RLB’s weekly recommendations
The eagerly anticipated follow up to Sarah Perry’s award winning ‘Essex Serpent’ has finally hit the shelves and her new novel is a very different kind of tale. Darker and disturbingly atmospheric it is a gothic chiller of rare grace and power. It opens in Prague where Helen Franklin, lonely and remorseful, leads a sad … Continue reading Book of the Week, October 6th 2018
In 1940, aged just 18 and recently orphaned, Juliet Armstrong is recruited by MI5. Her initial work is boringly secretarial, transcribing the secretly recorded meetings of British Nazi sympathisers but before long she is sent out to infiltrate these pro Hitler activists. The unfolding story of Juliet’s wartime years are spliced between her very different … Continue reading Book of the Week, September 29th 2018
Home to Essex girls and Basildon Man, our county has suffered from unfair stereotyping as a place of fake tans, boy racers, chavs and bling. Part of a long-term project, ‘Radical Essex’ is a book which overturns that warped view of our county. For Essex has always been a place of new ideas, pioneering communities, … Continue reading Book of the Week, September 22nd 2018
Boosted by the popular tv series, DI Jimmy Perez has become one of the country’s favourite detectives as he confronts the criminal underworld in the beautiful isolated landscapes of the Shetland Isles. Wild Fire is the eighth and final novel in the Shetland series and it opens with an English family, recently moved up from … Continue reading Book of the Week, September 15th 2018
Anyone starting to explore their family tree has to be prepared for a surprise or two but it’s not often that a ghost turns up when researching the ancestors. This is what happens to Ruth when she returns to Edinburgh to sort out the family home after the death of her father. Inside a box … Continue reading Book of the Week, September 8th 2018
This is a collection of 366 nature poems for children – one for every day of the year, including leap years. The poems range across all styles and ages from William Blake and Shakespeare through to current poet laureate, Carol Anne Duffy and rasta dub poet, Benjamin Zephaniah. There are poems of the sea and … Continue reading Book of the Week, September 1st 2018