7/4/2023 0 Comments The vivisector![]() Here, he is torn between his vulgar side and the façade of Sydney society, exemplified by his childhood friend, art-collector Olivia Hollingrake. He evolves from a struggling young painter to an arrogant, disillusioned, financially secure artist. He is scared he will die “before he had dared light the fireworks still inside him.” Hurtle’s love of his art is all-encompassing, leading him to dissect those around him for the purposes of his work, and destroy his relationship with the prostitute Nance Lightfoot. Between the bold colours of the Australian landscape and the wealth of colour on display in Europe, Hurtle discovers his artistic values, escaping the family as a young man to pursue a career as an artist. ![]() Hurtle’s new parents alternately ignore and oppress him, while he finds human connection only in the servants and his disabled, spiky foster sister Rhoda. ![]() ![]() Plot: Hurtle Duffield is born in poverty to a large family but is removed by a wealthy couple keen for a child, happy to sweeten the deal with a little cash. ![]() “It was going to be a long trudge to the Elysian Fields.” ![]()
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![]() ![]() On arriving there for reconnaissance, however, the group starts to piece together a far broader and more dangerous game at work. Picking up a few months after Hollow of Fear(2018), this latest adventure pits Holmes and her intrepid band against an unknown blackmailer’s demands, which lead them to a French chateau. Watson, Lord Ingram, and a few characters who have appeared fleetingly in the series and another from two of Thomas’ other novels. Charlotte and her sister, Olivia, plunge into the investigation with Mrs. In the new cat-and-mouse Charlotte “Sherlock” Holmes novel, a heist becomes more complicated than Victorian England’s greatest sleuth could have predicted.Īn unexpected visitor from the British Raj leads to a new assignment for lady detective Charlotte Holmes, one that reveals layers of mystery at each step. ![]() 7/4/2023 0 Comments Case Files by Larry Verstraete![]() ![]() The RCMP hadĪ suspect, but no witnesses and not much evidence - just a few On the line was Roger Savoie, a Royal Canadian Mounted Police O’Brien was the head of Animal GeneticsĪt the Laboratory of Genomic Diversity in Frederick, Maryland. IntroductionThe phone call was a strange one, and it took Dr. On the jacket, however, forensic investigators had found ![]() What little evidence there was didn’t link Beamish directly to the crime. The suspect was Duguay’s recently paroled ex-husband, Douglas Beamish, a man with a quick temper and a history of violence. Tests showed that the blood on the jacket belonged to Duguay. Not far away was a plastic bag containing a man’s blood-soaked leather jacket. In May 1995, seven months after her disappearance, the RCMP found Duguay’s badly de- composed body in a shallow grave near the small town of North Enmore, Prince Edward Island. The case involved a missing woman - Shirley Duguay, a thirty-two-year-old mother of five. Could O’Brien and his team of genetic scientists extract cat DNA from them? Dr. ![]() The RCMP had a suspect, but no witnesses and not much evidence - just a few stray cat hairs. On the line was Roger Savoie, a Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) investigator. O’Brien was the head of Animal Genetics at the Laboratory of Genomic Diversity in Frederick, Maryland. ![]() 44 CHAPTER 2 Introduction The phone call was a strange one, and it took Dr. ![]() 7/4/2023 0 Comments Windswept annabel abbs![]() Whenever I moved, I felt as though I was on a rocking ship, that I was very drunk at the same time, so everything just swayed round and round and round. I still couldn't move because the crack on my head had affected my vestibular system, my system of balance. I spent about eight days in intensive care because I'd cracked my skull. One of my neighbors found me lying on the pavement. I had collapsed fairly close to my house. Then the next thing I knew, I was in an ambulance. Where am I? Why can't I find my house? By this stage, I was feeling very, very faint. I was walking in and out of all the houses of my neighbors and I kept getting to the front door and thinking, this isn't my door. I couldn't find my house on my own street. I couldn't recognize any of the landmarks and I didn't know where I was and I was feeling very frightened. I just feel very dizzy and some part of my vision was doing very strange things. ![]() Walking is something you can do every day, something so simple, it's easy to take for granted.Ībout eight years ago, I was at London Book Fair and I was walking home carrying lots and lots of books from the book fair. ![]() 7/4/2023 0 Comments Memory Betrayal by Deborah Ann![]() ![]() It is a novel drawn in the shadows, on the edge of sight, in the background where more the frightening characters lurk, where nightmares and dreams abound. The male characters are arguably better developed than the female, but the women are nonetheless strong presences in the novel and are probably more sophisticated elements in the story. The characters described are well introduced and consistent, even if they are not at the forefront of the action for some time. ![]() There are chilling descriptions of visions, realisations and events that may make this a book for daytime reading as they are so vivid and memorable. It features a young man whose capacity to find love with a woman changes his life and shapes the lives of those around him. This is a book that is a really powerful Victorian gothic thriller written in the faster paced style of more contemporary times. ![]() 7/4/2023 0 Comments The golden notebook review![]() ![]() Needless to say my reading experience suffered somewhat from such a long, drawn out read. So I think I first started The Golden Notebook back in September and have read eleven other books since then. I had also read about 200 pages of this 635-page book when I picked up the 1358-page War and Peace. And because I narcissistically wanted to be able to say, “oh yes, I’ve read that.”Īnd like War and Peace, The Golden Notebook was at times brilliant, and enthralling, and well, at times, a bit of a slog. And because one can’t claim to know the author until the magnum opus is read. Kind of like I did with that other, much thicker, door stop I read this year War and Peace. And of course Lessing’s 2007 Nobel Prize for Literature means that legions more know the title but not the book. So I felt I had a mission. Hard to find someone that has actually read the book. And by saying that people know the title, I mean very literally that, people know the title. ![]() But I felt like I hadn’t really read Lessing yet– The Golden Notebook is the only Lessing title people seem to know. I also enjoyed The Fifth Child, and it was so disturbing. The Summer Before The Dark I really enjoyed. Before reading The Golden Notebook I had read two other novels by Doris Lessing. ![]() ![]() ![]() Neither was the worst thing she could possibly do: fall in love with her future husband. While the rude, elusive Dante isn’t her idea of a dream partner, she agrees to their arranged marriage out of duty.Ĭraving his touch was never part of the plan. Marrying a blue-blooded Russo means opening doors that would otherwise remain closed to her new-money family. Vivian Lau is the perfect daughter and her family’s ticket into the highest echelons of high society. There’s only one problem: now that he has her…he can’t bring himself to let her go. He’ll do everything in his power to destroy the evidence and their betrothal. ![]() ![]() It doesn’t matter how beautiful or charming she is. Vivian Lau, jewelry heiress and daughter of his newest enemy. The billionaire CEO never planned to marry–until the threat of blackmail forces him into an engagement with a woman he barely knows. She’s the wife he never wanted…and the weakness he never saw coming.ĭante Russo thrives on control, both personally and professionally. ![]() 7/4/2023 0 Comments Untitled by Bethany C. Morrow![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Called back to the Vault, Elsie learns that because Dolores has reached her maximum number of Mems, she is in danger of being “reprinted,” wiping out her unique self. Now I suppose I’ll live like one,” as she struggles with her place in this strange world. ![]() But Elsie is a fully formed individual, capable of forming her own memories, the only Mem who's been allowed to live independently outside the Vault. 1,” meant to keep the memory of a car crash in 1906 from troubling her “source,” Dolores Shepherd. The story is told by a 19-year-old Mem who identifies as "Elsie," though her true designation is “Dolores Extract No. In this rendering, scientists have discovered a peculiar method of extracting memories from people and delivering them into “Mems,” half-alive creatures whose purpose is to experience the memory over and over again in a fortress called the Vault until they die. This debut novel by multigenre fabulist Morrow is a haunting exploration of memory, identity, and mortality set in a vaguely sinister alternate-reality Montreal circa 1925. A young woman’s personality is the result of a startling experimental procedure, leaving her to struggle with the question of who she really is. ![]() ![]() ![]() But when the corpses of Selena Apocada and Raj Sanjit are discovered in a nearby valley, their bodies savagely torn apart by a pack of wolves, Tana is the only one who suspects foul play. In this remote community Tana hopes to build a home for herself and her baby. ![]() A tragic event followed by a series of bad decisions has left her alone and pregnant at twenty-four, so a posting in Twin Rivers, population 320, seems ideal. In the Barren Ground is an atmospheric thriller that may please fans of thrillers and mysteries but leave romance readers wanting more.Ĭonstable Tana Larsson is looking for a fresh start. ![]() While I liked the unique setting and found the central mystery well-done, the romance portion of the book didn’t really work for me. Loreth Anne White’s latest book is set in the Barren Lands, a vast swath of sparsely inhabited region in northern Canada. ![]() ![]() The Blinding Knife by Brent Weeks - Weeks is a heckuva author, and it was great to return to his series where characters use color as their magic.Kind of brutal and a little confusing, but worth it for the payoff. Pines by Blake Crouch - A “what the heck is going on in this weird small town” story.Yet you come to root for him, and that’s the amazing part. ![]() Prince/King of Thorns by Mark Lawrence - A dark fantasy series with a completely rotten character as the protagonist.Eli Monpress series by Rachel Aaron - Good light-hearted fantasy in a quite imaginative world where every object has a living, thinking spirit attached.Books 1-5 are the core story, with 6-8 designed to be a prologue series of sorts. It’s a fascinating idea that’s coupled with cool characters and lots of surprising twists. ![]() Wool is a series of (currently) seven novels and novellas centering around a post-apocalyptic society that lives in a giant underground silo. So take these as an award or just a “things I recommend that I saw/played/read/enjoyed this year.” ![]() I haven’t even really thought it through past today, but I’d hate to break a tradition. I’m a bit crunched for time with Christmas coming up, so I don’t have the time to really sit and doodle up a cool graphic for this year’s award ceremonies here at Bio Break. ![]() |