The Man from Beijing
Henning Mankell
The story starts in northern Sweden where the police are called to a small village. It’s winter and the police find one body which has been mauled by a wolf. Then they find the entire village has been slaughtered. We meet a judge who becomes involved as her foster parents were killed. The story moves to China in the 1800s and two peasants who are abducted and taken to California to help build the trans America railway. And finally we meet decendants of these two men. All these people are linked through China and its current economic surge. A really interesting book.
The Road
Cormac McCarthy
One of the major books of the decade. This is the world five years after an unnamed apocalyptic event. ( McCarthy has mentioned that he wrote the story after thinking about what would happen if a large meteorite struck the earth.) A father and his young son are walking from the mountains down to the sea, as the father believes they wont survive another freezing winter. The world is full of ash, there is no food as nothing will grow, and the remaining survivors are desperate. Please read the book before you see the movie, because McCarthy is a master at painting mental images.
The First Rule
Robert Crais
Robert Crais is a bit like Lee Child and dare I say this book is better than Child’s new one. Frank Meyer had been a mercenary with Joe Pike but gave it all away to be a family man. Then his home is invaded and the entire family killed. Joe Pike will not only search out the murderers but he’ll eliminate them as well. No one is toughter than Joe Pike and he’ll need to be tough in this story, because the home invaders are a gang of eastern European mafia. A great pageturner.
Tethered
Amy Mackinnon
Clara Marsh is an undertaker. She spends her solitary life among the dead, preparing their bodies and bringing them flowers from her own garden. Then a young lonely child, Trecie, comes to play in the funeral parlour and a Detective, Mike Sullivan, appears to ask Clara about a body she prepared three yars ago. It was of a young, murdered girl and it looks as though the people who killed her have something to do with Trecie. Clara will be confronted with the choice of maintaining her solitary life, or binding her life to another. Another really interesting first book.
Picture Atlas
Usborne
This is a great lift the flap picture atlas for preschoolers. The pages are board so the flaps will withstand preschool use. Each double page spread is one of the continents, and the flaps are great fun. Usborne publish brilliant preschool books, and this series is a favourite with young Hutch.
