Paula Longhurst's Blog, page 18
June 11, 2019
Recursion, Blake Crouch
The new novel from the author of 'Dark Matter' delivers a mind bending concept that will keep you awake at night long after the final page.
2007: Desperate to reverse the Alzheimer’s disease ravaging her mother’s brain, neuroscientist Helena Smith is about to lose her funding when billionaire Marcus Slade steps in with money, facilities and an NDA. He and a small team build the device but it doesn’t work the way Helena envisaged. When Slade goes too far with a test subject Helena tries to shut down the experiment and again she fails...
2018: Det Barry Sutton is attempting to stop a suicidal woman who claims her child has been ‘erased’. He lost his teenage daughter in a hit and run in 2007 but he’s sure the woman is suffering from FMS ( false memory syndrome) and his daughter is alive, he remembers saving Meghan and seeing her die...
April 2019: The world is on an infinite loop to destruction and only Barry and Helena can save it.
2007: Desperate to reverse the Alzheimer’s disease ravaging her mother’s brain, neuroscientist Helena Smith is about to lose her funding when billionaire Marcus Slade steps in with money, facilities and an NDA. He and a small team build the device but it doesn’t work the way Helena envisaged. When Slade goes too far with a test subject Helena tries to shut down the experiment and again she fails...
2018: Det Barry Sutton is attempting to stop a suicidal woman who claims her child has been ‘erased’. He lost his teenage daughter in a hit and run in 2007 but he’s sure the woman is suffering from FMS ( false memory syndrome) and his daughter is alive, he remembers saving Meghan and seeing her die...
April 2019: The world is on an infinite loop to destruction and only Barry and Helena can save it.
The Last House Guest, Megan Miranda
Avery Greers parent’s death in a car wreck left her broken and feral; Sadie Loman saved her. Avery, a Littleport Maine native and Sadie, pampered but smart rich girl are more like sisters than best friends.
The Lomans own most of the rentals in this quaint seaside town and Avery manages those properties for them but Sadie’s apparent suicide drives a wedge between the Lomans of this world and the locals and over a year later as a memorial for Sadie looms, Avery stumbles across an even dirtier secret about her hometown; a secret that may have gotten her best friend murdered.
The Lomans own most of the rentals in this quaint seaside town and Avery manages those properties for them but Sadie’s apparent suicide drives a wedge between the Lomans of this world and the locals and over a year later as a memorial for Sadie looms, Avery stumbles across an even dirtier secret about her hometown; a secret that may have gotten her best friend murdered.
May 14, 2019
If She Wakes, Michael Koryta
It starts with a distracted driver. He ploughs into two people killing one and putting Hammel College student Tara Beckley into a coma.
Abby Kaplan is the insurance investigator sent to assess the scene and she’s convinced the accident was staged because Abby is, was, a professional stunt driver.
Tara, locked inside her own body can see and hear what’s going on in her hospital room. And she knows that she and her family are in danger from a baby faced assassin who has already left a trail of bodies and is targeting Abby.
Never Game, Jeffery Deaver
“Anything you can do to find Fee, please!”
Frank Mulliner’s daughter Sophie has gone missing, the cops tag her as a runaway and so Frank’s offering a $10,000 reward for her safe return. Enter Colter Shaw the tracker son of a reclusive survivalist family. Soon Colter’s in deep, with trigger happy gamers, silicon valley tech titans and with the cops, who think he might’ve kidnapped Sophie himself. Colter realizes that someone is bringing the video game ‘Whispering Man’ into real life. There are ten levels, Sophie Mulliner was level one…
Frank Mulliner’s daughter Sophie has gone missing, the cops tag her as a runaway and so Frank’s offering a $10,000 reward for her safe return. Enter Colter Shaw the tracker son of a reclusive survivalist family. Soon Colter’s in deep, with trigger happy gamers, silicon valley tech titans and with the cops, who think he might’ve kidnapped Sophie himself. Colter realizes that someone is bringing the video game ‘Whispering Man’ into real life. There are ten levels, Sophie Mulliner was level one…
May 8, 2019
Exhalation, Ted Chiang
This collection of the four time Hugo (and Nebula and Locus) award winner’s short stories are – as always – thought provoking and intelligent. He explores a mysterious portal that comes with a caveat, the legal rights of AIs, a talking sentient non-human earth species, parallel futures, language, free will, religion and robotic nannies, and more!
April 30, 2019
Invited, Jennifer McMahon
Hartsboro is a world away from suburban Connecticut. Nate and Helen have given up their teaching jobs to build their dream home in the countryside. To the residents of Hartsboro they’re ‘flatlanders’, to their young neighbour Olive they’re ruining her treasure hunting and to one former resident they, Helen especially, are a conduit into the town’s dark past. A past Helen seems determined to unearth, the legend of Hattie Breckenridge, who back in 1924 was hanged, as a witch.
April 22, 2019
A Woman of No Importance, Sonia Purnell
Ever heard the name Virginia Hall? No? Neither had I until I read this book.
Virginia Hall was an amazing woman but she carried out her operations without a military rank and sometimes in the face of less experienced 'superiors' who thought that war was just a game; their womanizing and lax security almost led to her downfall several times.
Virginia was one of first SOE agents sent into occupied France during WWII. Hall was American but the only diplomatic work the US could find for her was typing and filing so she offered herself to the Brits. Hall, who had the added problem of a wooden leg was suddenly in her element, posing as a Western journalist she filed stories from Paris for the New York Post and quietly set up several of the strongest resistance networks in SOE history.
Even after her cover was blown she managed to escape to Spain across the Pyrenees and after retraining in the U.K as a radio operator she re-entered France to organize a campaign of deadly guerrilla warfare and sabotage targeting divisions of German troops who would otherwise have been headed to Normandy.
Virginia Hall was an amazing woman but she carried out her operations without a military rank and sometimes in the face of less experienced 'superiors' who thought that war was just a game; their womanizing and lax security almost led to her downfall several times.
Virginia was one of first SOE agents sent into occupied France during WWII. Hall was American but the only diplomatic work the US could find for her was typing and filing so she offered herself to the Brits. Hall, who had the added problem of a wooden leg was suddenly in her element, posing as a Western journalist she filed stories from Paris for the New York Post and quietly set up several of the strongest resistance networks in SOE history.
Even after her cover was blown she managed to escape to Spain across the Pyrenees and after retraining in the U.K as a radio operator she re-entered France to organize a campaign of deadly guerrilla warfare and sabotage targeting divisions of German troops who would otherwise have been headed to Normandy.
April 9, 2019
The Last, Hanna Jameson
Twenty people marooned in a Swiss hotel at the end of the world as they know it. One of them could be a killer.
London, Scotland, Berlin, Washington DC and other major cities, vaporized in a flash. No electricity, no internet, winter drawing in, tensions rising amongst the survivors. In an attempt to hold on to his humanity, historian Jon Keller begins to document the stories of his fellow guests and with fellow American, the volatile student Tomi Harkaway, investigates the murder of a little girl found floating in a water tank on the hotel's roof.
For fans of Station Eleven and Dog Stars.
London, Scotland, Berlin, Washington DC and other major cities, vaporized in a flash. No electricity, no internet, winter drawing in, tensions rising amongst the survivors. In an attempt to hold on to his humanity, historian Jon Keller begins to document the stories of his fellow guests and with fellow American, the volatile student Tomi Harkaway, investigates the murder of a little girl found floating in a water tank on the hotel's roof.
For fans of Station Eleven and Dog Stars.
April 2, 2019
Save Me From Dangerous Men, S.A. Lelchuk
Nikki Griffin, bookseller by day, badass by night. Nikki owns a bookstore but her PI work quite often involves man hunting. Men who used fists instead of words. Nikki makes sure that they get exactly what they dished out. She’s very persuasive, she’s also in court ordered therapy. A new assignment, tailing a tech company employee suspected of leaking secrets leads Nikki into a run in with the FBI and pitches her headfirst into a nightmare situation where her ass kicking skills are going to come in very handy.
N.B. This is going to be a series!
Lights All Night Long, Lydia Fitzpatrick
Russian exchange student Ilya is an enigma to the Louisiana family who are hosting him for a summer. In their land of Super Walmarts, free refills and Megachurches they can’t grasp what he left behind. The biting cold small refinery town of Berlozhniki, the shared rooms, the teacher who pushed him to succeed and her policeman husband. The local oligarch, whose money made Ilya’s trip to the States possible and his older drug-addicted brother Vlad, who is in prison for multiple murders; crimes Ilya is sure he didn’t commit.
Even from America, Ilya is determined to free his brother. It was their dream to come to America, together. Forging a connection with the Mason family’s oldest daughter, Sadie (who has secrets of her own). Ilya, Sadie and Sadie’s cousin start to track down the only foreigner who was in Berlozhniki at the same times the murders occurred, he has to be the real killer. Vlad left Ilya the evidence he needs to clear him, but will he hear it in time?
