Category: Book Beginnings on Friday

Book Beginnings on Friday & The Friday 56: The Man With No Face by Peter May

Published on by Margaret6 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.

I’m featuring another book by Peter May this week – The Man With No Face. This was first published in 1981. He made ‘some very minor changes’, before it was republished in 2018.

Kale watched the train through the rain-spattered glass and thought, this time will be the last. But even as the thought formed in his mind it clotted and he knew he would kill again.

Also every Friday there is The Friday 56, hosted by Freda at Freda’s Voice, where 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:

They took their first sips in silence before Bannerman said, ‘Tell me about yourself.’

‘There’s not much to tell.

‘Now why do people always say that?

‘Maybe because it’s true.’

He shook his head. ‘No. Everyone’s got a story to tell.’

Description from Goodreads:

A POWERFUL AND PRESCIENT THRILLER FROM THE MILLION-SELLING AUTHOR OF I’LL KEEP YOU SAFE, COFFIN ROAD AND THE BLACKHOUSE.

A REPORTER WITH NO FEAR

Jaded Edinburgh journalist Neil Bannerman is sent to Brussels, intent on digging up dirt. Yet it is danger he discovers, when two British men are found murdered.

A CHILD WITH NO FATHER

One victim is a journalist, the other a Cabinet Minister: the double-assassination witnessed by the former’s autistic daughter. This girl recalls every detail about her father’s killer – except for one.

THE MAN WITH NO FACE

With the city rocked by the tragedy, Bannerman is compelled to follow his instincts. He is now fighting to expose a murderous conspiracy, protect a helpless child, and unmask a remorseless killer.

~~~

What do you think, does it appeal to you? What are you currently reading?

Book Beginnings on Friday and The Friday 56: A Winter Grave by Peter May

Published on by Margaret14 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.

A Winter Grave is the last book I bought and is Peter May’s latest novel. I’ve enjoyed the other books of his I’ve read, so I’m hoping this one will be just as good. It is cli-fi, about the effects of climate change on human society, set in 2051.

Cli-fi, short for climate fiction, is  a form of fiction literature that features a changed or changing climate. It is rooted in science fiction, but also draws on realism and the supernatural.


Little will heighten your sense of mortality more than a confrontation with death. But right now such an encounter is the furthest thing from Addie’s mind, and so she is unprepared for what is to come.

Also every Friday there is The Friday 56, hosted by Freda at Freda’s Voice, where 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:

In the early photos, when Addie was just a baby, Mel had been happy and radiant, and he lingered over them. But the increasingly haunted face she presented to the world in later years made him scroll more quickly by.

Description from Amazon:

A TOMB OF ICE

A young meteorologist checking a mountain top weather station in Kinlochleven discovers the body of a missing man entombed in ice.

A DYING DETECTIVE

Cameron Brodie, a Glasgow detective, sets out on a hazardous journey to the isolated and ice-bound village. He has his own reasons for wanting to investigate a murder case so far from his beat.

AN AGONIZING RECKONING

Brodie must face up to the ghosts of his past and to a killer determined to bury forever the chilling secret that his investigation threatens to expose.

Set against a backdrop of a frighteningly plausible near-future, A WINTER GRAVE is Peter May at his page-turning, passionate and provocative best.

~~~

What do you think, does it appeal to you? What are you currently reading?

Book Beginnings & The Friday 56: The Star of the Sea by Joseph O’Connor

Published on by Margaret11 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.

One of the books I think I’ll read soon is In the Heart of the Sea The Epic True Story That Inspired Moby Dick by Nathaniel Philbrick. I haven’t read Moby Dick. I think it might be easier to read than Moby Dick – at 238 pages it is certainly shorter. It has lots of 5 and 4 star ratings on Goodreads.


Preface February 23, 1821

Like a giant bird of prey, the whaleship moved lazily up the western coast of South America, zigging and zagging across a sea of oil. for this was the Pacific Ocean in 1821, a vast field of warm-blooded oil deposits known as sperm whales.

Also every Friday there is The Friday 56, hosted by Freda at Freda’s Voice, where 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:

Before cutting loose the whale’s mutilated corpse, the mates probed its intestinal tract with a lance searching for an opaque, ash-colored substance called ambergris. Thought to be the result of indigestion or constipation on the part of the whale, ambergris is a fatty substance used to make perfume and was worth more than its weight in gold.

Description from Goodreads:

In the Heart of the Sea brings to new life the incredible story of the wreck of the whaleship Essex – an event as mythic in its own century as the Titanic disaster in ours, and the inspiration for the climax of Moby-Dick. In a harrowing page-turner, Nathaniel Philbrick restores this epic story to its rightful place in American history.

In 1820, the 240-ton Essex set sail from Nantucket on a routine voyage for whales. Fifteen months later, in the farthest reaches of the South Pacific, it was repeatedly rammed and sunk by an eighty-ton bull sperm whale. Its twenty-man crew, fearing cannibals on the islands to the west, made for the 3,000-mile-distant coast of South America in three tiny boats. During ninety days at sea under horrendous conditions, the survivors clung to life as one by one, they succumbed to hunger, thirst, disease, and fear.

Philbrick interweaves his account of this extraordinary ordeal of ordinary men with a wealth of whale lore and with a brilliantly detailed portrait of the lost, unique community of Nantucket whalers. Impeccably researched and beautifully told, the book delivers the ultimate portrait of man against nature, drawing on a remarkable range of archival and modern sources, including a long-lost account by the ship’s cabin boy.

At once a literary companion and a page-turner that speaks to the same issues of class, race, and man’s relationship to nature that permeate the works of Melville, In the Heart of the Sea will endure as a vital work of American history.

~~~

What do you think, does it appeal to you? What are you currently reading?

Book Beginnings & The Friday 56: The Close by Jane Casey

Published on by Margaret9 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.

One of the books I’m currently reading is The Close by Jane Casey, the 10th Maeve Kerrigan book, one of my favourite detective series. I’ve been looking forward to reading this as I’ve read all the earlier books.

They are police procedurals, fast-paced novels, with intriguing and complex plots that also develop the relationship between the main characters, Maeve and her boss, Detective Inspector Josh Derwent. They have a confrontational working relationship and this is a recurring theme in the books. In the 9th book, The Cutting Place, it seemed to me that their relationship took a significant turn. So, I can’t wait to find out what will happen next.


All murder investigations were different and yet all of them began the same way, at least for me: standing in silence near a body, trying to catch the faintest echo of what had happened.

Also every Friday there is The Friday 56, hosted by Freda at Freda’s Voice, where 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:

‘You don’t want to look as if you’re patrolling the place. It’s a small community and we’ll stick out anyway. You’ll be attracting plenty of attention, believe me, so you need to look as if you don’t mind it. Start from now. Loosen up. Let your hair down.’

‘Literally?’ I kept my hair tied back at work, always.

‘Why not? And while you’re at it, don’t be so guarded all the time. You’re constantly on the defensive with me.’

Description from Amazon:

At first glance, Jellicoe Close seems to be a perfect suburban street – well-kept houses with pristine lawns, neighbours chatting over garden fences, children playing together.

But there are dark secrets behind the neat front doors, hidden dangers that include a ruthless criminal who will stop at nothing.

It’s up to DS Maeve Kerrigan and DI Josh Derwent to uncover the truth. Posing as a couple, they move into the Close, blurring the lines between professional and personal as never before.

And while Maeve and Josh try to gather the evidence they need, they have no idea of the danger they face – because someone in Jellicoe Close has murder on their mind.

~~~

What do you think, does it appeal to you? What are you currently reading?

Book Beginnings & The Friday 56: Blood, Sweat and Tyres: The Autobiography by Si King and Dave Myers (The Hairy Bikers)

Published on by Margaret9 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.

This week the book I’m highlighting is Blood, Sweat and Tyres The Autobiography by Si King and Dave Myers, who are The Hairy Bikers. I love their TV programmes and we own some of their cookbooks, so when my husband said how good this book is I thought I’ll have to read it too. It’s their autobiography. They tell their stories in alternating chapters.

The opening chapter is by Dave telling how he made a cheese-and-potato pie for tea when he was seven years old.


‘Mam can’t cook, she’s not very well. I’ve made your tea.’

Also every Friday there is The Friday 56, hosted by Freda at Freda’s Voice, where 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: (also one of Dave’s chapters)

Mr Eaton arranged lots of trips to art galleries in Manchester and Liverpool and, thanks to him, I became obsessed with the Pre-Raphaelites, which incidentally was my specialist subject when I went on Celebrity Mastermind a few years back.

Mr Eaton was Dave’s art teacher at school.

Description from Goodreads:

Si King and Dave Myers, AKA the Hairy Bikers have travelled an interesting road. Born in the north of England, both Si and Dave had their childhood challenges. For Si, being bullied as the fat kid in class was part of his daily school routine. For Dave, his life changed when he became a childhood carer for his mother. But through the challenges of their early years came a love of really good food.

And it was food that brought Si and Dave together. Their eyes met over a curry and a pint on the set of a Catherine Cookson drama, and they knew they would be firm and fast friends for life.

From deserts to desserts, potholes to pot roasts, the nation’s favourite cooking duo reveals what’s made their friendship such a special and lasting one. They’ve eaten their way around the world a good few times, but have never lost sight of what matters: great friends, great family and great food.

In this heartwarming memoir of friendship and hilarious misadventure, Si and Dave take you on the ride of their lives!

What do you think, does it appeal to you? What are you currently reading?

Book Beginnings & The Friday 56: The Collaborators by Reginald Hill

Published on by Margaret7 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.

I enjoy Hill’s Dalziel and Pascoe crime fiction, but he also wrote thrillers, historical novels, science fiction and, later, a smaller humorous series set in Luton, featuring the black private detective Joe Sixsmith.

This week the book I’m highlighting is The Collaborators by Reginald Hill, a standalone novel of wartime passion, loyalty – and betrayal. It is set in Paris from 1940 to 1945, when Janine Simonian stood accused of passing secret information to the Nazis that led to the arrest and torture of several members of the French Resistance.

My Book Beginning:

March 1945

She dreamt of the children.

They were picnicking on the edge of a corn field. Pauli hiding from his sister, Céci giggling with delight as she crawled through the forest of green stalks. Now too she was out of sight, but her happy laughter and her brother’s encouraging cries drifted back to their mother, dozing in the warm sunshine.

Also every Friday there is The Friday 56, hosted by Freda at Freda’s Voice, where 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:

‘It’s a worrying time for her what with the children being ill and no news of Jean-Paul’, said her husband.

‘If you ask me, she’ll be better off if she never gets any news of him,’ said the woman.

Publisher’s Weekly

First published in England in 1987, this novel departs from Hill’s usual mystery oeuvre ( Ruling Passion ). With thoughtfulness and insight that call to mind le Carre, Hill reconsiders an aspect of the German occupation of France during WW II that many Frenchmen would prefer to forget–the collaboration.

Set primarily in Paris, the novel follows the lives of Jean-Paul and Janine Simonian, he a Jew, she a boulanger’s daughter married against her parents’ wishes. Upon his release from a military hospital after France’s humiliating defeat in 1940, Jean-Paul joins the Resistance. For her part, Janine worries–about her two children and the husband who has become emotionally so dark and distant. Gunther Mai, an otherwise kindly German officer in the Abwehr, befriends Janine and uses her as a source of information on her husband’s activities–a relationship that works well until he falls in love with her.

What Hill portrays so successfully is the conflict between social and personal responsibility. Through a wonderful range of secondary characters, he skillfully characterizes the collaborator in his various guises–from the self-serving black marketeer to the loving mother and wife. Best of all, Hill captures the collapse of morality in occupied France.

What do you think, does it appeal to you? What are you currently reading?

Book Beginnings & The Friday 56: The Summer That Never Was by Peter Robinson

Published on by Margaret6 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.

One of the books I’m currently reading is The Summer That Never Was by Peter Robinson, the 13th Inspector Banks book, following on from Aftermath. I am really enjoying it, so far, which is a relief as I really disliked Aftermath.

My Book Beginning:

Trevor Dickinson was hung over and bad-tempered when he turned up for work on Monday morning

Also every Friday there is The Friday 56, hosted by Freda at Freda’s Voice, where 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:

‘Did he have many friends?’

‘He made quite a few around here,’ Joan answered. She looked at her mother. ‘Who was there Mum?’

‘Let me remember. There was the Banks lad, of course, they were very close, and David Grenfell and Paul Major. And Steven Hill.’

Blurb

A skeleton has been unearthed. Soon the body is identified, and the horrific discovery hits the headlines.

Fourteen-year-old Graham Marshall went missing during his paper round in 1965. The police found no trace of him. His disappearance left his family shattered, and his best friend, Alan Banks, full of guilt.

That friend has now become Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks, and he is determined to bring justice for Graham. But he soon realizes that in this case, the boundary between victim and perpetrator, between law-guardian and law-breaker, is becoming more and more blurred.

What do you think, does it appeal to you? What are you currently reading?

Book Beginnings & The Friday 56: A Death in Tuscany by Michele Giuttari, translated by Howard Curtis

Published on by Margaret11 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.

One of the books I’m currently reading is A Death in Tuscany by Michele Giuttari. I’ve not read anything by him before and am really enjoying it.

My Book Beginning:

Florence, 2001

The girl, little more than a child, was found on the edge of a wood on the road above Scandicci, scantily dressed, without papers, and dying of an overdose, at dawn on Sunday 29 July, and was taken to the Ospedale Nupvo. But it wasn’t until almost a week later that Chief Superintendent Michele Ferrara, head of the Florence Squadra Mobile, really became involved with the case.

Also every Friday there is The Friday 56, hosted by Freda at Freda’s Voice, where 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:

Worse still: the whole weekend would be ruined. But Ferrara realised that Anna was making an exception for him, and he couldn’t refuse. Especially as it had something to do with the investigation into the dead girl, which he was taking increasingly to heart.

From the back cover:

In the picturesque Tuscan hill town of Scandicci, the body of a girl is discovered. Scantily dressed, she is lying by the edge of the woods. Chief Superintendent Michele Ferrara, head of Florence’s elite Squadra Mobile, takes on the case. Because toxins were discovered in the girl’s body, many assume that she dies of a drug overdose. But Ferrara quickly realises that the truth is darker than that: he believes the girl was murdered.

And when he delves deeper, there are many aspects to the case that convince Ferrara that the girl’s death is part of a sinister conspiracy – a conspiracy that has its roots in the very foundations of Tuscan society.

Written by former Florence police chief Michele Giuttari, it gives a unique insight into life and police work in Tuscany.

This is a detailed police procedural and, although it is fast-paced, it is not a book you can read quickly.

What do you think, does it appeal to you? What are you currently reading?

Book Beginnings & The Friday 56: Winter Garden by Beryl Bainbridge

Published on by Margaret5 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.

One of the books I’m currently reading is Winter Garden by Beryl Bainbridge. I’ve enjoyed some of her other books so I’m hopingto enjoy this one too.

My Book Beginning:

One morning early in October, a man called Ashburner, tightly buttoned into a black overcoat and holding a suitcase, tried to leave his bedroom on the second floor of a house in Beaufort Street.

Also every Friday there is The Friday 56, hosted by Freda at Freda’s Voice, where 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:

Only last week there had been a report in the Guardian about an innocent bystander from Manchester who had gone to some meeting or other behind the Iron Curtain and disappeared for three days.

Synopsis

Quiet and reliable, Douglas Ashburner has never been much of a womaniser. So when he begins an extra-marital affair with Nina, a bossy, temperamental artist with a penchant for risky sex, he finds adultery a terrible strain.

He tells his wife that he needs a rest, so she happily packs him off for a fishing holiday in the Highlands. Only, unknown to her, Douglas is actually flying off to Moscow with Nina, as a guest of the Soviet Artists’ Union. It is then that things begin to get very complicated indeed…

What do you think? What are you currently reading?

Book Beginnings & The Friday 56: A Heart Full of Headstones by Ian Rankin

Published on by Margaret13 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.

One of the books I’m currently reading is Ian Rankin’s latest and 24th Rebus novel, A Heart Full of Headstones. I’ve read all the earlier books.

The first Rebus book I read was Set in Darkness, the 11th book in the series. It was obvious that this featured characters that had been in the earlier books but I didn’t find it difficult to follow who was who and their relationships. Even so I decided I needed to start at the beginning and read them in sequence. And I think, for me at least, that works best, in order to fully understand the background and how the characters interact and evolve.

My Book Beginning:

John Rebus had been in court plenty of times, but this was his first time in the dock.

Also every Friday there is The Friday 56, hosted by Freda at Freda’s Voice, where 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:

Rebus had just finished eating an early dinner of microwaved haggis when he heard the doorbell. Brillo trotted with him to the door. Siobhan was standing on the step.

‘Well, well,’ Rebus said, while Brillo’s welcome was more effusive, ‘In you come then.’

Synopsis:

John Rebus had been in court plenty of times, but this was his first time in the dock…

John Rebus stands accused: on trial for a crime that could put him behind bars for the rest of his life. Although it’s not the first time the legendary detective has taken the law into his own hands, it might be the last.

What drove a good man to cross the line? Or have times changed, and the rules with them?

Detective Inspector Siobhan Clarke faces Edinburgh’s most explosive case in years, as a corrupt cop goes missing after claiming to harbour secrets that could sink the city’s police force.

But in this investigation, it seems all roads lead to Rebus – and Clarke’s twin loyalties to the public and the police will be tested to their limit.

A reckoning is coming – and John Rebus may be hearing the call for last orders…

Oh, my goodness – the call for last orders? How will this book end? I just have to read it!

What do you think? Have you read it, or are you going to read it?