bedraggled sea winds & coloured-in skies ♥

The title was eye-catching enough for me to pick it up, look at it, read the back cover and a couple of the first few pages and go: ‘hey, it looks good, and it’s cheap. I’ll get it!’ Charlie Howard is trying to get as much inspiration as he can from the particular city he’s working in. This time, it’s Amsterdam.  Except this time, there’s a twist. Not only is he writing about being a ‘career thief’, this time, he is one. Ordered to steal two monkeys figurines (speak no evil & see no evil), things turn messy when there’s a fight and a man gets killed.

What do the monkeys really mean? What is their worth, and why are people prepared to kill for these statuettes?

A really interesting debut novel, The Good Thief’s Guide to Amsterdam was fun and humorous, but exciting at the same time. It kept the light tone, while discussing things of a more severe nature, which made for reading of a different style, which was great.

A harrowing excavation unearths a chilling tragedy never laid to rest. They are “the disappeared,” twenty-three massacre victims buried in a well in the Guatemalan village of Chupan Ya two decades ago. Leading a team of experts on a meticulous, heartbreaking dig, Tempe Brennan pieces together the violence of the past. But a fresh wave of terror begins when the horrific sounds of a fatal attack on two colleagues come in on a blood-chilling satellite call. Teaming up with Special Crimes Investigator Bartolomé Galiano and Montreal detective Andrew Ryan, Tempe quickly becomes enmeshed in the cases of four privileged young women who have vanished from Guatemala City — and finds herself caught in deadly territory where power, money, greed, and science converge.

Copied from: www.kathyreichs.com/grave-secrets/

I liked this book, but it had moments were it was a little scary, chilling and sad. 

When Tempe Brennan was a little girl, over the summer, her family took her and her sister Harriet to the beach.  There, they met an Acadian family of similar age, who they became very close with, until one day, the whole family packed up and disappeared. Confused, the Brennan sisters went to where they were staying with their aunt and uncle, and asked where they had gone. They were told to not come back to the house and forget about the girls.

40 years later, Tempe remembers those days, and wonders what ever happened to her friend Evangeline. A skeleton comes into her morgue, and the body appears to be that of Acadian decent, and Tempe cannot help but delve down memory lane, and worry that the body is that of Evangeline.

Now, faced with bones scarred with inexplicable lesions, Tempe is consumed with solving a decades-old mystery — while her lover, detective Andrew Ryan, urgently needs her attention on a wave of teenage abductions and murders. With both Ryan and her ex-husband making surprising future plans, Tempe may soon find that her world has painfully and irrevocably changed once again.

Copied from: www.kathyreichs.com/bones-to-ashes 

After his surprisingly eventful first year at Hogwarts, Harry is looking forward to going back to school, and seeing his best friends, Ron & Hermione, after a summer of loneliness; have they forgotten about him, or just don’t want to talk to him? He hasn’t received a single letter the whole holidays. Then, one day, a House Elf named Dobby turns up at 4 Privet Drive, and warns him not to return to Hogwarts. Harry ignores the strange creature’s urges, and attempts to return. However, his attempts with Ron are foiled, when the gateway seals itself.

Harry’s second year is as mystery-shrouded as his first year at Hogwarts, and uncovers a whole new bunch of unknown tales about the school’s past. The Chamber of Secrets is the second novel in the saga; however, I like it possibly the least out of all the books (if that is even possible, they are all really awesome books.)

The one thing that can be said for this play is that everybody dies at the end. Admittedly, I did not have to endure the assessment for this, or I might have enjoyed this less than I did.

On a more serious note, Romeo & Juliet wasn’t as bad as I make it out to be. The lovey-dovey actions of the two main characters, and the time-period this play depicts are irritating and alarming. The language does get easier to understand, however, the book, which acts as a translator, fails to explain points that the readers might find helpful, instead repeating information, or obvious meanings.

However, Shakespeare leaves us in no doubt that he was a master at what he did,  having the recently heart-broken Romeo find love at first sight in the form of Juliet at a dinner party. Although the two families (the Montagues and the Capulets) are constantly feuding, the ill-fated, “star-crossed lovers” put their families’ differences aside and fall into a deep and desperate love.  It complicates matters further when Juliet is set to be married to Count Paris, a man whom she does not wish to be married to, and Romeo accidentally kills Juliet’s cousin Tybalt, and to avenge his death, one of the Capulet kinsmen kills Mercutio, one of the Prince’s kinsmen.  Romeo is forced to flee fair Verona as a marked man. He returns to find Juliet supposedly dead, and kills himself. She wakes up and finds that he is dead, and kills herself also. The family and Friar stumble upon the two bodies and are beside themselves with woe and vow never to fight again, for the sake of their two lost young children. 

Izzy Spellman is not your average 28 year old. She’s a Private Investigator in her parent’s firm, Spellman Investigations.  Sure, she’s had a chequered past, littered with romantic mistakes, but at least she’s good at her job. Snooping runs in the family - to be a Spellman is to snoop, blackmail, wiretap, sabotage and dish the dirt on a Spellman.  However, her parents get her younger sister to tail her and her new boyfriend, and see what they get up to. At this, Izzy snaps, and wants out. Her parents agree, but only after completing one final case. However the Snow case is ancient, and more twisted than a pretzel. What ensues is hilarity and peculiarity as Spellman family history is revealed, and eventually the case is solved also.

A great book with a fairly light air, but a slightly creepy ending, The Spellman Files is a decent chick-lit detective story.

Wanting to make my stay in hospital as comfortable as possible, I decided to bring with me the start of the most comforting series of books I own .

Little Harry Potter’s parents are killed by vicious and evil Lord Voldemort. When the same wand is turned towards the toddler, and the same curse is uttered however, something strange happened. The spell turned towards its owner Voldemort, who, weak and fragile fled, and Harry Potter became famed the world over as the Boy Who Lived; the only person ever to have survived the Killing Curse.

Ten years later, living with his deceased mother’s sister and her family, Harry being the object of hatred since being placed in their care, does he receive a strange letter. Harry has never known what really happened to his parents, instead told that they died in a car crash. Mr Dursley, his uncle, quickly destroys it, but more and more come.  The Dursleys take Harry to a far-flung decrepit hotel in the middle of a raging sea, to escape the letters. They did not count on their door being broken down in the middle of the night by a giant of a man called Hagrid, who tells Harry that he’s a wizard and the letters have told him that he’s been accepted to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.  

 Harry’s first year is a magical tale and is the start of a journey of a lifetime - both for him & his friends as much as it is for us, the readers; the Potter generation.

Not a book I would have normally picked up out of free will, but actually basis for school assessment, Lord of the Flies wasn’t a book I was anticipating particularly.

Set in an imaginary extension of the Second World War, a group of school boys become marooned on an island somewhere in the Pacific. One of the boys, Ralph, is elected to take charge and keep order.  However, the boys struggle to keep their miniature society in check and chaos quickly reigns supreme, especially once a little boy starts talking of a beastie and then disappears, and is never seen or heard of again.

Meanwhile, there is competition between the two alpha males, Ralph, who wants to be rescued and go home, and Jack, who would like nothing better than to hunt all day. The boys soon split up the rest of group about who should be leader or not.

An interesting novel about how close society could be to toppling into calamity, Lord of the Flies is a classic and at many points can be quite tiresome with the author describing absolutely everything far too much. 

Already anticipating this book, after simply reading the cover and a preview in a previous book, Dr Reichs did not disappoint.

In 1968, John Charles Lowery was declared dead, victim of a plane crash in Vietnam. A body is found to have drowned in a pond, and is also identified as John Lowery.  The mystery of this novel is how Lowery could have died twice, in different continents, and how an American soldier ended up in Canada.

Dr Temperance Brennan sets off to find the answer, exhuming Lowery’s grave in North Carolina and transporting the remains to Hawaii for reanalysis  - the headquarters of the US Military’s Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC), who strive to recover Americans lost in previous conflicts. A third set of remains soon turns up, with Lowery’s dog tags tangled amongst them. 

Who are these 3 men? Why are they all being identified as Lowery? Which, if any, actually is Lowery? Mortal Remains is fast paced with an interesting plot with many twists. Unlike many other novels, Tempe doesn’t poke around too much and get herself into trouble, and her life isn’t on the line because she’s doing too much of her own probing.  A great read, highly recommended for those interested in action, mystery or forensics.

Encouraged by a friend to join an all-women house renovation, Jane Jeffry is hired as interior designer. Sandy, the incompetent contractor, who is a sworn feminist, insisting on calling the women all by the masculine-versions of their names has problems of her own too, though. Her sleazy ex-husband turns up, and becomes a suspect in the murder, trying to sabotage his divorcee’s work project. Suddenly, though, things go pear-shaped, after a person is found dead at the bottom of the stairs. Things get more and more sinister, as several more problems arise, until they discover that the issues are created by vandals.

Apart from the pacy beginning, with the murder occurring quickly at the start of the story; the rest of the book is a little bit of a drag, and isn’t really recommended for this age group. It appears to be more of a book that a middle-aged woman with not much else to do would read. The mystery itself is interesting enough, but the author is good at targeting only one particular age-group, and that was not mine. 

Before Harry’s 3^rd year at Hogwarts has even begun, news of a mass-murderer escaping Azkaban, the wizard jail, seeps through to Little Whinging on the Muggle news. 

When Harry returns to find that the guards to Azkaban, dementors, are now guarding his school. The dementors are capable of taking all the happiness out of the room, and sucking your soul away.

After not being allowed into Hogsmeade with all the other third-years, Harry is gifted with the Maruader’s Map, an enchanted map that shows everybody in the school, whenever the user requires.  Using his father’s old Invisibility Cloak and the map, Harry finds his way to Hogsmeade and sees Ron and Hermione, only to overhear a conversation between his teachers and the Minister for Magic, Cornelius Fudge.

His eavesdropping is rewarded only with Harry finding out that the why the dementors are at Hogwarts: because Sirius Black, the escaped murderer, is trying to get to Harry; that Black is Harry’s godfather and that he betrayed Harry’s parents, James and Lily Potter to Voldemort himself.

The third exciting story in the famous series, the Prisoner of Azkaban is a tale not to be missed.

Cassia Reyes lives in a future society where Officials dictate everything - who you marry, how many children you have, where you live, what you eat and when, the clothes you wear and even when you die. They calculate the chance of everything - what colour dress you pick for The Match Banquet, the dreams you have, or your children’s names.  At The Match Banquet on her 17^th birthday, Cassia finds out who The Society has dictated to be her perfect partner for life. Her best friend’s face appears on the screen. But it’s not meant to be him. It’s meant to be another boy; but he can’t be matched.

As Cassia finds herself falling for him, she gets more and more determined to make her own choices. And that’s when her world as she knows it begins to unravel. Matched is a story of a Society who think that theirs is Utopian when really, it’s Dystopian.  A story about speaking out against what everybody else says, and following your heart, Matched is an interesting read, with a Sci-Fi theme, but a romantic plot.

Dr Temperance Brennan is uncovering the prehistoric marshy swampland of Dewees, a barrier island north of Charleston, South Carolina, when one of her students calls her over to see what they’ve found. It’s a freshly buried body; still with some soft tissue connecting the vertebrae.  The remains show that he is a middle-aged Caucasoid male, but who he is still cannot be answered. To add to the complications, there is an odd fracture in the sixth cervical vertebrae.

Just as Dr Brennan starts to piece together the evidence, another body is found, hanging from a tree in a national park. Once more examining the body, there is the same fracture. It’s not the fracture that would be achieved through jumping from a height with a noose on, and thoughts as to how the body got to the tree are confused. The body has ID, however; it is incorrect and the man they believe it to be is still alive.

As Tempe digs deeper in, the investigation becomes more and more inhumanely cold. Break No Bones is a good read, although not as exciting as Reichs’ first novel, Déjà Dead.

The prequel to Devil in Amber, The Vesuvius Club is about Lucifer Box, who is sent on a mission to continue the investigation begun by recently murdered Jocelyn Poop. The clues that did not die with Poop are the names of two scientists that died within a day of each other.

The investigation brings in an undertaker who ships more boxes to and from Naples than handles dead bodies.  Box quickly makes his way to Italy and has dinner with one of the survivors of the “Cambridge Four” - a group of 4 intellectuals, 2 of which were the aforementioned dead scientists. Secretly meeting with Charlie Jackpot (one of the waiters) invites Lucifer to the Vesuvius Club, where both Box and Jackpot fall victim to sleeping gas.  Several clues lead towards Mount Vesuvius, but several things still don’t link up.  The investigation brings Box to a drug-house; he finds a hidden entrance to the volcano.

Lucifer’s companions are imprisoned in the volcano and he is locked into a volcanic vent and is meant to be steamed to death, but he luckily escapes, and rescues his friends against the wishes of Victor and Unmann; Victor who wishes to get revenge for his ill-treated scientist-father who went mad before his project could be completed and Unmann who is found to be a traitor to the Secret Service.

The Vesuvius Club isn’t as enjoyable as its sequel, which is quite action-packed the whole way through; however, is thrilling with a killer twist at the end. 

Reed Brennan wants to be different. She hates her old life - her drug-addict mother, her boring school.  But Reed gets a second chance, receiving a scholarship to an elite private school. It seems that everybody at Easton Academy excels in almost everything they do. Then there’s the Billings Girls. Insanely popular, and insanely beautiful, these girls rule the school, and they know it. Reed does everything she can to become one of these girls, and forget her old life.

Unfortunately, doing everything she can does means she gets lured in by the Billings Girls, and does stupid things. The Billings Girls have their own secrets too, secrets that they are forced to blackmail Reed into keeping quiet about.

This book is not recommended, as Reed does ridiculous things, all in the name of fame and popularity, which is something I do not agree with. I think that people should not do all those lucrative things in the name of popularity.