BOOK MARKS
IT’S always such a treat when a series writer you enjoy dreams up a brand new character. Baldacci’s Memory Man features Amos Decker, a former detective whose life falls apart when his family is murdered. Sixteen months later, having hit rock bottom, Decker hears that a man has confessed to the brutal killings. But while he’s still trying to process that news, a mass shooting takes place at the local school.
What makes Decker so intriguing is that a sporting accident years back left his brain changed forever – he cannot forget anything. Both a curse and a blessing, that gift makes him the ideal person to have on the shooting case, but will he be able to focus knowing that the man who killed his wife and daughter has surfaced? Baldacci tells a riveting story, impeccably plotted.
– Terri Dunbar-Curran JOURNALIST and former diplomat Dr Chika Onyeani declares on the cover: “I have been accused of being angry – if you know what is going on within the black race, I ask you, why wouldn’t you be angry?”
Whether or not the reader finds Onyeani angry or just loudly vocal, his views and straight talk are aimed at many of today’s key issues.
These include parasitic leaders, the financial selfreliance and upliftment of black communities, the failure of the African elite to influence the direction of their countries, the persistence of slavery in Africa, and the “whiteness” of Obama.
This new collection of Onyeani’s speeches, articles and other writings offers eloquent and sometimes provocative food for thought.
– Julian Richfield SIBANDA AND THE DEATH’S MOTH CM Elliott
Jacana CM Elliott’s Facebook entry last July gives atmosphere from the opening paragraph, “then the middle bit which is quite long”, and concludes with: “Instead she closed the car door softly, gave freedom to her tears, and drove off into the colourless African night.”
The middle is indeed long, and complicated, more like an Amazon jungle than the sparse African landscape, but rewarding. The night may have been colourless, but the book is not, with a hint to a third book that “she” will return to haunt the lovelorn Detective Sibanda again.
Zimbabwe’s land and landsmen are full of life as Elliott brings home amid the murders the devastation of ivory poaching, teaches us a little more about Africa, and shows that the riches end up with those at the top.
– Shirley de Kock Gueller SHADES OF DESIRE Jamie Dornan & Alice Montgomery Penguin books IF your response to the name Jamie Dornan is; “Never heard of him”, then maybe Shades of Desire is not a must read for you.
An unknown a year ago, Dornan’s explosive performance in the BBC drama The Fall led to his starring role in the film trilogy Fifty Shades of Grey.
Shades of Desire is the unauthorised biography of this 33-year-old actor. From his Northern Ireland birth where his father was a prominent doctor specialising in foetal medicine, it tells of a childhood tragedy, a relationship with Keira Knightly, stints in modelling and music, and the career-changing circumstances of landing the Christian Grey role.
Hopefully Dornan’s movie career blossoms and demands a weightier look at his life.
– Julian Richfield KENYANauthor Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor’s Dust was shortlisted for the 2014 Folio Prize.
It opens on the night of Kenya’s contested general election vote in 2007, as a young man named Odidi Oganda is shot dead in a gunfight with police.
His sister, Ajany, an artist based in Brazil, returns to Nairobi to help her father bring the body back to the family home in the country’s arid north. There, they encounter Isaiah, an Englishman searching for his father.
This simple premise is the starting point for a rich exploration of Kenya’s modern history. Owuor takes us from the days of British colonial rule to the Mau Mau uprising and the recrudescence of tribal violence in the modern era. What’s striking here is the extraordinary prose. It’s a virtuoso literary performance.
– The Independent BEING old is not for sissies, and Nicci Gerrard has conjured up a wonderful character in Eleanor. She is 94-yearsold and is about to be moved out of her home by her concerned and loving family.
But Eleanor has not always been 94. Hers is a rich story of love and betrayal, of the changes in the social fabric of life between World War I and II. She employs Peter to catalogue her books and belongings, and slowly she begins to tell him the story of her life.
The language in the novel invokes a real feeling of place and sense and sensuality.
Her story proves that just because you have lived for a long time does not mean that you don’t remember the loves of your life.
It’s a book about how bringing things out into the open is a way to find healing. A powerful read, beautifully written.
– Jennifer Crocker