Warning Signs by Tracy Sierra

Published on by Margaret1 Comment

Penguin| 12 February 2026| 336 pages| e-book| Review copy|4*

This is Tracy Sierra’s second book and the first one I’ve read of hers, but it won’t be the last. After a slow and ominous start that made me worried about what was coming next, it then picked up pace. I couldn’t stop reading, totally gripped and fearful of what might happen next.

Description:

There’s something out there in the darkness.
By morning, bones lie in the snow, picked clean.

Zach knows the moods of the mountains – his mother taught him before she was gone. His father and the other men on the ski weekend think they know better though.

Drinking and boasting, they laugh in the face of the icy conditions.

But Zach understands what danger looks like. Can he survive the wilderness, and all the monsters within it?

The book begins as Zach, Bonnie and their mother, Grace are in the Colorado mountains where she is teaching them how to recognise the danger signs of an avalanche. A year later, Zach, now aged twelve, is spending a ski weekend with his father, Bram as he entertains his business investors. Bram is one of the most obnoxious characters I have met in fiction, a cruel, manipulative and narcissistic monster and his relationship with Zach is really awful. Zach, who is desperate for his father’s approval, has to tread carefully to avoid Bram’s vile and explosive temper.

The story is told from Zach’s point of view, which had made me initially wary of reading it. But, it was successful, because it is told in the third person. Despite his lack of confidence due to his father’s behaviour towards him, he is a resourceful, courageous and sensible boy. His mother had instructed him well about the dangers of the mountains and how to survive the conditions. He is a fully rounded character, whereas the other characters are not described in such detail, but sufficiently well enough as a supporting cast.

The setting is just so beautiful, but also claustrophobic as snow continues to fall and the hut where they are staying becomes snowbound. The tension and suspense gradually rise, as they try to find a way to ski down the mountain. The danger increases with the threat of an avalanche and some stupid decisions that Bram and the other men make. They are supremely confident that they can cope with anything the conditions throw at them, unaware of the dangers. And to make matters worse Zack is constantly aware that something or someone is watching them. The discovery of a dead elk on their way up to the hut adds to his fears as he imagines it was killed by a monster. This is a terrifying story filled with horror as their fears of an avalanche become a reality.

My thanks to the publishers, Penguin and NetGalley for a review copy.

Six Degrees of Separation from Wuthering Heights to The Brontës

Published on by Margaret18 Comments

This is a monthly link-up hosted by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. On the first Saturday of every month, a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six other books to form a chain. Readers and bloggers are invited to join in by creating their own ‘chain’ leading from the selected book.

Books can be linked in obvious ways – for example, books by the same authors, from the same era or genre, or books with similar themes or settings. Or, you may choose to link them in more personal ways: books you read on the same holiday, books given to you by a particular friend, books that remind you of a particular time in your life, or books you read for an online challenge.

A book doesn’t need to be connected to all the other books on the list, only to the ones next to them in the chain.

This month we are starting with Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. This was one of my favourite books when I was a teenager.

My first link was also a favourite book I read as a teenager, Mist Over Pendle by Robert Neill, historical fiction based on the real-life Lancashire witch trials.

My second link is possibly the first historical fiction book I read, The Children of the New Forest by Captain Frederick Marryat, one of the first historical novels written specifically for children and published in 1847, set during the English Civil War.

My third link is The King’s General by Daphne du Maurier, also historical fiction that I read as a teenager. It’s a blend of fact and fiction set in Cornwall also during the Civil War. It was first published in 1946.

The fourth book in my chain was also first published in 1946. It’s Miss Pym Disposes by Josephine Tey, set in a Physical Training College where was a’nasty accident‘. But this is not a conventional crime fiction novel. It’s a psychological study focusing on the characters.

My fifth link is to a biography of Tey – Josephine Tey: a Life by Jennifer Morag Henderson, a book I have yet to read. Josephine Tey was the pen-name of Elizabeth MacKintosh, who was a Golden Age Crime Fiction writer.

My final link is to another biography, The Brontës by Juliet Barker, based on research among all the Brontë manuscripts. This is a biography of the Brontë family – which I should have read a long time ago.

My chain is mainly made up of historical fiction and crime fiction and two biographies. The links are some of my favourite books I read as a child and then a teenager, books published in 1946 and biographies of two of the authors.

My final book links the starting book by Emily Brontë to the last, a biography about her and her family.

Next month (April 4, 2026) we’ll start with Virginia Evans’s epistolary novel, The Correspondent, a book I’ve never heard of before.

WWW Wednesday 18 February 2026

Published on by Margaret3 Comments

WWW Wednesday is run by Taking on a World of Words.

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

I don’t take part in this every week, but try to do so once a month.

Currently I’m still reading The Inheritance of loss by Kiran Desai, the winner of several prizes including the 2006 Booker Prize. It’s a book I bought in 2007 and meant to read long before now. I’m reading this slowly but making good progress. It alternates between the characters in the Himalayas and their family members who are working in New York.

I’ve become engrossed in reading The Borders: A History of the Borders from Earliest Times by Alistair Moffat. My interest in this is that I live in the region and so is about places I know that covers the southern part of Scotland and the northern part of England. It is nonfiction but begins with an imaginary description of life in the most ancient times ‘where hunter-gatherers penetrated into the virgin interior‘, as it states in the synopsis. I particularly like the factual inserts in the text, commenting on historical details. I’ve read 34% on my Kindle, which may not sound very far into the book – but I’m now on page 289!

The last book I read was Keep Laughing: the Autobiography by Chris McCausland, a book I loved. For those who may not have heard of Chris, he is a stand- up comedian, who won BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing, with professional dancer Dianne Buswell, in 2024 and then a BAFTA award in 2025. He is blind due to retinitis pigmentosa. I’ll write more about later on. Here’s the description from Amazon:

Already one of the country’s best loved comedians, Chris McCausland’s participation on Strictly was a phenomenon. But how did the boy from Liverpool end up winning the hearts of the nation?

This is his remarkable story, of a twenty-five-year journey through sight loss to blindness. Of the highs, the lows and the downright hilarious along the way.

From being a lowlife conker dealer, and running his very own bootlegging empire (kind of) . . . to almost becoming a spy for MI5 (really) . . .

And of how he dared himself to try stand-up comedy, and ended up being brilliant on all your favourite TV shows.

Before, of course, he surprised himself, as well as everybody else, when he tried dancing on live TV in front of millions.

What will I read next? It could be one of these books because they are about some of the kings in the same area and period covered in Moffatt’s book.

Edwin: High King of Britain or Oswald: the Return of the King, both by Edoardo Albert, or The King in the North by Max Adams

But when the time comes to start another book it could be something completely different.

Spell the Month in Books – February 2026

Published on by Margaret2 Comments

Spell the Month in Books is a linkup hosted by Jana on Reviews From the Stacks on the first Saturday of each month. The goal is to spell the current month with the first letter of book titles, excluding articles such as ‘the’ and ‘a’ as needed. That’s all there is to it! Some months there are optional theme challenges, such as “books with an orange cover” or books of a particular genre, but for the most part, any book you want to use is fair game!

The theme this month is a Freebie and I’m featuring books I’ve recently acquired and books I read before I started my blog, so I haven’t reviewed any of them and have linked the titles to the descriptions on Amazon.

F is for Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak, fiction.

Enlightening, enthralling. An affecting paean to faith and love (Metro), fiction.

E is for Every Body Should Know This: The Science of Eating for a Lifetime of Health by Dr. Federica Amati, Medical Scientist and Head Nutritionist at ZOE, nonfiction.

‘Dr Federica is a human encyclopaedia when it comes to the science of food and health. This book contains the most critical answers to nutrition that we’ve all been searching for. A must read’– Steven Bartlett

B is for The Bull of Mithros by Anne Zouroudi, crime fiction.

‘A cracking plot, colourful local characters and descriptions of the hot, dry countryside so strong that you can almost see the heat haze and hear the cicadas – the perfect read to curl up with’― Guardian

R is for Road Rage by Ruth Rendell, crime fiction.

‘With immaculate control, Ruth Rendell builds a menacing crescendo of tension and horror that keeps you guessing right up to the brilliantly paced finale’― Good Housekeeping

U is for Under the Greenwood Tree by Thomas Hardy, fiction.

Set in the small village of Mellstock in Thomas Hardy’s fictional Wessex, this is both a love story and a nostalgic study into the disappearance of old traditions and a move towards a more modern way of life. (Amazon)

A is for As a Jew: Reclaiming Our Story from Those Who Blame, Shame, and Try to Erase Us by Sarah Hurwitz, nonfiction.

‘This book explains antisemitism and the danger it poses—not just to Jews, but to all of us. It also reveals the breathtaking history and resilience of the Jewish people and the beauty of Jewish tradition’ – Van Jones, CNN Host and New York Times bestselling author

R is for The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West, fiction.

Returning to his stately English home from the chaos of World War I, a shell-shocked officer finds that he has left much of his memory in the front’s muddy trenches. (Amazon)

Y is for The Years by Virginia Woolf, fiction.

Published in 1937, this was Virginia Woolf’s most popular novel during her lifetime. It’s about one large upper-class London family, spanning three generations of the Pargiter family from the 1880s to the 1930s. (Amazon)

The next link up will be on March 7, 2026 take your pick from Pi Day, March Madness, or Green Covers.

The Bull of Mithros: Book Beginnings on Friday & The Friday 56

Published on by Margaret2 Comments

Every Friday Book Beginnings on Friday is hosted by Gillion at Rose City Reader where you can share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading. You can also share from a book you want to highlight just because it caught your fancy.

The Bull of Mithros by Anne Zouroudi is the 6th book in her Mysteries of the Greek Detective a series I’ve been reading out of order.

Chapter One:

In Mithros’ s harbour, no boat ever came or went unnoticed.

Also every Friday there is The Friday 56, hosted by Freda at Freda’s Voice, but she is taking a break and Anne at My Head is Full of Books has taken on hosting duties in her absence. You grab a book and turn to page 56 (or 56% of an eBook), find one or more interesting sentences (no spoilers), and post them.

Page 56:

‘Why are we coming this way, Captain?’ asked Skafidis. ‘What would he be doing over here?’

‘He isn’t in his bed at the camp,’ said the captain, ‘and he left without saying goodbye. That’s not polite, is it Skafldis? He’s a man in a hurry to leave us, and I’d like to know why.

Description from Goodreads

It is summer, and as tourists, drawn by the legend of a priceless missing artifact, disembark on the sun-drenched quay of Mithros, the languid calm of the island is broken by the unorthodox arrival of a stranger who has been thrown overboard in the bay. Lacking money or identification, he is forced for a while to remain on Mithros. But is he truly a stranger? To some, his face seems familiar. The arrival of the investigator Hermes Diaktoros, intrigued himself by the island’s fabled bull, coincides with a violent and mysterious death. This violence has an echo in Mithros’s recent past: in a brutal unsolved crime committed several years before, which, although apparently forgotten may not yet have been forgiven. As Hermes sets about solving the complex puzzle of who is guilty and who is innocent, he discovers a web of secrets and unspoken loyalties, and it soon becomes clear that the bull of Mithros may only be the least of the island’s shadowy mysteries.

If you have read this book, what did you think?

Top Ten Tuesday:Love in Crime Fiction

Published on by Margaret8 Comments

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish and now hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl.

This week’s topic is a Love Freebie and I’m featuring Love in Crime Fiction. Some detectives are loners, some are happily married and here are eight of them.

Tommy and Tuppence Beresford who first appeared in Agatha Christie’s The Secret Adversary in 1922, are, by the end of the book in love and get married. My favourite book of theirs is By the Pricking of My Thumbs, which is about the mystery of what had happened in the house by the canal, whose child had died and how, and where was Mrs Lancaster? They also appear in a collection of short stories in Partners in Crime, N or M? , By the Pricking of My Thumbs, and Postern of Fate .

Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane first appear in Dorothy L Sayers Strong Poison, in which Lord Peter Wimsey, the aristocratic amateur detective, and Harriet Vane, a crime fiction writer, first met. Harriet is on trial for the murder of her former lover, Philip Boyes, who died from arsenic poisoning. Wimsey, attending the trial, is convinced she is innocent and sets out to prove it … and falls in love with her. In Gaudy Night she agrees to marry him and they get married in Busman’s Honeymoon.

Another happily married couple is Commissario Guido Brunetti and his beautiful wife Paola. He often goes home for lunch with Paola, who is a wonderful cook. One of my favourite books from the series is A Sea of Troubles, in which she treats him to a delicious apple cake made with lemon and apple juice and ‘enough Grand Marnier to permeate the whole thing and linger on the tongue for ever.’

Georges Simenon’s Inspector Jules Maigret also has a happy marriage and is another policeman who likes to go home for his lunch with Madam Maigret whenever he can. Is it the food or the wife, I wonder? They also like to take walks after dinner and go to the movies. In A Maigret Christmas Maigret has the day off and had planned to spend a quiet morning cocooned in their apartment and are feeling sad at being childless, particularly so at Christmas.

Dr Watson and Mary Morstan in Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes books are also happily married. They met and fell in love in The Sign of Four when she visits Baker Street to ask Sherlock Holmes to investigate a bizarre case involving the disappearance of her father and the sending of a single pearl to her every year for the past six years.

Cold case Detective Chief Inspector Karen Pirie in Val McDermid’s DCI Karen Pirie books is not married, but she was deeply in love with Phil Parhatka, a fellow officer who was killed. McDermid does not write specifically about his death. It occurs in between two books The Skeleton Road and Out of Bounds, in which Karen is grieving for Phil. He was the love of her life, having fallen for him the first week they worked together.

Then there is forensic archaeologist Ruth Galloway and her lover DCI Harry Nelson in the Ruth Galloway Mysteries by Elly Griffiths. They have one child and an on/off relationship throughout the series. In the last book, The Last Remains they finally confront their feelings for each other.

And finally Detective Superintendent Roy Grace and Cleo, a mortuary technician in the Roy Grace series by Peter James. Before the series started Roy’s wife, Sandy disappeared and despite all his efforts he was unable to find out why and what happened to her. When he met Cleo they fell in love and after Sandy was declared to be dead they married. Throughout the series more information about Sandy is revealed and her story is finally told in They Thought I was Dead.