The Dig - John Preston
Penguin Pb £7.99 rrp
In the long hot summer of 1939 Britain is preparing for war. But on a riverside farm in Suffolk there is excitement of another kind: Mrs Petty, the widowed farmer, has had her hunch proved correct that the strange mounds on her land hold buried treasure. As the dig proceeds against a background of mounting national anxiety, it becomes clear though that this is no ordinary find ... And pretty soon the discovery leads to all kinds of jealousies and tensions.
John Preston's recreation of the Sutton Hoo dig - the greatest Anglo-Saxon discovery ever in Britain - brilliantly and comically dramatizes three months of intense activity when locals fought outsiders, professionals thwarted amateurs, and love and rivaly flourished in equal measure.
Devil May Care - Sebastian Faulks writing as Ian Fleming
Penguin Hb £18.99 rrp
This is a brand new James Bond novel written in the style of Ian Fleming by bestselling author Sebastian Faulks. It picks up where Octopussy and The Living Daylights left off in 1966 and is set during the Cold War.
“My novel is meant to stand in the line of Fleming’s own books, where the story is everything.” said Faulks, “In his house in Jamaica, Ian Fleming used to write a thousand words in the morning, then go snorkelling, have a cocktail, lunch on the terrace, more diving, another thousand words in late afternoon, then more Martinis and glamorous women. In my house in London, I followed this routine exactly, apart from the cocktails, the lunch and the snorkelling.”
The English Year - Steve Roud
Penguin pb £9.99rrp
This enthralling book will take you, month-by-month, day-by-day, through all the festivities of English life. From national celebrations such as New Year’s Eve to regional customs such as the Padstow Hobby Horse procession, cheese rolling in Gloucestershire and Easter Monday bottle kicking in Leeds, it explains how they originated, what they mean and when they occur.
A fascinating guide to the richness of our heritage and the sometimes eccentric nature of life in England, The English Year offers a unique chronological view of our social customs and attitudes.
Oscar Wilde and the Candlelight Murders
- Gyles Brandreth
John Murray pb £7.99rrp
This is Gyles Brandreth's first foray into crime fiction. A classic, historical murder mystery set in London featuring the extraordinary personality of Oscar Wilde as detective. Brandreth’s fictional Wilde teams up with fellow author Conan Doyle to to investigate the murder of a sixteen-year-old boy. ‘One of the most intelligent, amusing and entertaining books of the year’ Alexander McCall Smith.
The Dig -
Penguin Hardback fiction £16.99
In the long hot summer of 1939 Britain is preparing for war. But on a riverside farm in Suffolk there is excitement of another kind: Mrs Petty, the widowed farmer, has had her hunch proved correct that the strange mounds on her land hold buried treasure. As the dig proceeds against a background of mounting national anxiety, it becomes clear though that this is no ordinary find ... And pretty soon the discovery leads to all kinds of jealousies and tensions.
John Preston's recreation of the Sutton Hoo dig - the greatest Anglo-Saxon discovery ever in Britain - brilliantly and comically dramatizes three months of intense activity when locals fought outsiders, professionals thwarted amateurs, and love and rivaly flourished in equal measure.
The Cloudspotter’s Guide
- Gavin Pretor-Pinney
Sceptre Paperback £7.99
This book did exceptionally (and perhaps surprisingly) well in Hardback and has just been released in paperback. Gavin Pretor-Pinney is the chairman and founder member of the ‘Cloud Appreciation Society‘. He contends that we are ‘blessed in this country with a uniquely rich and varied cloudscape, which has hitherto been sadly undervalued‘.
His book teaches us to appreciate their different varieties – the cumulus, nimbostratus and Morning Glory to name only a few – and all their beauties and significances, both meteorological and cultural. We learn how Hindus believed the cumulus clouds were the spiritual cousins of elephants, how thermal air currents act on fair weather cumuli, and how to save a fortune in psychiatric bills by using the clouds as Rorschach images that reflect our state of mind as well as nature’s moods.
Looking up will never be the same again.
A Beginner's Guide to Changing the World - For Tibet with Love - Isabel Losada
‘Sometimes you just have to do something, don’t you? Sometimes an injustice comes along and you think "No, this cannot be", and rather than just turn off the TV, you know it’s time to act.’ So begins Isabel Losada’s extraordinary For Tibet, with Love in which she explores whether it’s possible for an ordinary person to change the world, just a little… Isabel demonstrates, falls for a monk in Nepal, gets sick in Tibet, upsets BP, faces some hard truths, starts a company, irritates the Chinese Ambassador, falls from a great height, keeps her bra on, breaks the law, and captures headlines worldwide. And then she meets the Dalai Lama....
Glass Houses
- Sandra Howard
Simon and Schuster £10
Sandra Howard's (wife of Michael) first novel is 'a love story of great intensity - a secret affair set against the backdrop of high-pressure politics in Westminster.'
It is the Sunday after a General Election and Victoria James is awaiting a call from Downing Street. Part of her is desperate for the phone to ring, part of her is willing it to remain silent. At lunchtime - as confidently predicted by the political press - she received the summons. High office awaits her: it is to be Junior Minister for Housing. Life as she knows it, for her, her husband Barney and their 16-year-old daughter Nattie, will never be quite the same. From the outset, Victoria knows the professional challenges ahead, that her political mettle will be tested to its utmost, that as a young attractive female Minister she will be living firmly in the public eye. But nothing has prepared her for a love affair that throws her completely off-balance, a love affair with a married man so well known in media circles that it can only be a matter of time before everyone knows their secret...
Sandra Howard will be appearing at Landers Bookshop on 1st December 2006 between 2.30 and 3.30pm to sign copies of her successful new book. If you would like to attend and get £1 off please call the shop for details.
The City of Falling Angels - John Berendt 
Hodder and Stoughton £7.99
Taking the fire that destroyed the Fenice theatre in 1996 as his starting point, John Berendt creates a unique and unforgettable portrait of Venice and its extraordinary inhabitants. Beneath the exquisite facade of the world's most beautiful historic city, scandal, corruption and venality are rampant, and John Berendt is a master at seeking them out. Ezra Pound and his mistress, Olga; poet Mario Stefani; the Rat Man of Treviso; or Mario Moro – self-styled carabiniere, fireman, soldier or airman, depending on the day of the week. With his background in journalism, Berendt is perfectly poised to gain access to private and unapproachable people, and persuade them to talk frankly to him. The result is mischievous, witty and compelling.
Womans Hour - From Joyce Grenfell to Sharon Osbourne - Various
John Murray £20
Woman`s Hour
is one of Britain`s greatest national institutions, entertaining millions of women `and men` since its first broadcast on 7 October 1946. For sixty years, the programme has championed the woman`s perspective on topics such as health, education, family and home, work, sex, arts, fashion, international affairs and politics. From celebrity interviews to ordinary listeners who were invited to tell their personal stories on air, Woman`s Hour has charted the changing status of women throughout the latter twentieth century and into the twenty-first. Now, for the first time, this book brings together many of these interviews, reflecting the passage of the decades through the unique voices of those who have taken part.Highlights include presenter Jill Allgood interviewing Joyce Grenfell in her own home in the post-war years, to Ailsa Garland discussing hair and fashion with Cilla Black in the swinging sixties; Germaine Greer and Kate Millet advocating a womens’ movement in the 1970s; the Thatcher years of the 1980s; Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi campaigning for Burmese democracy in 1996, and Sharon Osbourne talking parenthood and cosmetic surgery in 2005. Woman`s Hour: From Joyce Grenfell to Sharon Osbourne tells a vivid and personal history through the voices of its guests, and provides a thrilling insight into how the programme has inspired, set the agenda and brought women together over six fascinating decades.
The Secret River
Canongate Books £7.99
Many readers will remember Kate Grenville’s Orange Prize winning book ‘The idea of Perfection’. Here she is 5 years later finding new success with her Man Booker short listed title ‘The Secret River’.
London, 1807.
William Thornhill, happily wedded to his childhood sweetheart Sal, is a waterman on the River Thames. Life is tough but bearable until William makes a mistake, a bad mistake for which he and his family are made to pay dearly. His sentence: to be transported to New South Wales for the term of his natural life.
The Thornhills arrive in this harsh and alien land that they cannot understand and which feels like a death sentence. But among the convicts there is a rumour that freedom can be bought, that `unclaimed' land up the Hawkesbury offers an opportunity to start afresh, far away from the township of Sydney. When William takes a hundred acres for himself he is shocked to find Aboriginal people already living on the river. And other recent arrivals - Thomas Blackwood, Smasher Sullivan and Mrs Herring - are finding their own ways to respond to them.
Soon Thornhill, a man neither better nor worse than most, has to make the most difficult decision of his life ...
.jpg)
The Summer Book - Tove Jansson
Sort of books - £6.99
This really is one of my all time favourites and it just begs to be read in the shade of the garden with a long cool drink to hand. Tove Jansson is better known as the creator of the Moomin Children stories but this is her favourite too of the ten books she wrote for adults. Drawing from many of her own experiences she writes of one Summer on a tiny island in the Gulf of Finland and the relationship that develops between an elderly artist and her six-year-old Grand-daughter. She manages to describe the scenery, the atmosphere and individual moments with such beauty that it really does deserve to be read and re-read.
The Secret life of Trees - Colin Tudge
Penguin £8.99
In Shropshire stands the Royal Oak, where it is alleged Charles II hid from Cromwell's men. There are kauri trees in New Zealand which were old before the Maoris arrived from Polynesia, and redwoods still standing in California which were ancient by the time Columbus first landed. It is often this sense of age that places us in awe of trees: we look up at them, we know they have stood for many years, and yet we know so little about them, or how they work.
While the stories of trees are as plentiful as leaves in a forest, they are rarely told. Here, Colin Tudge travels from his own back garden round the world to explore the beauty, variety and ingenuity of trees everywhere: from how they live so long to how they talk to each other and why they came to exist in the first place. Lyrical and evocative, this book will make everyone fall in love with the trees around them.
Old Filth - Jane Gardam
Chatto and Windus £6.99
Old Filth was a 'child of the raj'. His earliest memories are of his amah, a teenage Malay girl - not of his mother who is dead, nor his father who can't cope. But very soon he is torn away from the only person who loves him, and sent to be educated at 'Home', where he is boarded out with strangers...What is the terrible secret that the children shared? What exactly happened at the farmhouse in the Lake District from which Filth is rescued by 'Sir' whose 'outfit' is one of the oddest schools in England? Old Filth is funny and heart-breaking at the same time. A touch of surrealism combines with the subtle delicacy of a gifted novelist to make Old Filth a genuine masterpiece.
“An absolutely delightful, moving and nostalgic read, I couldn’t put it down” Landers Customer
The Highest Tide
- Jim Lynch
Bloomsbury £7.99
This is an atmospheric and gentle read that has a more than a touch of humour. I really enjoyed it.
One Good Turn - Kate Atkinson
Doubleday - £17.99
It is summer, it is the Edinburgh Festival. People queuing for a lunchtime show witness a road-rage incident - an incident which changes the lives of everyone involved. Jackson Brodie, ex-army, ex-police, ex-private detective, is also an innocent bystander - until he becomes a suspect.
With Case Histories, Kate Atkinson showed how brilliantly she could explore the crime genre and make it her own. In One Good Turn she takes her masterful plotting one step further. Like a set of Russian dolls each thread of the narrative reveals itself to be related to the last. Her Dickensian cast of characters are all looking for love or money and find it in surprising places. As ever with Atkinson what each one actually discovers is their true self.
Unputdownable and triumphant, One Good Turn is a sharply intelligent read that is also percipient, funny, and totally satisfying.