Category Archives: #AtoZChallenge

#AtoZChallenge, Agatha Christie, Book Titles, Halloween Party

H is for Halloween Party #AtoZChallenge

April 9, 2016 Melanie 1 Comment

Halloween Party

H is for Halloween Party by Agatha Christie

Halloween

One of my cousins bought the hardcover edition of this book for my grandmother the year she got indoor plumbing. Good reading material while she waited for her turn in the new bathroom. But I digress…

Blurb: (from Goodreads) A teenage murder witness is drowned in a tub of apples… At a Hallowe’en party, Joyce—a hostile thirteen-year-old—boasts that she once witnessed a murder. When no-one believes her, she storms off home. But within hours her body is found, still in the house, drowned in an apple-bobbing tub. That night, Hercule Poirot is called in to find the ‘evil presence’. But first he must establish whether he is looking for a murderer or a double-murderer…

#AtoZChallenge, Book Titles, Miriam Wakerly

G is for Gypsies Stop tHere #AtoZChallenge

April 8, 2016 Melanie 8 Comments

Gypsies Stop tHere

G is for Gypsies Stop tHere by Miriam Wakerly

Gypsies

Blurb: (from Goodreads) Will uprooting herself from London to live in the country help Kay escape guilt-ridden memories of her husband’s death? Far from finding a quiet life, she is caught up in an age-old village conflict where passionate opinions on Romany Gypsy Travellers divide the local people.

A young woman, Lena, enters her life, unwittingly putting Kay’s plans on hold as Kay struggles to not only come to terms with her emotional past but to resolve Lena’s problems, those of the village and the Gypsies.

#AtoZChallenge, Book Titles, Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury

F is for Fahrenheit 451 #AtoZChallenge

April 7, 2016 Melanie 11 Comments

Fahrenheit 451

F is for Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Fahrenheit 451

Blurb: (from goodreads) The terrifyingly prophetic novel of a post-literate future.

Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to burn books, which are forbidden, being the source of all discord and unhappiness. Even so, Montag is unhappy; there is discord in his marriage. Are books hidden in his house? The Mechanical Hound of the Fire Department, armed with a lethal hypodermic, escorted by helicopters, is ready to track down those dissidents who defy society to preserve and read books.

The classic dystopian novel of a post-literate future, Fahrenheit 451 stands alongside Orwell’s 1984 and Huxley’s Brave New World as a prophetic account of Western civilization’s enslavement by the media, drugs and conformity.

Bradbury’s powerful and poetic prose combines with uncanny insight into the potential of technology to create a novel which, decades on from first publication, still has the power to dazzle and shock.

#AtoZChallenge, Book Titles, Even Dogs in the Wild, Ian Rankin

E is for Even Dogs in the Wild #AtoZChallenge

April 6, 2016 Melanie 5 Comments

Even Dogs in the Wild

E is for Even Dogs in the Wild by Ian Rankin

Even Dogs in the Wild

You can read the blurb at Ian Rankin’s website and purchase directly through his website as well.

I recently bought the hardcover of this title and can’t wait to curl up with it.

#AtoZChallenge, Book Titles, Chris Longmuir, Dead Wood

D is for Dead Wood #AtoZChallenge

April 5, 2016 Melanie 6 Comments

Dead Wood

D is for Dead Wood by Chris Longmuir

Dead Wood

Blurb: (from Goodreads) Award winning crime novel set in Dundee, Scotland, A mystery and detective story which is a combination of police procedural, and woman in jeopardy. Book 2 of The Dundee Crime Series, with the popular DS Bill Murphy.

Kara owes money to Dundee gangster Tony and takes to the streets to earn the cash. She narrowly escapes the clutches of a killer on the prowl, but stumbles across the bodies of his other victims. Hunted by the serial killer and the gangsters, Kara goes on the run.

DS Bill Murphy teams up with newcomer, DC Louise Walker in the murder investigation. But Murphy is heading for a breakdown and it is up to Louise to catch the killer.

One of the murder victims is the daughter of Dundee gangster, Tony, and he vows revenge. He is determined to mete out his own kind of justice to the killer.

Who will find the killer first? Tony or the police. And what will happen to Kara? In the end what kind of justice will prevail?

Buy Links

amazon.com

amazon.co.uk

Dundee International Book Prize winner 2009

Chris Longmuir is an award winning novelist. Her previous crime novels have won the Pitlochry Award, and the Dundee International Book Prize.

#AtoZChallenge, Cauldstane, Linda Gillard

C is for Cauldstane #AtoZChallenge

April 4, 2016 Melanie 10 Comments

Cauldstane

C is for Cauldstane by Linda Gillard

I love this cover! And if you’ve seen my posts about “I see faces”, I’m happy to say, I found one here, too!

Blurb: (from Goodreads) When ghostwriter Jenny Ryan is summoned to the Scottish Highlands by Sholto MacNab – retired adventurer and Laird of Cauldstane Castle – she’s prepared for travellers’ tales, but not the MacNabs’ violent and tragic history.

Lust, betrayal and murder have blighted family fortunes for generations, together with an ancient curse. As members of the family confide their sins and their secrets, Jenny learns why Cauldstane’s uncertain future divides father and sons.

But someone resents Jenny’s presence. Someone thinks she’s getting too close to Alec MacNab – swordsmith, widower and heir to Cauldstane. Someone will stop at nothing until Jenny has been driven away. Or driven mad.

“Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.” Especially a dead woman.

Buy Links

amazon.com

amazon.co.uk

#AtoZChallenge, Authors, Bagpipes and Bullshot, Janice Horton, Scotland

B is for Bagpipes and Bullshot #AtoZChallenge

April 2, 2016 Melanie 13 Comments

Bagpipes & Bullshot

B is for Bagpipes and Bullshot by Janice Horton

Bagpipes & Bullshot

Blurb: (from goodreads) When Innes Buchanan inherits the title of Laird, he is entrusted with the Scottish family estate, the ancestral home, and centuries of noble tradition. Sadly, he also inherits the family bank balance which, after death duty, is crumbling faster than the walls of their ancient castle.

After exhausting even the most unlikely of cash generating alternatives and with bankruptcy on the horizon, Innes stumbles across one last initiative, a research scholarship in Texas to establish a new herd of cattle. With a lifetime of sheep farming and no room for failure, Innes’s luck returns on a chance encounter with Orley MacKenna, a born and raised Texan cowgirl who needs little convincing to leave her past behind. Though a likely couple, the two settle for an unlikely business partnership, and return to Scotland to try and save the Buchanan fortune.

Told with timeless Scottish romanticism and a knowing sense of humour, Bagpipes and Bullshot twists an everyday love story with a whole cast of village eccentrics who integrate seamlessly into a fantastic play on rural life.

Buy links:

amazon.com

amazon.co.uk

#AtoZChallenge, Animal Farm, Book Titles, George Orwell

A is for Animal Farm #AtoZChallenge

April 1, 2016 Melanie 23 Comments

Animal Farm

A is for Animal Farm by George Orwell

Blurb: (from amazon.com): Animal Farm is the most famous by far of all twentieth-century political allegories. Its account of a group of barnyard animals who revolt against their vicious human master, only to submit to a tyranny erected by their own kind, can fairly be said to have become a universal drama. Orwell is one of the very few modern satirists comparable to Jonathan Swift in power, artistry, and moral authority; in animal farm his spare prose and the logic of his dark comedy brilliantly highlight his stark message.

Taking as his starting point the betrayed promise of the Russian Revolution, Orwell lays out a vision that, in its bitter wisdom, gives us the clearest understanding we possess of the possible consequences of our social and political acts.

You buy Animal Farm at amazon.com

#AtoZChallenge

Theme Reveal… the #AtoZChallenge starts tomorrow…

March 31, 2016 Melanie 2 Comments

THEME REVEAL

Drum roll, please… I’m ready to reveal my theme for this year’s Blogging from A to Z Challenge.

Are you ready? What else would a writer blog about during a challenge such as this? How about books? Yup, I’ve put together an eclectic collection of book titles that take in every letter of the alphabet.

I hope you’ll stop by every day next month to see what book I’ve spotlighted. Some are well known… some not so well. Maybe you’ll even find a title or two that you’ve not heard about and you’ll want to read.

See you in April!

#AtoZChallenge, animals, Zebra