Cramlington Book Club

Despite my protests for The Lost by Mari Hannah the group voted for The Dry already read by a couple of us and highly recommended. The book is set in the Australian countryside in the middle of a two year drought and centres around Aaron Falk, a policeman returning to his home town to attend the funeral of his childhood best friend thought to have killed his wife and young child before committing suicide. The drought and Australian outback were expertly described throughout the book although I did get a little tired of reading the line 'we're all at boiling point' and the casual references to various breeds of spiders seemed more for the reader than the actual characters. The group commented on how this may have been because Harper is English and spiders and snakes are perhaps more noticeable to an outsider, hence the references. We also discussed how the town could easily have been set in America as the farming/small town lifestyle, and its people, would easily have

The very beautiful  Beautiful Ruins  was bought by a friend for my mum for Christmas from the very lovely  Forum Books  in Corbridge as part of their mystery book range. The book comes wrapped in brown paper with a label (doubling up as a very useful bookmark later) giving a brief description of the book hidden inside. It's a brilliant way of discovering new books being a total lucky dip. This particular book was described by the label as "From 1960s Italy to modern day Hollywood - this novel brims with love and life! Bellisimo" Would you have guessed which book was awaiting? I loved the cover, its bold, it stands out, its beautiful and the description made me immediately think of another book club book -  The Affai r.  Would it be as good? It was better, by miles! So good that I actually e-mailed myself various quotes from the book so I could blog about them (very sad I know). The 'info dump' we expose ourselves to every morning when we wake up (Twitter int

Someone mentioned that the location of this book was set very close to a regular holiday destination of mine in the Highlands. Intrigued I took it as a sign when the very next day I walked into Waterstones and found it standing out cover first on a shelf. As tempted as I was, I deciding to save it until the next time the Highlands beckoned. Easter it was and just in time as a breather from Bleak House (floundering at page 315) was needed. I love "location reading" and always try to link my holiday reading to my destination. I think it brings something extra to the book and the holiday to be able to say "ooh I've just read about that". Anyway the book itself is about a triple murder in a small crafting community in 1869 (very holiday reading I know). I must confess during the first few pages I wasn't sure whether the book was fact or fiction. Having no WiFi I chose not to Google more about the book and ploughed on blind. The book is broken down into v