station in the Antarctic, where she'd been for 6 weeks. yeah, right. and that was where the elastic band went snap and I lost patience with this.Bernadette was a promising architect, but has personality issues (to put it mildly) she's rude and unpleasant to the other parents at the school, is self centered and has turned herself into a bit of a martyr for her only child, Bee. Poor Bee has a most ridiculous name and was born with a heart defect, so spent most of her first 5 years on hospital. I appreciate this can give parents a tendency to treat her as if she were made of glass, but children are robust little things and Bee makes it perfectly clear that she's not sick any more and shows every sign of wanting to grow up a normal child. Elgie (honestly) is a techie nerd who's high up in Microsoft and creating though control chips. He also is not the most rounded person you've ever met in your life and it seems that he's taken to working instead of talking to his wife. I'm sure it happens, but he goes from not seeming to care to trying to get her sectioned in 2 chapters.Their story is told by way of e-mails, letters, faxes and additional information from Bee herself. I'm not sure it really works, as it very fragmentary, some of the messages running to only a few lines before the font changes for the next message/letter/fax etc. The font may change, but the character of those writing them also seem to undergo a seismic shift as the various crisis come and go. The neighbour has a sudden crisis of conscience and turns from devil incarnate to angel in one paragraph. Actually the change is probably partly her but also in how she's perceived. But, I'm sorry, I didn't really buy it. It's an engaging story in principle, how well do we really know anyone, especially our parents. And I don't envy Bee being the child of two such gifted people - that's got to be a poisoned chalice if ever there was one. But the escape was, frankly, too far fetched and I didn't feel the ending necessarily held true to the rest of the book - it certainly leaves a significant number of unresolved issues back home which are brushed under the carpet. Didn't come into this with high expectations, but the execution was, I felt, insufficient to carry the story through.