Book Review

Book Review The Promise – President Obama Year One

Jonathan Alter

Barack Obama’s first year as President saw him thrown into the deep end of American politics; his attempts to deal with an unwinnable war, an economic crisis and an army of Tea-Partiers, Birthers and assorted nuts attacking every decision are chronicled in Jonathan Alter’s well-informed book.

Alter clearly had plenty of access – there are excellent portraits of Obama and his team, detailed accounts of his handling of the economy and passage of the Healthcare Bill, and some eyebrow-raising tales of George Bush and John McCain’s economic cluelessness. But the book sails close to hagiography at times, and while chapters…

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Book Review A Cold Season

by Alison Littlewood

Returning to her childhood home of Darnshaw, Yorkshire after losing her husband in Afghanistan, Cass tries to make a new life for herself and her son, Ben. But as a snowdrift cuts the strange town off from the outside world, a charming but sinister new headmaster arrives at the local school and Cass begins getting cryptic warnings from local people, it soon becomes clear that something is rotten in Darnshaw.

In fact, what’s going on in Darnshaw is so clearly telegraphed from the first few chapters that I hoped it was all an elaborate bluff, and spent much of the…

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Book Review Blowback

by John Lake

Single parents, Ukrainian gangsters, meddling teenagers and ineffective stoners come together in this uncomfortably realistic tour of Leeds’ drug-riddled underbelly.

Ex-heroin user Bea finds a bag of pills under her son’s bed. A Sri Lankan chemist is dropped off a roof. Drug-baron Dmitri is forced to spend Friday night with his diva wife and invisible children whilst simultaneously tracking down his missing DMT. Kidnappings, stake-outs, casual torture and trips to ‘The Royally’ ensue until the humour-laced climax and the statutory set-up for the final part of Lake’s Leeds 6 Trilogy.

Lake’s extremely over-written style is made up for by his…

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Book Review A Year in the Life of Some Guy

by Oliver Ross

Estate agent Tim Calgon is in his 30s, still single, hates his job and is going through the motions living in a poky London flat – but over the next 12 months his life is about to change significantly.

After a spell living in New York, the Leeds-born bachelor is stuck in a rut along with his outspoken homosexual flatmate Garth, but not for long as A Year in the Life of Some Guy tracks a surreal 12 months for the cynical Yorkshireman.

From being disillusioned and unlucky in love, Tim’s luck starts to change when he is woken up…

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Book Review More Interesting Than Your Teacher

by Stuart Wright

Enjoy classic classroom facts without harsh lighting, heavy textbooks or the mundane drone of a teacher.

Bursting with bite-sized chunks of information, this book is brimming with the answers to some of life’s most common musings.

The perfect present for fact finders everywhere, More Interesting Than Your Teacher will tell you the answers to questions you have poured and pondered over, as well as those you hadn’t thought to think about. What exactly is a calorie? What is the largest number? Why does chrome rust on your bike, but not in your bathroom? Did you know that only five percent…

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Book Review Pigeon English

by Stephen Kelman

The fact its paperback edition has a reading guide with questions for discussion at the back betrays how important Pigeon English might become on the school syllabus. Told from the point of view of 11-year-old Ghanaian immigrant, Harri Opoku, the story follows his amateur investigation of a murder in his neighbourhood.

The innocent narrative is poignant and, at times, emotionally difficult to read. He and his older sister, Lydia are hounded by local gang members, his illegal immigrant aunt burns her fingertips to remain unidentifiable and his Ghana-based dad and baby sister regularly cut out over the phone.

The Pigeon…

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Book Review The Third Antichrist

by Mario Reading

It’s impossible not to judge The Third Antichrist by its cover. The latest offering in Mario Reading’s The Antichrist Trilogy displays an inverted cross on it’s cover and has a notable RRP of £6.66. Many will be intimidated away from reading this interesting and imaginative tale.

Adam Sabir, guardian of the lost prophecies of Nostradamus, is attempting to protect the foetus he has identified as the second coming. He is tailed throughout by the notorious De Bale siblings – a group of adoptees convinced that they must prevent the devil from reigning by allowing the antichrist to wreak chaos on…

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Book Review Comfort & Joy

by India Knight

Have you ever wanted to create the perfect, fairytale Christmas for your family, but struggled because the modern family set-up is sometimes so complicated?

Wife and mother Clara Dunphy has the answers. In a desperate bid to please her flamboyant mother, her husband (and his mother) and ex-husband, her eccentric half-sisters, her children and various others, Clara hosts a riotous Christmas dinner every year.

We meet Clara Christmas shopping on Oxford Street on the 23^rd December 2009. After searching for the best – and therefore most expensive – presents she can find, Clara suddenly decides to get into the festive…

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Book Review The Rum Diary

by Hunter S Thomspon

The Rum Diary is re-released here as a film tie-in. Allegedly the result of Johnny Depp digging out a forgotten manuscript in his friend Thompson‘s archive, it is a novel that otherwise might never have been published. Depp told Thompson it should be published and Thompson subsequently decided that he needed the money. This presents an interesting tension upon opening the book. Should it have been published, or was it best left alone? Thankfully, Thompson does not disappoint.

The Rum Diary is written with that telltale gonzo style which readers will be familiar with. Here the voice is less relentless,…

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Book Review The Garden of Betrayal

by Lee Vance

Thrillers are everywhere, filling every book shop while authors hope they might become the next Dan Brown. And so arrives Lee Vance’s The Garden of Betrayal.

Seven years after the disappearance of his son, Kyle, Mark Wallace is working as an energy analyst for a large and successful hedge fund firm. Nothing has ever been heard about Kyle, until the police receive an anonymous tip about the night he disappeared. On the same day, Mark starts receiving information which could make his career. Is it just a coincidence?

On first opening the pages, it seemed like many thrillers that had…

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