Publication Day ~ The Crown Agent by Stephen O'Rourke

✨✨ Happy Publication Day ✨✨

Sandstone Press
7 November 2019

My thanks to the publishers for my copy of this book

A ship adrift, all hands dead. A lighthouse keeper murdered in the night. The Crown needs man to find the truth. Doctor Mungo Lyon, his reputation tarnished by the Burke & Hare scandal, and forbidden to practise as a surgeon, is the wrong man.

That’s exactly why the Crown chose him.

What did I think about it...

Having been caught up in the Burke and Hare scandal, Surgeon Mungo Lyon's reputation has been ruined, so when he is offered the opportunity to leave Edinburgh to undertake a clandestine political investigation of behalf of the British Crown he takes this unusual chance to redeem himself. However, this change in his circumstances is not without uncertainty, and Mungo soon discovers, to his cost, that the danger he finds himself in, as he uncovers a deadly secret, is even more devastating than being caught up in the Burke and Hare scandal.

The story flows well with enough excitement to keep you turning the pages and takes us from the dark and gloomy streets of nineteenth century Scotland, to the danger of a perilous sea voyage to the Caribbean, and throughout it all Mungo, and his rather surprising sidekick, get caught up in all sorts of political shenanigans.

The Crown Agent is a rollicking good historical adventure with more than enough twists and turns to keep you guessing, and even as Mungo gets caught further and further into a tight corner so the drama pulls ever tighter. This could easily be a series as the ending certainly lends itself to that possibility and it would be great fun to see Mungo, and his sidekick, return in further historical adventures.

About the Author

Stephen O’Rourke is an advocate and a Member of the Institute of Chartered Arbitrators. He formerly wrote a regular column for The Scotsman and has written for The Guardian, Caledonian Mercury and Think Scotland websites. In 2012 he won a short story competition run by The Daily Telegraph, which proved to be the basis for The Crown Agent.

Twitter @sorourke_

@sandstonepress

Blog Tour ~ The Wolves of Leninsky Prospekt by Sarah Armstrong

Jaffareadstoo is delighted to host today's final stop on the 

The Wolves of Leninsky Prospekt Blog Tour

Sandstone press
7 February 2019

My thanks to the publishers and to Ruth Killick PR for my copy of the book
and the invitation to be part of the blog tour

It’s 1973 and Martha has been sent down from Cambridge for distributing left-wing leaflets and doing no work. To escape parental disapproval, she marries her friend Kit, posted to Moscow by the diplomatic service. Kit is gay, but having a wife could keep him safe. In Moscow, Martha struggles to make sense of a difficult but fascinating new world. 

Who can she trust? Who can she even talk to? She takes Russian lessons, makes the wrong friends, becomes familiar with a strange and wonderful city, and unwittingly becomes a spy.

My thoughts..

Martha is a bit of a free spirit and when she returns home after being sent down from Cambridge her parents don't really know what to do with her. Martha solves the problem by marrying her gay friend Kit and travelling with him to Moscow. That this marriage is one of convenience suits both Martha and Kit, however, Martha finds out, to her cost, that life in Russia is very different from being in England. Her natural excitement at being in such a wonderful, but rather strange, country is hampered by the political and social restrictions which, even as a married woman, are placed upon her.

Spending time in Moscow with Martha in the Russia of the 1970s, when this story is set, is enlightening as not only does the shadier side of life emerge, but also the references of living in a place where everyone is under suspicion comes across in a story, by a different narrator, which runs like a thread throughout, and which explains the analogy to the wolves of Leninsky Prospekt.

The Wolves of Leninsky Prospekt is an interesting read and the author has done a good job of recreating this mysterious time in Russian history. There was a nice sense of time and place and I especially enjoyed reading of Martha’s exploration of the parks and woods of the city and of her dealings with some of the more shady characters who flit into and out of the story. That some of these characters aren't particularly likeable helps to add an uncomfortable atmosphere, to what is, in effect, quite a cautionary story about a bygone world.

About the Author

Sarah Armstrong is the author of The Insect Rosary (‘a brave debut’- Anne Goodwin) and The Devil in the Snow (‘an intriguing and compelling story – Liz Trenow). Her short stories have been published in magazines and anthologies, and she teaches undergraduate and postgraduate creative writing with the Open University. Sarah lives in Colchester with her husband and four children.

Twitter @sarahsiobhana

@rkpublicist

@sandstonepress

Amazon UK

Blog Tour ~ Songs by Dead Girls by Lesley Kelley

Jaffareadstoo is excited to be hosting today's stop on the Songs by Dead Girls Blog Tour

Sandstone Press
19 April 2018

My thanks to the publishers and to Ruth Killick Publicity for the inviatation to be part of the tour and my copy of the book

What's it all about...

Nobody likes the North Edinburgh Health Enforcement Team, least of all the people who work for it. An uneasy mix of seconded Police and health service staff, Mona, Bernard and their colleagues stem the spread of the Virus, a mutant strain of influenza, by tracking down people who have missed their monthly health check. 

When Scotland’s leading virologist goes missing, Mona and Paterson from the Health Enforcement Team are dispatched to London to find him. In a hot and unwelcoming city, Mona has to deal with a boss who isn’t speaking to her, placate the professor’s over-bearing assistant, and outwit the people who will stop at nothing to make sure the academic stays lost. 

Meanwhile, back in Edinburgh, Bernard is searching for a missing prostitute, while Maitland is trying to keep the chair of the Parliamentary Virus Committee from finding out quite how untidy the HET office is.

My thoughts about it...

A deadly pandemic has affected much of the population and in order to control the spread of this deadly virus, Health Enforcement Teams are employed to make sure that people attend a monthly health check. These stringent regulations are essential if the virus is to be contained and those who skip the test are hunted down.

The North Edinburgh Enforcement Team is on the case of two people who have flaunted these regulations. The investigative skills of HET operatives, Mona and Paterson, are needed in order to find the whereabouts of a leading academic who is about to miss his monthly check-up. Their undercover investigation takes them to London, where they encounter all sorts of problems. Meanwhile back in Scotland, the HET are on the trail of a missing prostitute, who may have links with the darker side of Edinburgh life.

This is a really interesting premise for a story; I especially enjoyed the dystopian feel to the narrative, particularly around the Orwellian tactics used against those individuals who missed their monthly check-ups. The double mysteries at the centre of the story are well plotted and I enjoyed the fast pace of the novel, and allowing two different sides to the story, one in London, and the other in Edinburgh, adds an interesting dynamic.

Songs by Dead Girls is now the second book in the Health of Strangers series and even though I haven’t read the first book, I was soon able to pick up the story and could follow the background reasonably well, although it took me a little while to get to understand the quirks of the central characters. The North Edinburgh Enforcement Team are an odd bunch of people, however, their lively wit and petty squabbles add an interesting dynamic to what is potentially, a dark and rather sinister working environment. That they continue to survive ,and thrive, in this setting is testament to the author’s skill in bringing this dystopian world to life in a lively and entertaining way.

About the Author

Lesley Kelly has worked in the public and voluntary sectors for the past twenty years, dabbling in poetry and stand-up comedy along the way. She has won several writing competitions, including the Scotsman’s Short Story award in 2008. Her debut novel, A Fine House in Trinity was long-listed for the William McIlvanney award in 2016. She lives in Edinburgh.

Website

Twitter @lkautho #songsbydeadgirls

@sandstonepress @rkbookpublicist

Amazon UK

Blog Tour ~ A Message from the Other Side by Moira Forsyth

Jaffareadstoo is delighted to host today's stop on 

A Message from The Other Side Blog Tour

Sandstone Press
July 2017

What's it all about...

When Catherine moves several hundred miles away from her sister, Helen says, ‘Phone calls aren’t enough’, but they make it easier to edit the truth. Helen can dismiss Gilbert and his enchanted Factory as ‘weird’ when she’s never met him, and Catherine thinks Helen foolish for loving the unreliable and dangerous Joe. Neither sees the perils concealed in what they have not told each other, or guesses at the sinister connection between their separate lives. A Message from the Other Side is a novel about love and marriage, but even more about hatred and the damage people do to each other in the most ordinary of families.

What did I think about it...

When Catherine Sinclair receives an mysterious and unsettling telephone call from someone who has been missing for years, it opens up a whole host of memories, not just for her, but also for her sister Helen. What then follow is the effect that this phone call has on the equilibrium of a group of people who are unsettled by their memories of the past.

The story flips between time frames and follows the lives of the two sisters, Catherine and Helen, which gives us an insight into their tangled relationships, both with each other, and also with the men in their lives.

The story took me a little while to get into as I had to keep flipping back and forth in order to get the characters and their connections with each other clear in my mind, but once I had these in place then the story started to work more clearly.

The author is good at character development and in A Message from the Other Side she weaves an interesting, and suspenseful, family story about the complexities of sibling relationships, especially when those relationships are also bound by uncertainties about each other's romantic attachments.

Overall, this is a quietly perceptive story which allows the complexities of relationships to unfold in interesting detail.

About the author

Moira Forsyth is the author of four previous novels and many short stories and poems published in anthologies and magazines. She worked for many years in Education, including teaching in a Young Offenders’ Institution in the North of England, then latterly in Highland as the strategic lead for government initiatives to assist young people to move on successfully from school. She has been with Sandstone Press since its inception in 2002.

More can be found on Moira's website by clicking here

Follow on Twitter @moira_forsyth

The Message from The Other Side ebook deal is currenly just £1 on Amazon, iBooks and the Kobo Store.

Click on the links for more details:

https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/a-message-from-the-other-side

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Message-Other-Side-Moira-Forsyth-ebook/dp/B01MU2SGDI

My thanks to Diana at Ruth Killick Publicity for her kind invitation

 to be part of this blog tour.

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Blog Tour ~ Making Space by Sarah Tierney

 Jaffareadstoo is delighted to be hosting a stop on the Making Space Blog Tour

What's it all about...

Miriam is twenty-nine: temping, living with a flatmate who is no longer a friend, and still trying to find her place in life. She falls in love with Erik after he employs her to clear out his paper-packed home. They are worlds apart: he is forty-five, a successful photographer and artist and an obsessive hoarder still haunted by the end of his marriage. Miriam has an unsuccessful love life and has just got rid of most of her belongings. Somehow, they must find a way to reach each other.

What did I think about it...

Miriam seems to be a lost soul, struggling to live her life to her full potential. She lives with a flat mate she doesn't like very much and who seems to treat Miriam with complete disregard. Miriam's unsatisfactory work life leaves her feeling even more bereft, that is, until she comes into contact with Erik, a man who is as lost as she is, and who is struggling with his own problems which, at times, seem insurmountable.

This was a really astute look into the way we behave as human beings. How circumstances can affect the way we act, and of the coping mechanisms we choose to protect us from further hurt and pain. There is an acute realism to the narrative which is both bittersweet and tender and which gives such a sensitive look at life and love and which reiterates that we can only control our lives to a certain point, after which fate takes over.

I loved both Miriam and Erik from the start and felt both their isolation and their uniqueness, which comes across in the shrewd attention to detail and in the gentle way the author allows their combined stories to unfold.

I particularly enjoyed the Manchester ❤ references, a proud city I know and love, and of course, Morecambe fish and chips, who can resist that!

Making Space is undoubtedly a very confident and beautifully written first novel by a talented writer who I look forward to reading more from in the future.

Best Read with...Morecambe Bay fish and chips, straight out of the wrapper and tangy with salt and vinegar..

About the author

Sarah Tierney is a graduate of the MA in Novel Writing at Manchester University, and her short story, ‘Five Miles Out’, was made into a short film by the acclaimed director Andrew Haigh. Sarah has worked as a journalist, editor and copywriter. She lives in Derbyshire with her husband and daughter.

Follow on Twitter @sarahjtierney #MakingSpace

Published by @SandstonePress April 2017

My thanks to Keara at Sandstone Press for the invitation to be part of the blog tour

 and for my review copy of Making Space

Available on Kindle  promotion  at £1.00 until this weekend.

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Blog Tour ~ The Devil in the Snow by Sarah Armstrong

Jaffareadstoo is delighted to host today's stop on 

The Devil in the Snow Blog Tour

 

What's the book about ..

Sandstone Press
16 February 2017

All Shona wants is a simple life with her young son, and to get free of Maynard, the ex who’s still living in the house. When her teenage daughter goes missing, she’s certain Maynard is the culprit. Her mother, Greta, is no help as she’s too obsessed with the devil. Her Uncle Jimmy is fresh out of prison and has never been entirely straight with her. Then there’s the shaman living in her shed. Shona soon discovers that the secrets she buried are as dangerous as the family curse haunting her mother.

As part of the book's blog tour, I'm pleased to be able to share a tantalising extract of The Devil in the Snow with you today...

Shona always felt relieved when she’d left Rob to get back to his life. She could feel herself slipping into the role of wife, rather than lover, if she stayed too long. The state of his room did make her feel better about her own house, untidy as it was. She tried to feel a little guilty for not having picked up shoes or emptied the dishwasher or, as Cerys kept pointing out, having sorted the last three weeks’ worth of washing. It would all keep. It would all need doing again tomorrow, whether or not she did it today.

She checked one last time that she had her mobile and keys, threw her leg over the bike and paused to unwind her wool scarf a little. Outside was warmer than inside, although the sky was still brutally clear. She decided to cycle the long way so she could go flat out on the fields by the school. Here, on the roads, she cycled slowly, enjoying the mild chill of the wind. There were leaves gathering in the gutters and a sense of bonfires to come, yet the schools had only just started their year. Only the week before honeysuckle had tingled in the air. 

She turned into Victoria Road and stopped pedalling, putting one foot down. That boy was there again, where she’d last seen him a couple of months ago and two or three times before that. Dominic? That sounded right to her. He’d said something about the 1960s which she hadn’t quite understood. She had always regretted not telling anyone he was there. Not that she knew who to tell, but he was, maybe, sixteen – or older? It was hard to tell. 

The bike wheels clicked around as she slowly coasted towards him. He didn’t look up. He was dressed in old clothes again that looked slightly too big for him, jeans and only a T-shirt. His hands were placed, palms upward, by his side, and his knees bent up as he leaned against a tree. As she got closer, she could see goose pimples on his arms and his bare feet buried slightly into the soil.

‘Hey,’ she said. ‘Are you all right?’

He opened his eyes. ‘I’ve been waiting for you.’

‘Have you?’

He nodded. ‘I’ve been waiting.’ He held his hands close to his face. ‘I think I’ve been here a while.’

‘Why are you waiting?’ she asked. 

He put his hands back by his sides.

‘Is there someone I can call for you, let them know where you are? It’s Dominic, isn’t it?’

‘I have been waiting for you. I have to get my instructions.’

Shona waited to hear what they were but he carefully placed his hands on his knees and his head dropped forward. She rested her bike against the tree and crouched down next to him. There were bruises on his cheeks, cuts on the backs of his wrists, his eyelashes surprisingly long and dark. 

‘Do you think that I might be the one to give you instructions?’ she asked.

Dominic lifted his face. ‘I think I need to stay with you.’ 

Shona bit down the automatic ‘no’. He needed help and she had to help him. It had to be a ‘yes’. Just until she found out what kind of help he needed.

She said, ‘I think you could come home with me for a little while to warm up. And we can decide what to do.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It is you. Meghan sent me to tell you that there’s a message for you, when you’re ready.’

Shona swallowed. ‘Meghan?’

He nodded and she waited, but he didn’t say anything more. Meghan. How would he even know her name?

She stood up and held out her hand to him but he raised himself from the missing paving stone where the tree grew. As he got up he grabbed a handful of soil and put it in his pocket. 

He pointed back the way she’d come. ‘I suppose you don’t want to go the quickest way. Past his house. He might be looking.’

She looked back down the road and back to him. ‘Have you been watching me, Dominic?’

‘So many people are watching you.’ 

His hazel eyes blinked once and he smiled. She shuddered. She didn’t want to know what he meant by that.

About the Author

Sarah lives in Essex with her husband and four children. Her short stories have been published in magazines and anthologies, and she teaches creative writing for the Open University.

Follow Sarah on Twitter at @sarahsiobhana

My thanks to the author and Keara at Sandstone Press for sending me a copy of The Devil in the Snow and for the invitation to be part of this blog tour.

Blog tour runs 13th - 18th February 

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Review ~ The English Daughter by Maggie Wadey

Sandstone Press
2016

A bit of blurb..

As a child I was aware of my mother being different from my father and his family, and that her difference was somehow connected with her being Irish, but I knew almost nothing of her youth and upbringing. In the year or so before she died, she did begin to talk to me about her past. The first sequence of the book is based on those childhood memories. Only after my mother’s death do I go to Tipperary and there I begin to discover another story, the life she never told me about.

My thoughts about the book..

After her mother's death, the author returns to her mother's Tipperary birthplace, and  there she learns about a life she never knew had existed. She always thought that her mother was different in upbringing from her father, but Maggie never realised just how much her mother's life had been influenced by her Irish childhood.

The author writes well and with great compassion about her mother's life and it is obvious that she is very competent in putting a story together. Part biography and part social history, The English Daughter is a compassionate study of what life was like in rural Ireland during the early part of the twentieth century and with great insight the author succeeds in bringing her mother's story alive.

It's strange, isn't it, that only when we have lost someone do we feel compelled to go back over their lives, sadly, when they are no longer in a position to recount their story for themselves. I think that Maggie Wadey has more than done justice to her mother's story and for that she should feel justifiably proud of herself. 

Best Read With ...Irish Soda bread, liberally spread with butter and a drop of Poitín..

About the Author

Maggie Wadey is a novelist and screenwriter. Her childhood was spent in England,  Egypt , Cyprus and a Sussex boarding school, After a brief time as a model she read philosophy at University College London. Amongst her screenplays are adaptations of Mansfield Park, the Buccaneers, the Yellow Wallpaper and the children's novel Stig of the Dump . She lives in East London with her husband.

My thanks to Diana at Ruth Killick Publicity for my copy of this book.

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