Publication date: 2000-09-07
RRP: £14.99
Price: £3.40
Review The Gingerbread Woman / Headline Book Publishing:In The Gingerbread Woman, Jennifer Johnston again demonstrates her ability to create memorable and affecting characters. Clara, who at 35 makes her living doing "odd jobs for newspapers", is recovering from a serious operation and spends her days wandering around the cliff tops at Dublin Bay. Like the The French Lieutenant's Woman, she stares out to sea, trying to rediscover the direction in her life. One rainy afternoon, she encounters Laurence (Lar), a teacher who has run away from his life in Northern Ireland as he tries to come to terms with a family tragedy. The novel describes how these two unconventional people form a fragile friendship. Alternating the narrative voice, Johnston lets their stories unravel gradually. Both characters are trying to come to terms with loss and the novel examines the contrasting ways they cope: Clara is self-depreciating and humorous but can't shake off the knowledge that haunts her; Lar is bitter and coiled, bottling up his pain in an ever-present anger. Johnston has no difficulty in keeping the reader intrigued as the plot is never a foregone conclusion. The Gingerbread Woman is a short book but not a light read-it investigates loss, tragedy, loneliness and apparent hopelessness but does not weigh the reader down in doing so. It also considers the complexities of emotions not always recognised or voiced and their impact on everyone involved. [+]This is a book that lingers. -Christina McLoughlin.
Edition: New edition
Publication date: 1999-01-07
Dewey code: 813
RRP: £7.99
Price: £3.62
Review The Captains and the Kings / Headline Review:
Creator: Brigit Forsyth
Edition: New title
Publication date: 2004-02
RRP: £24.95
Price: £24.95
Review Girls Out Late / Chivers Children's Audio Books:
RRP: £7.99
Price: £8.56
Review Right Side of Wrong:
Creator: William Roberts
Edition: Unabridged
Publication date: 2001-09
Dewey code: 796
RRP: £53.99
Price: £57.68
Review A Walk in the Woods: Complete & Unabridged / Chivers Audio Books:Bill Bryson has made a living out of travelling and then writing about it. In The Lost Continent he re-created the road trips of his childhood; in Neither Here nor There he retraced the route he followed as a young backpacker traversing Europe. When this American transplant to Britain decided to return home, he made a farewell walking tour of the British countryside and produced Notes from a Small Island. Once back on American soil and safely settled in New Hampshire, Bryson once again hears the siren call of the open road-only this time it's a trail. The Appalachian Trail, to be exact. In A Walk in the Woods Bill Bryson tackles what is, for him, an entirely new subject: the American wilderness. Accompanied only by his old college friend Stephen Katz, Bryson starts out one March morning in north Georgia, intending to walk the entire 2,100 miles to the trail's end atop Maine's Mount Katahdin. If nothing else, A Walk in the Woods is proof positive that the journey is the destination. As Bryson and Katz haul their out-of-shape, middle-aged bodies over hill and dale, the reader is treated to both a very funny personal memoir and a delightful chronicle of the trail, the people who created it, and the places it passes through. Whether you plan to make a trip like this one yourself one day or only care to read about it, A Walk in the Woods is a great way to spend an afternoon. [+]-Alix Wilber.
Creator: Sophie Thompson
Publication date: 2002-04
RRP: £21.09
Price: £21.09
Review Billy the Bird: AND All Because of Jackson / Chivers Children's Audio Books:
Publication date: 2002-09-23
Price: £9.00
Review Spike Milligan: The Parkinson Interviews (Radio Collection) / BBC Audiobooks Ltd:
Creator: Hayward Morse
Publication date: 2004-04
RRP: £53.50
Price: £55.49
Review The Bloody Ground / ISIS Audio Books:
Creator: Miles Richardson
Publication date: 2006-11-06
RRP: £4.00
Price: £4.00
Review The Bruce-Partington Plans: Another Case for Sherlock Holmes / Irregular Special Press:
Creator: David Case
Edition: Unabridged
Publication date: 2006-02-01
Dewey code: 813
RRP: £50.49
Price: £39.69
Review The Count of Monte Cristo / Tantor Media, Inc:
Creator: Brigit Forsyth
Edition: New title
Publication date: 2004-01
RRP: £24.95
Price: £24.95
Review Girls Under Pressure / Chivers Children's Audio Books:
Dewey code: 809
RRP: £14.99
Price: £13.19
Review The Mayor of Casterbridge Student Edition SmartPass Audio Education Study Guide:
RRP: £31.50
Price: £33.49
Review Life, the Universe and Everything / ISIS Audio Books:
Publication date: 2007-06-07
RRP: £16.99
Price: £4.46
Review Portrait of a Lady / Hodder & Stoughton:
Creator: Bernard Cribbins
Publication date: 2002-05-14
RRP: £10.52
Price: £10.52
Review Sophie's Tom / Chivers Children's Audio Books:
Authors
- Jacqueline Wilson
- Brigit Forsyth
Publication date: 2004-03
RRP: £20.95
Price: £20.95
Review Girls in Tears / Chivers Children's Audio Books:Jacqueline Wilson's Girls In Tears is the fourth instalment in her successful Girls series, following the lives and loves of three buddies-Ellie, Magda and Nadine-each very different but each bound by an absolute bond of friendship. As ever, things are not running so smoothly for the girls. Ellie's romance is on its last legs, thanks to a persistent boyfriend, Nadine is "in love" with a boy she met on the Internet and is planning to go and meet him despite the other girls' insistence that things may not be quite as they seem, and Magda's hamster has died, leaving her less than happy with her friends' response to her grief. Each of them is shedding tears (rivers of them, in fact) and none of them can quite get to grips with the idea that their all-time best mates seem to be so absorbed in their own problems that communication between them is fast breaking down. Jacqueline Wilson, award-winning queen of tell-it-as-it-is children's literature, hits the teen spot with this straightforward, highly enjoyable novel, adding further flesh to the bones of the characters her loyal readers will have come to love in Girls In Love, Girls Under Pressure and Girls Out Late. She tackles the everyday issues that really count (school, boys, family life, friendship, bad hair, imperfect bodies. [+]) perfectly capturing the raw emotions her characters endure through their daily lives, while telling a darn good story that will leave readers asking, "How soon can we read the next one?". Age 11 and over. -Susan Harrison.
Creator: Emilia Fox
Publication date: 2003-05-01
Dewey code: 813
RRP: £12.99
Price: £7.99
Review Holy Fools / Random House Audiobooks:Holy Fools is Joanne Harris's most enjoyable novel yet, a beautifully detailed and sharply observed piece that emotionally moves the reader unlike anything she has tackled before. The immense success of Chocolat and Coastliners has made Harris one of the most cherished authors at work today, and each new book is something of an event. Holy Fools is set in 17th century France, and the central character is Juliette, a former actress and rope dancer who has given up her travelling life to become a teaching nun at a remote abbey. Juliette has settled with her young daughter into an existence very different from that she knew, and she finds comfort from the advice of the wise and friendly abbess. Harris brilliantly delineates both phases of her heroine's life: the colourful earlier era and the new demands of the semi-cloistered life. Things change radically when the abbess dies and her place is taken by an 11-year-old girl whose appetite for reform quickly destroys much that Juliet has come to love in her new life. What makes the book so refreshingly original is not just the unusual structure (the heroine's dual life alone is handled with radiant detail), but the surprising new trajectory the narrative takes after the death of the abbess, as everything Juliette was used to begins to go wrong. We become involved in every minor crisis, however much we question that the religious life is the answer to her problems. Juliette is a brilliantly drawn character, and the plotting of this ambitious novel is both thoughtful and invigorating, while the basic theme-the ploys we all use to distract ourselves from the painful realities of existence-is handled with subtlety. -Barry Forshaw.
Creator: Jamie Rose
Edition: Unabridged
Publication date: 2006-04-07
Dewey code: 813.52
RRP: £25.99
Price: £6.76
Review Ride the River / Listening Library:
Creator: Peter Joyce
Publication date: 2006-06-01
RRP: £15.99
Price: £8.20
Review Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (Victorian Collection) / Assembled Stories:
Edition: Unabridged
Publication date: 2006-03-01
Dewey code: 823.914
RRP: £50.50
Price: £52.49
Review The First Casualty / ISIS Audio Books:
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Models & Brands:
The Gingerbread Woman, The Captains and the Kings, Girls Out Late, Right Side of Wrong, A Walk in the Woods: Complete & Unabridged, Billy the Bird: AND All Because of Jackson, Spike Milligan: The Parkinson Interviews (Radio Collection), The Bloody Ground, The Bruce-Partington Plans: Another Case for Sherlock Holmes, The Count of Monte Cristo, Girls Under Pressure, The Mayor of Casterbridge Student Edition SmartPass Audio Education Study Guide, Life, the Universe and Everything, Portrait of a Lady, Sophie's Tom, Girls in Tears, Holy Fools, Ride the River, Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (Victorian Collection), The First Casualty |
