Edited in September 2021, this is an emotional and gripping story.
You paid the price for wanting what you couldn’t have. Now DNA tests threaten to expose what you spent a lifetime hiding…
As an ambitious young woman in the years following the Second World War, Barbara made some hard choices, decisions changing everything that came after. She had to fight for what she wanted; then the stakes got so much higher.
A continent away, and decades later, Barbara’s daughter hires genealogist Karen Copperfield to make sense of the family’s DNA tests. Nothing about the results ties in with what Barbara’s children believed, and the shock is tearing the family apart. Barbara seems to prefer death to revealing the truth, and Karen soon discovers there is more than one secret she intends to take to her grave.
But when threats start to come from both sides of the Atlantic, it soon becomes clear that Barbara is not the only person who wants the past to stay that way.
DNA Never Lies is the first in a series of novels featuring Karen Copperfield, investigative genealogist. Karen helps people make sense of sometimes dark family secrets revealed by DNA tests as they ask: ‘what happens when nothing you believed is true?’
Escape into this emotionally gripping novel, packed with psychological suspense, for readers who love Kate Morton, Lucy Atkins and Barbara Vine.
A social media influencer. Millions of followers. One sadistic blackmailer.
Jessica Leigh is a social media tech influencer at the top of her game, and she intends to keep it that way. So when an up-and-coming tech company wants her to demonstrate their new brain chip, she jumps at the chance, despite her husband’s misgivings. After blazing rows between the couple, Jessica’s eye starts to wander and before long, she becomes entangled in a new love affair.
But little does she know she’s being watched, and after an encounter with a sadistic blackmailer, she must find a way to prevent her new love affair from going viral.
Bad Connections is the new novel by J. M. Eckford. If you like Sex and the City and Black Mirror, you’ll love this dark women’s fiction with a near-future, dystopian twist.
Edited in September 2021, this unusual and entertaining story about a young Nigerian teenager and his dreams of becoming a rock star is very different to anything I’ve read before.
My music. My life.
This is all sixteen-year-old Lanre Bandele dreams about – even though he is a lonely and unhappy schoolboy abandoned by his parents, staying with unsympathetic relatives and flunking his schoolwork. Still, he finds solace in his guitar playing and his secret fantasy of being a professional artist like Bob Marley. Maybe. Someday.
When an unexpected opportunity appears, it seems like his dreams can come true. As he embarks on his journey, he discovers an unexpectedly different world, colourful characters and an experience of twists and turns.
Sometimes funny, sometimes tragic, this is a gripping yet tender coming of age story told with a vivid sense of place about a contemporary Nigerian teenager, music, love and above all, growing up.
A brilliant final novel in this gripping series about the Jewish gangs of New York.
How can a crooked man ever go straight?
Jewish gangster, Alex Cohen settles down in Florida surrounded by his wife and family. But his past life in the criminal underworld stalks his every move and when a bullet whizzes past his ear, he must decide whether to run or fight.
In his desire to go straight, Alex inserts himself in the East Coast porn film industry, only to find that the tentacles of the mob are clasped tight around his life. With the Feds using new laws to hunt down mob bosses, and rats in his own organization all too ready to testify against him, Alex must clean house before the authorities throw him in jail or the mob kills him to stop him ratting them out.
The seventh book in the Alex Cohen series is an historical thriller novel, which reveals the dying embers of Jewish organized crime in America. Leopold Borstinski’s crime fiction shines a light on the death of the old-style mob in an explosive finale.
Another wonderful historical romance in this lovely series.
He wants a respectable bride who will not ask for more than he can give – love. She has no need or desire to marry, and love is the only thing that might change her mind.
Hugh Brandforth, the seventh Earl of Ormsley, returns to his estate after wasting several weeks searching for a bride. He is looking forward to some much-needed rest and recreation. All is not as he left it, however, and within the space of an hour, he finds himself berated by his old nurse, assaulted by an eccentric termagant and subjected to the disrespect of her coachman.
Wishing to escape Bath and avoid the imminent proposal of a determined rake, Miss Cressida Harrington accepts Lady Ormsley’s offer of the dower house at Leighfield Park. A peaceful sojourn in the country is just what she needs. If Cressy did not expect to find the house in disarray and the garden a wilderness, these minor inconveniences do not have the power to disturb her. The unexpected presence of an earl she had no notion existed is quite another matter.
Secrets and scandal lurk behind the respectable façade of the house and grounds. Will they bring them together or drive them apart?
Another wonderful and humorous instalment in the Guesthouse on the Green series as Mammy and Moira travel Vietnam.
I love the series and can't wait for book four!
A quick but emotional read - reading about the cruelty to the dog was heartbreaking but this was a lovely tale of the love and healing that animals can bring to our lives.
I would have given five stars but for the missed typos - a few t...
I get the impression that this could be a nice story but I've had to give up after forcing myself to go as far as 15% of the way through. If this novel has ever been near a remotely professional editor then the author was conned.
Chapte...
Another very enjoyable story but with a few niggles, hence the four stars rather than five. Maybe it's because I was tired but the editing issues grated on me more than in the first story and, do people really generally believe that 'ear...
Edited in April 2021.
