Release Date: 29/01/15
Publisher: Head of Zeus
SYNOPSIS:
This is the final book in the enthralling Engelsfor's trilogy. After the terrible events in Fire, the Chosen Ones are reduced from seven to six. Will they be strong enough to face the final showdown with terrifying the demons? In The Key questions are answered. Secrets are revealed. Loyalties are tested. Only one thing is certain: Everything will change.
REVIEW:
Nancy Mitford was, in the words of her sister Lady Diana Mosley, 'very, very complex'. Her highly autobiographical early work, the biographies and novels of her more mature French period, her journalism, and the vast body of letters to her family, friends such as Evelyn Waugh, and to the great love of her life, Gaston Palewski, all tell an intriguing story. Drawing from these, as well as conversations with Mitford's two surviving sisters, acquaintances and colleagues, prize-winning author Laura Thompson has fashioned a portrait of a contradictory and courageous woman. Approaching her subject with wit, perspicacity and huge affection, Thompson makes her serious points lightly, eschewing cliches about the eccentricities of the Mitford clan. Life in a Cold Climate is full of the sound of Mitfordian laughter; but tells also the often paradoxical and complex story beneath the smiling and ever elegant facade.
Release Date: 05/01/12
SYNOPSIS:
Following on from Tom's life with six cats in UNDER THE PAW, he now picks up the story in TALK TO THE TAIL, updating readers on what has happened with his feline friends as well as looking back for more confessions about his animal-loving past. Readers of Tom's previous book will be delighted to read what has happened to his six eccentric cats. Why does Janet keep bringing 1980s sweet wrappers into the house? Will 24-hour surveillance of The Bear, using a state-of-the-art cat GPS system, finally solve the mystery of his wanderlust? Tom also writes about his bumbling forays into the remainder of the animal kingdom. He attempts to overcome his crippling fear of horses with disastrous results, chase ostriches in Kenya, put his hand into a tiger's mouth for 0.9 seconds and he meets his 'alter-doggo' -- the spaniel Tom regularly walks who likes to roll around in dead animals. Where will it all end? Will he give in to temptation and get a dog, a goat or even more cats? With this soppy creature-obsessive, anything is possible. Gerald Durrell has lots of family and other animals, but Tom Cox has MY ANIMALS AND OTHER FAMILY.
REVIEW:
Like Tom, I have a secret identity. I too am Cat-Man, able to rip open pouches at the speed of light, with the super power of tickles and able to hold conversations with my feline friends (and yes, they do swear at me.) What this title does is bring more exploits of Tom’s six “friends” to the reader so they can enjoy the journey through a man’s everyday life with these extraordinary friends which will make you laugh, occasionally cry but always with a story to keep you interested.
Add to this a wonderfully talkative writing style that will appeal to the reader, a great sense of finding the right thing at the right time to keep the reader happy and a book that will strike more than the occasional chord with the reader.
Release Date: 20/10/11
SYNOPSIS:
With his lightning-quick wit, unbridled creativity and his ear for the absurd, Milligan revolutionised British comedy, leaving a legacy of influence that stretches from Monty Python's "Flying Circus" to the work of self-confessed acolytes such as Eddie Izzard and Stephen Fry today. Throughout his life, Milligan wrote prolifically - scripts, poetry, fiction, as well as several volumes of memoir, in which he took an entirely idiosyncratic approach to the truth. In this ground-breaking work, Norma Farnes, his long-time manager, companion, counsellor and confidante, gathers together the loose threads, reads between the lines and draws on the full breadth of his writing to present his life in his own words: an autobiography - of sorts. From his childhood in India, through his early career as a jazz musician and sketch-show entertainer, his spells in North Africa and Italy with the Royal Artillery, to that fateful first broadcast of "The Goon Show" and beyond into the annals of comedy history, this is the autobiography Milligan never wrote.
REVIEW:
A tribute and biography of Spike Milligan partly in his own words and a title that I absolutely loved from the first page to the last especially since I remember listening to my radio and enjoying the Goon Shows on repeat on a Sunday Night before bed.
What this title does is bring not only the witty Spike to the fore but allows the reader to delve deeper into the man behind the character through personal letters and brought together by his manager Norma Farnes who got to see the side of him that was rarely presented. It’s touching, it has a wonderful blend of whimsy and also allows the reader to relive some of Spike’s funniest moments as well as the ups and downs in his own life.
All in, this is a wonderful tribute to one of the people who changed the face of comedy as the British audience will attest. Magical.
Release Date: 30/09/11
SYNOPSIS:
Five years after his death, Stieg Larsson is best known as the author of the Millennium Trilogy, but during his career as a journalist he was a crucial protagonist in the battle against racism and for democracy in Sweden, and one of the founders of the anti-facist magazine Expo. Kurdo Baksi first met Larsson in 1992; it was the beginning of an intense friendship, and a fruitful but challenging working relationship.
In this candid and rounded memoir, Baksi answers the questions a multitude of Larsson's fans have already asked, about his upbringing; the recurring death threats; his insomnia and his vices; his feminism - so evident in his books - and his dogmatism. What was he like as a colleague? Who provided the inspiration for his now-immortal characters (Baksi is one of the few who appears in the trilogy as himself)? Who was Lisbeth Salander?
REVIEW:
This book is not so much a biography but a tribute to a best friend from one of the people who knew him best. It’s rounded, it allows the reader to see the personal side to one of the best known Scandinavian authors and also allows the reader the chance to get to know him after he passed. In addition to this, this title takes the reader on this journey of discovery, of spiritual cleansing and of course from the start of Steig’s life to the end.
All in, whilst not for everyone, this book is a loving and personal tribute from Kurdo and all in helps keep an author’s memory alive for all which is perhaps the best tribute to anyone.
Release Date: 06/10/11
SYNOPSIS:
By the end of the First World War, Gabrielle 'Coco' Chanel had revolutionised women's dress. But dress was the most visible aspect of more profound changes she helped to bring about. During the course of her extraordinary and unconventional journey - from abject poverty to a new kind of glamour - Chanel would help forge the very idea of modern woman.
Unearthing an astonishing life, this remarkable biography shows how the most influential designer of her century became synonymous with a rebellious and progressive style. Her numerous liaisons, whose most poignant details have eluded all previous biographers, were the stuff of legend. Witty, strange, mesmerizing, Chanel became muse, patron or mistress to some of the century's most celebrated artists, including Stravinsky, Picasso and Dali.
Highlighting the designer's far-reaching connections with modernism and its artists, this book explores the origins, the creative power, and the secret suffering of this exceptional and often misread woman.
REVIEW:
With so much being written about Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel, you do wonder what so many authors have been discovering in order to feed the mill about her other than new discoveries about hidden designs for the fashion collection and whilst I have to admit an interest in one of the most controversial as well as clever business women of our age, I haven’t read any books about her before, so it was a story that I was interested in reading based more on what the woman had to say rather than the public figure.
What was revealed within this title was a story from her humble beginnings through to her time in a convent and then onto the streets of Paris alongside her love affair through previously unpublished letters from Arthur “Boy” Capel and extracts from the diaries of Dmitri Pavlovich (one of the surviving Russian Nobility.) It’s candid, it has some heart felt moments and the reader gets to see what made Chanel tick as well as her grief at the loss of various loves. All in a decent book and whilst I can’t comment on other titles about her, this one gave me a rounded view and allowed me to glimpse the human beneath the myth.
Release Date: 07/07/11
SYNOPSIS:
Perfect for cricket fans everywhere, Thanks Johnners is a warm and witty tribute to Brian Johnston and his time at the helm of Test Match Special. The Test Match Special on-air incident, in which Jonathan Agnew's comment on Ian Botham's attempt to avoid stepping on his stumps -- He just couldn't quite get his leg over provoking prolonged fits of giggles, most notably from Brian Johnston, has been voted the greatest piece of sporting commentary ever. The friendship between Aggers and Johnners became immortalised through that broadcasting classic, but there was a far deeper bond between the two men, as this fascinating book reveals. Jonathan Agnew had grown up to the sound of Johnston, Arlott, and a young Martin-Jenkins et al on TMS as he followed his father around on the family farm, ear glued to the transistor radio, but the two men met formally only when Agnew joined the BBC team at Headingley in 1991. Thus began a great working partnership which, fuelled by a mutual passion for the noble game, bridged the generation gap and ended only with Johnston's sudden death in 1994. As this book demonstrates so convincingly, Johnners's wit, warmth and sense of fun was a feature not only of his cricket commentaries, but also in the way he lived his life. His influence on Aggers is clearly recognisable in the same amiable and informal manner in which his successor presents Test Match Special today. Thanks, Johnners is a rich blend of biography and anecdote, of antics and dramas on and off the pitch, in and out of the commentary box, its pages filled with stories about the great names of cricket including Fred Trueman, Geoffrey Boycott, Vivian Richards, Michael Holding and Ian Botham. Just as TMS is the sound of summer, so Thanks, Johnners is the fresh breeze rippling the long grass of remembered pleasures.
REVIEW:
Fans of cricket will get the chance to enjoy some of the stories surrounding the best loved commentator of the game in the 20th Century. It has humour, it has warmth and above all else it brings this gentleman of the microphone to the mind-set of the reader as the embodiment of everything that made cricket great. Add to this the storyteller style of Jonathan “Aggers” Agnew as he moves from one story to another and it’s a heart-warming tribute that really will warm the cockles as well as fond memories of those avid listeners.
BOOK BLURB:
He was one of the most effective agents ever to work for Soviet Russia. For the first half of the twentieth century his fingerprints can be found on one world-changing event after another. But who was Otto Katz? To the FBI, he was 'an extremely dangerous man'. The British Secret Service wondered if he was the 'Director of all Communist policy in the West.' In Prague and Berlin he was a drinking companion with the likes of Franz Kafka and Bertolt Brecht. To Marlene Dietrich, he was one of her many lovers. But to others, Katz was a passionate anti-fascist who witnessed Hitler's rise to power and was among the first to alert the world to the Nazi threat. He was a staunch Communist, part of the Soviet infiltration of England during the period when the Cambridge spies were being recruited. In Hollywood, he was a playboy socialite, political mentor to director Fritz Lang and a star among stars. His example inspired the character of Victor Laszlo in Casablanca and Kurt Muller, the hero of the Academy Award Winning Watch on the Rhine. To Noel Coward, he was a potential double agent. In the Spanish Civil War, he did Stalin's dirty work. Years later, some even blamed him for the assassination of Trotsky. In a captivating detective story, Jonathan Miles goes in search of the real Otto Katz - a brilliant, daring charmer, a double-dealing man with an unquestionable taste for the finer things in life who, nonetheless, served one of history's darkest masters - Joseph Stalin. Using recently released FBI, MI5 and Czech files, Jonathan Miles has created an action-packed story of the life (or lives) of one of the world's most intriguing, influential and successful spies.
REVIEW:
As a huge fan of books based on real larger than life characters, I was pretty surprised at this offering from Jonathan Miles who investigated the curious character known as Otto Katz, a soviet spy. It not only was fascinating but brought a real sense of a 007 to the modern day reader from the last century. Beautifully written and above all well researched this offering really did hit the spot to me as a reader and allowed a glimpse into a man who must have been an absolutely fascinating character at a dinner party. A real triumph and one that I hope that many will pick up if only to learn about a character that shouldn’t have met the grisly end.
