Out & About Winter 2018

BOOKS When the nights draw in and it’s a little bit chilly outside, there’s nothing better than settling down with a good book and losing yourself in a fictional world. Whether you’re looking for a gift or just want something quick and easy to read, GERALDINE GARDNER has a few ideas

N ow available in hardback, The Palace of Lost Dreams by local author Charlotte Betts, is set in India in 1798. Ms Betts likes to set her romantic fiction in a historical context and this one doesn’t disappoint. Beatrice Sinclair is a grieving young widow facing financial destitution. She has travelled from Hampshire to Hyderabad to visit her brother, an employee of the British East India Company. There, she is astonished to discover that he has married a beautiful Indian girl and lives with his wife’s extended family in a dilapidated palace, the Jahanara Mahal – famed for the theft of a fabled diamond many years ago. It is during this time that the French and British forces become locked in a battle over India’s riches, and matters are complicated further by the presence of the dashing Harry Wyndam: a maverick ex-soldier and suspected spy. With rebellion in the air, Bee must decide where her loyalties lie . . . Palace of lost dreams by Charlotte Betts

The Reckoning by John Grisham

J ohn Grisham never disappoints and in his latest book The Reckoning , looks at the long-term effects on a small community of a baffling murder. Reverend Dexter Bell is inexplicably shot one October morning in 1946 by Pete Banning, a decorated Second World War hero, the patriarch of a prominent family, a farmer, father, neighbour and a faithful member of the Methodist church. Pete’s only statement about it—to the sheriff, to his lawyers, to the judge, to the jury, and to his family—was: “I have nothing to say.” He was not afraid of death and was willing to take his motive to the grave.

Transcription by Kate Atkinson

T ranscription by the ever-reliable Kate Atkinson, tells the story of 18-year old Juliet Armstrong, who is reluctantly recruited into the world of espionage. Sent to an obscure department of MI5 tasked with monitoring the comings and goings of British Fascist sympathizers, she discovers the work to be by turns both tedious and terrifying. But after the war has ended, she presumes the events of those years have been relegated to the past for ever. Ten years later, now a producer at the BBC, Juliet is unexpectedly confronted by figures from her past. A different war is being fought now, on a different battleground, but Juliet finds herself once more under threat. A bill of reckoning is due, and she finally begins to realize that there is no action without consequence.

The Librarian by Sally Vickers

I n The Librarian , Salley Vickers has come up with an uplifting story about love, education and the relationship between an individual and a community and the ways in which reading can shape and foster a life. Sylvia Blackwell, a young woman in her 20s, moves to East Mole, a quaint market town in middle England, to start a new job as a children’s librarian. She falls in love with an older man, but it is her connection to his precocious young daughter and her neighbours’ son which will change her life, putting them, her job and the library itself under threat.

In a house of lies by Ian Rankin

P opular detective John Rebus is back in Ian Rankin’s latest crime thriller, In a House of Lies . This is the 22nd of the Rebus books, as he comes out of retirement to revisit a cold case involving the mysterious reappearance of a missing policeman’s body.

You can find book reviews on the Newbury Today website www.newburytoday.co.uk/out&about/books Leave your comments and tell us what you think of the books or email geraldine.gardner@newburynews.co.uk

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