Readers'
Room
Books by TNW contributors and subscribers
Beyond
the Broken Gate - Sylvie Nickels (Oriole Press)
The theme is the effect of war on succeeding generations.
Of three main threads, the first concerns an Australian, Jake, the second
is Luke, whose adored grandfather was badly damaged in the First World
War, the third is Minkie, a young Bosnian woman who has returned to war-torn
Sarajevo after being fostered through her teenage years by a couple in
a village in middle England. The village of Daerley Green in Oxfordshire
is where all three threads come together as the truth of the various circumstances
unfolds and unlikely relationships are made or broken. This is the sequel
to the author's first novel, Another Kind of Loving.
A
Touch of the Sun - David Evans (Crocus Books)
A steamy ride through the bleak streets of Apartheid South Africa. Simon
Brown is from a working-class district of Victoria. More interested in
sex than politics, he is embarrassed by his mother's liberal familiarity
with the local Coloureds and appalled by his school friend's ambition
to join Special Branch. From stuck-up Elizabeth Carter to Thandi, the
fiery daughter of the family maid, he keeps falling for the wrong girl.
After being propelled into the frontline of conflict, Simon is forced
to choose between his white privileges or turn law breaker. Also available
by David Evans, Portrait of a Playboy and other stories (Headland)
Wringland
Sally Spedding (Macmillan)
Abbie Parker is
just starting her new job as sales negotiator for a prestige housing development
in sinister and vaporous Black Fen - rumoured to be the most haunted corner
of England. One morning she arrives to find her office door ajar, and
a strangely dressed woman waiting inside, intent on laying claim to just
one particular building plot. Is Abbie being drawn into a conflict with
the vengeful spirit of a woman betrayed over a century earlier? For
other Sally Spedding titles click
here.
How
To Make it in IT
- Alan Stewart (Virgin)
Ever wanted to
earn a million as an IT consultant? Flitting from one company to another
whilst making your fortune? Or wondered how to start your own IT company?
Forget what your career teacher told you and get reading...here is the
perfect start for anyone wanting to break into the business: containing
essential practical information, this is your one-stop guide to making
some serious money in the most vibrant industry going.
Julia
Gets A Life - Lynne Barrett-Lee (Bantam)
Forget all that
stuff about finding the inner child; it’s sexual healing Julia Potter
is after when husband Richard strays from the marital bed. The one he’s
been playing in belongs to Rhiannon. He’s sorry, or so reads his Post-it
apology, but, as he says, ‘It’s so hard being a man ...’ Look out also
for Lynne Barrett-Lee’s new novel, Virtual Strangers, a witty and romantic
thirty-something read about a woman who thinks she may have found her
soulmate - via email, published this August. For
other Lynne Barrett-Lee titles click
here.
A
Special Need For Inclusion - Julia Widdows (Children’s Society)
Research with parents
of over 30 children with disabilities reveals the frustrations and obstacles
of everyday life. There is also the added difficulty of ensuring that
their children are included in the wide community. Findings stress the
need for well-planned service provision.
Escape
From The Rat Race - Nicholas Corder (Elliot Right Way Books)
In the rat race,
only a rat can win, but there is an alternative, and one for which thousands
of people worldwide are beginning to opt. The author has done it, and
here he shows how you too can change your way of living to one of simplicity,
increased happiness and immense satisfaction. For other Nicholas
Corder titles click
here.
Creative
Pathways: Freeing the Writer's Inner Voice - Suzanne Ruthven
(ignotus press)
A highly practical
approach to producing innovative writing, shows how to create those exciting
new ideas that appeal to editors and publishers. For
other Suzanne Ruthven titles click
here.
Mallingford
- Alison Love (Black Swan)
Painter Stella Deighton became
tennant of Mallingford, an 18th-century mansion in the Sussex South Downs,
during the 1920s. But it is now the 1990s, and things must change. Stella
is dead, and it is up to Cosima, Stella's granddaughter, to fight to keep
a roof over her head.
The
Common Lot - Margaret Pelling
This work is a collection of
studies on health, medicine and poverty in Tudor and Stuart England. It
concentrates on the health experience of the majority of the population
in this period - artisans, labourers, servants, the poor and women, and
especially older women. Some of the themes that run through the text include
the high level of anxiety about health and illness at the time, the lay
involvement in medicine, the effects of urbanisation on the health of
vulnerable age groups and the sensitivity of chronic disease as an indicator
of social conditions.
Die Cast - Alan Dunn (Piatkus) Billy Oliphant is a control freak who is out of control. Carrie Radcliffe is an unlikely angel of mercy whose company is plagued by vandalism. When she asks Billy to solve her security problems, he suspects foul play but has to decide between the safety of his family or his conscience.
Raising
The Roof - Jane Wenham-Jones (Bantam) Whatever
hapened to Cari's wish list? Make some money, lose some weight, find someone
to have a grand pasion with, and become so rich and successful that Martin
is consumed with jealousy. Will any of them ever come true? An unputdownable
debut by a sparkling and original new voice in women's fiction. For
other Jane Wenham-Jones titles, click
here .
Working
Girls -
Maureen Carter (Creme de la Crime)
When a fifteen-year-old
is found murdered, it soon emerges that she's not only a schoolgirl but
a Working Girl. Is Shell killed because she's on the game? And are the
other girls on Bev's manor in danger? Within days, one disappears and
another's on life support. There's no shortage of suspects, just a distinct
lack of evidence. Then a second girl is found dead and media pressure
mounts. Bev's boss turns a blind eye as she puts her life on the line
by going undercover with the girls to trap the killer. Forget the clichéd
'tart with a heart'. These girls are lassies with lip. And warmth and
wit. Unlike some of her colleagues, Bev sees them as Nice Girls not Vice
Girls. Working Girls is a story of prejudice and pre-conceived ideas;
lies and half-truths; deception and detection. For
other Maureen Carter titles click
here.
The
Chase - Lorna Fergusson
(Bloomsbury)
Gripping and deeply moving story
about a couple who move to France to escape tragic memories. However,
Netty and Gerald Feldwick discover all too soon, as they try to settle
in and become influenced by the haunting echoes of age-old violence in
their French house, that you can never escape the past.
People
Who Made History In Ancient Greece -
Nicola Morgan (Hodder Wayland)
Spanning ancient Greek
history from 800 BC until 146 BC when the Romans conquered Greece, this
book tells the story of the great civilization through the lives of nine
ancient Greeks who each represent a different aspect of its history, including
Homer, Sappho, Pericles and Alexander. For 8-12 year-olds. For more information
on Nicola Morgan's literacy books for younger children visit www.childliteracy.com
Mondays
are Red - Nicola Morgan (Hodder & Stoughton)
Mondays are red. Sadness has an empty blue shell. And
music can taste of anything from banana puree to bat's pee. After a devastating
bout of meningitis, Luke struggles to regain his health and understand
its mysterious legacy - the synaesthesia that makes life a kaleidoscope
of mixed sensations. See also www.nicolamorgan.co.uk
For other
Nicola Morgan titles click
here.
A
Different Kind of Love - Jay Mandal (BeWrite Books)
A collection of beautifully
crafted love stories - sad, humorous, heartwarming - made ‘different’
simply because key characters share, not only passion and compassion,
but gender. “I would place Jay Mandal near the same level as the other
leader of short fiction in this field, Edmund White.” Neil Barnett, Speakout
magazine. See also http://www.bewrite.net/authors/jay_mandal.htm
What
The Eye Doesn’t See - Alice Jolly (Pocket Books)
Set between London,
Gloucestershire and Brussels this first novel is part love story, part
family saga, part thriller; written in the three voices of the main characters,
the time frame is the present but segues into the past. Alice Jolly writes
with a fresh voice, captivating her readers form the first page and not
letting them rest till the last. “Beautifully paced, beautifully understated
and terrifically assured ... she's so good on clothes, sex, love, death
and the prisons that family members can make for each other.” Barbara
Trapido
Gathering
the Clans: Tracing Scottish Ancestry on the Internet - Alan
Stewart (Phillimore)
Scottish ancestry is easy to trace on the Internet, because Scotland is
leading the world in making its family history records available on-line.
So now, wherever you live, it is easy to grow a Scottish family tree!
All the main records will soon be on-line: births, marriages and deaths
(from 1855), old parish registers (some back as far as 1553), wills and
inventories (from 1500) and ten-yearly census returns (1841-1901). In
the future, church, land, poor relief, taxation and heraldry records are
expected to become available too. Whether new to family history, or to
Scottish research, or to the use of the Internet for either, everyone
will find this book a comprehensive and easy-to-follow guide.
Cry
of the Justice Bird
- Jon Haylett (PaperBooks)
Armstrong McKay is an ordinary Essex school teacher whose life would have
remained contentedly mundane had he not fallen for Rebecca, a lovely,
moral girl determined to make her contribution by taking a teaching contract
in a small, central African country. Armstrong's life spirals out of control
when she is killed in a road accident ...
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