The Looking Glass House

Readers who love Alice in Wonderland will delight in this fictional telling of the relationship between young Alice Liddell and Christ Church mathematics tutor Charles Dodgson, who would eventually publish under the pen name Lewis Carroll.

The Looking Glass House is told through the eyes of Mary Prickett, governess to Alice and her sisters. Mary is a real person in history but much of her narrative is fictional. Mary aspires to an increase in station, one she hopes to gain from her association with the Liddell family, the most important family in Oxford.

The role of governess quickly proves limited and tedious. Her charges are unappreciative, her life is bland and her suitor Mr Wilson is much less than she desires and feels she deserves.

Mr Dodgson gradually becomes part of the family and develops a close relationship with Alice. Mary looks at the educated, cultured young teacher with different eyes, mistaking his eagerness to be included in Liddle family occasions as an expression of his interest in herself.

Mr Dodgson is fascinated by young children and in particular Alice. He takes her photo, writes her letters professing his affection and lavishes her with attention. One lazy afternoon on a boat trip down the river, Alice demands a story.

“Alice,’ he said. His voice was unsure. “Alice… Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting on the riverbank and of having nothing to do.”

Mary sabotages the friendship by presenting it in an unsavoury light to Mrs Liddell and Charles and Alice are separated. Charles focuses on his stories and the rest is literary history.

Vanessa Tait is Alice Liddell’s granddaughter and provides a section at the end of story explaining what is fact and what is fiction. The two are cleverly and closely woven together as Vanessa had access to family letters and oral history in addition to public references. The fiction has a deliciously believable flavour.

I found the issue of Dodgson’s relationship with Alice thought provoking. It came under scrutiny at the time and led to Mrs Liddell ending his relationship with Alice and her family. While this was portrayed as the result of Mary’s rumor mongering and that the affections was excessive rather than inappropriate, I found myself wondering.

In the summary explanation, Vanessa Tait notes: The gossip at the time in Oxford and the tradition in my family too, was that Dodgson was too fond of Alice. But she decides based on her research that Dodgson’s intentions were not romantic or otherwise but “that does not mean is was not in love with her in his own way.”

I felt visibly relieved that the fairy tale was still intact.

The Looking Glass House is an entertaining read and lovers of historical fiction will thoroughly enjoy it. Fans of Alice in Wonderland will enjoy it even more

Reviewed by Sandy Fussell

Title: The Looking Glass House

Author: Vanessa Tait

Publisher:  Allen & Unwin (Corvus)

Publication Date: August 2015
RRP: $39.99 

Format: Paperback

Type: Adult fiction

Crooked Leg Road

This mystery-adventure comes from the author of The Tunnels of Tacoma, which won the 2013 Davitt Award. Four friends - Kitty, David, Andrea and Martin, get caught up in a series of misunderstandings and mysterious events. They take on the role of detectives to solve a complex mystery, just as the election of a new premier draws closer.

Andrea believes she is being followed by the foreign men loitering around David’s house. When David disappears, his grandfather claims he’s gone interstate to visit relatives the group has never heard about. Determined to discover what has happened to their friend, Andrea, Kitty and Martin find themselves unprepared for what they encounter.

There is a new boy at school whom Kitty befriends. Skender is secretive and evasive. What is he hiding, and can he be connected to David’s disappearance?

Meanwhile other mysteries unfold. Debates in class have ignited rumours that their school will be closed down and the seaside land developed if the new premier has his way. Who is the real main candidate in this election, and how far will he go to get chosen?

The group set out to solve the mystery. But there are secrets, threats, dangers, and unexpected outcomes to face before all their questions are answered.

This novel is terrific reading for the 10+ age group. It’s full of surprises, twists and turns; where things aren’t what they first seem and neither are the people.

Reviewed by Anastasia Gonis

Title: Crooked Leg Road

Author: Jennifer Walsh

Publisher:  Allen& Unwin

Publication Date: April 2014

Format: Paperback

ISBN: 9781743316931

Type: Children's Fiction Mystery/Adventure

Stella Makes Good

by Lisa Heidke

Allen and Unwin. Adult Fiction, Australian. Paperback RRP $29.99

Stella is happily separated from her husband. He has moved out and living with a new partner. Stella has the children and the house and everything is perfect.

Having a drink with her best friends, Carly and Jesse, at the local pub begins as an innocent catch up but ends with Carly and Stella discovering what the supposedly ordinary suburban neighbours get up to behind closed doors. All quite a giggle until a face in the crowd seems familiar.

Carly and Stella are torn between protecting their friend, Jesse, or revealing to her that, maybe, her life is all a lie. When all gets too much, Jesse seems to know the answer… but is it the right one?

One night changes everything for all three women. Carly starts to look at her own marriage and her and her husband’s fidelity. Stella reassesses her life and maybe Mike, the wonderful single doctor, is just what she needs, or is she waiting for the fall? Jesse is having trouble keeping her overworked husband happy at home and keeping herself sane. Let’s have another Chardy…

This is a funny but frank and honest look at life, and what we make of it. There is danger, excitement, suspense and romance. In the end do we really want to know the truth?

I read Stella Makes Good in a single day. I was swept up in the drama surrounding the three women and could easily relate to all of them. My problem with this book is that it was too short and I wanted more. I will now search out more of Heidke’s novels.

http://lisaheidke.com/

The Proper Care and Maintenance of Friendship

by Lisa Verge Higgins

Allen and Unwin. Adult Other. Paperback RRP $27.99

Reviewer - Barbara Brown

Four girls, friends since high school. All now comfortable in their own worlds. They meet up when they can. But then Rachel Braun dies. The daredevil of the group, her death is a surprise but not completely unexpected. After all, she did spend her life travelling the world for the next thrill – jumping out of planes, off mountains and buildings.

The three that are left behind each receive a letter from the grave asking them each to do one small favour. The stay-at-home busy housewife/mum Kate is asked to jump out of a plane. Easier said than done, since Kate has a fear of heights. But when Kate lands on terra firma in front of the two remaining friends her life takes a big jump as well.

Sarah is an international relief worker/nurse living in a backwater town in Africa helping the locals survive against disease, bandits, starvation and the government. Her task seems simple and something she has longed to do. She is requested to search the world for her one true love. With the help of her friends, Sarah confronts the past which will allow her to continue with the future.

Jo, the advertising mogul, once voted ‘least likely to breed’, is given a request that she is positive has been a mistake. Not only is it wrong but how could Jo, the girl who grew up in foster homes and was never really loved by anyone, care for and rear Rachel’s seven-year-old daughter?

Rachel, it seems, really didn’t know what she was thinking when she wrote these three friends’ their letters… or could Rachel see past what Kate, Sarah and Jo are too blind to acknowledge?

The Proper Care and Maintenance of Friendship has been put on the top of one of my favourite stories to read. A wonderful story that I did not want to end.

http://www.lisavergehiggins.com/

Vinnie’s War

by David McRobbie

Allen and Unwin. Australian, Children’s Fiction. Paperback RRP $15.99

Guest Reviewer - Anastasia Gonis

Hitler’s first air raid hits London just as children are being sent away to the country as public evacuees. Vinnie is amongst them. Or

phaned at 11 years old, he was allocated by welfare to a sterile and emotionless home environment. Vinnie secretly worked at the local pub. Befriended by the pub owners and Isaac, a Jewish refugee, he got a taste of the laughter and warmth that had been missing from his life. He learnt about music and it became an integral part of his life. But those temporary joys ended with his evacuation.

Vinnie, siblings Kathleen and Joey, and Dobbs, all travel, arrive and stay close at Netterfold where they are billeted out to families. Vinnie goes to the ageing but aristocratic Miss Armstrong who initially remains unseen. But he is content to be enveloped in the kindness and caring of the housekeeper.
Vinnie is always warring with someone or something in his search for a place to belong. In Netterfold he finds himself in a more confronting war than the one he’d escaped. This war is declared by the town’s children who see the evacuees as usurpers to their established way of life. They bully and ridicule the newcomers who also have to cope with separation from family, home, and everything dear and familiar.

Rationing becomes everyone’s way of life. Others find rorting the system and using children to their advantage, another alternative to surviving the austere measures enforced by the war effort. But Vinnie’s life is transformed when Miss Armstrong turns out to be more than he had dared hope. As the war ends, he realises that he is not who he was, that he has found his place in the world.

The ‘Afterward’ allows the reader into the writer’s life as a child during the war years. These experiences were the starting block for this book; a book about displacement and separation, about war and its casualties which were more than the wounded. It is a book about strength and courage; about compromise and community.

Follow the Money

by Peter Corris

Allen and Unwin. Australian, Crime, Mystery. Paperback RRP $29.99

Guest Reviewer – Ian Brown

Peter Corris has been writing about P.I. Cliff Hardy for a long time although this is the first Cliff Hardy novel I have read. Follow the Money, is set in Sydney. Cliff has lost his P.I. license and all his money thanks to his unscrupulous financial advisor. The advisor has disappeared, presumed dead, but there have been reports of him sighted.

Cliff has been asked by a lawyer to find the advisor and Cliff’s money. He manages to get bashed, shot at as he chases the money.

As a first time Hardy read this was a great place to start. Corris has created a truly likeable character. The plot has plenty of twists, lots of action, and set in the seed underbelly of Sydney.

The Reading Stack is a big fan of Peter Corris and has done several reviews of his works. In 2007 The Big Score, in 2008 Blood Brothers and Open File.

http://www.petercorris.net/

Odd and the Frost Giants

by Neil Gaiman

Allen and Unwin. Children Fiction. Hardback RRP $22.99

This freezing cold Viking tale complete with Norse gods and a trip to Asgard tells the story of Odd, a young crippled boy.

Life is not easy for Odd. His father was killed in an accident and his mother has remarried Fat Elfred, who is not interested in a crippled stepson.

Odd spends most of his time in the woods. He loves the warm seasons and waits for winter to pass. But this time it goes on forever.

The Frost Giants have invaded Asgard and banished the gods – Thor, Loki and Odin to Midgard where humanity lives. When Odd saves a bear, a fox and an eagle he finds himself caught in the struggle to free the world from winter.

Can a crippled boy be any help to three powerful gods? Can he return the hammer that is beyond even Thor’s mighty reach?

With Odd and the Frost Giants, Neil Gaiman has ice-carved a new adventure in Norse mythology.

Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book was reviewed in Issue 14 of The Reading Stack and Instructions in July 2010.

http://www.neilgaiman.com/

Blood Ninja

by Nick Lake

Allen and Unwin. Young Adult. Paperback, RRP $15.99

Set in feudal Japan, this exciting adventure has all the action readers would expect in a tale of samurai and ninja. With a twist. These ninjas are also vampires – which is surprisingly good when explaining many of the supernormal skills attributed to the ninja.

This is a classic tale of a young noble boy, Taro, delivered for safe keeping to a poor fishing village family. He grows up unaware of his true heritage, happily helping his parents and spending time with his best friend Hiro.

Until the ninjas arrive.

 

Taro is rescued by Shusaku, a samurai who has become a vampire ninja. Taro, Hiro and Shusaku are now on the run. Taro must learn the ways of both ninja and samurai to survive. And perhaps even harder than that, when he finally discovers who his father is, he must decide where his loyalties lie.

Blood Ninja has all the elements of a great action historical adventure. With vampires!

The Reading Stack reviewed Nick Lake's book, The Secret Ministry of Frost, in July 2009.

The Dead of Winter

by Chris Priestley

Allen and Unwin. Young Adult, Horror. Paperback RRP $22.99


Guest Reviewer - Anastasia Gonis

Michael is left orphaned and desolate after his mother’s death, his father having died during the war saving the wealthy Sir Stephen Clarendon of Hawton Mere, who has now become Michael’s legal guardian. The boy reluctantly sets off to spend the Christmas holidays at the distant mansion and meet the man who lives instead of his father.

But Michael’s guardian is of no comfort to the grieving child. The inhuman treatment experienced in his youth at the hands of his father, has left him an emotionally damaged man living in a world of his own suffering.

Hawton Mere is a bleak and isolated place; a dark and foreboding house set alone in an endless moor. Michael already feels he has ‘walked into a fog of mystery and whispers’ when he awakes the day after his arrival, still preoccupied by the ghost of a mysterious woman seen by the road.

But something more threatening than the ghostly woman soon makes contact with the boy. It has a presence and a breath, but no body, and carries horror incorporated with it. The countless secrets that Hawton Mere and its inhabitants harbour magnify Michael’s fears. Even the actual building seems to pulse with a life of its own. Learning that he has inherited his father’s abilities to see and hear the dead makes things worse. Michael is determined to find answers to his questions and the reasons for the existence of the terrors housed within the mansion.

Priestley has created another dark, riveting read to follow the outstanding Tales of Terror from the Tunnel’s Mouth. The story is fast-paced and keeps the reader on the edge of their seat. The book is suitable for mature teenage readers that prefer edgy prose accompanied by a fast heartbeat, and who are not afraid of the dark.

The Reading Stack reviewed Tales of Terror from the Tunnel's Mouth in May 2010.

http://chrispriestley.blogspot.com/

the body in the clouds

by Ashley Hay

Allen and Unwin. Australian, Fiction, History. Paperback RRP $29.99


Three men, three different times, one thing in common – Dawes Point in Sydney and what they all see from that one special spot.

Second Lieutenant William Dawes arrives in New South Wales in the late 1700s ready to explore the sky from a world away from the cultured life in England. Here in Sydney Cove there are tales of savages and animals that are larger than alligators. But Dawes sits on an outcrop and dreams of his observatory where he can lie and watch the magnificent and beautiful bright blue and white sky so different from the dreary grey colours on the other side of the globe.

Ted Parker, a young man looking for work in the 1930s, dreaming of becoming a part of the construction of the magnificent structure that will soon become the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Ted sits near Dawes Point and watches with envy as the workers climbing all over the metal curves. Ted soon finds a job on the barge underneath the workers – he is happy, he is part of the ‘team’. But he still dreams of sitting on top of the world.

Dan Kopek is an expat from Australia working as a banker in London. He hasn’t been home for over ten years. It is the 21st century and the other side of the world isn’t that far anymore but Dan finds it hard to get home – to see his mother, his neighbour, best friend Charlie and Charlie’s grandfather who was Charlie’s only living relative and who also took Dan in as well. Charlie is a famous photographer and she has a special spot for the Sydney Harbour Bridge, because that’s where her grandfather flew, the only man to survive falling from the bridge whilst it was being constructed. Dan sees Charlie’s photograph advertising Sydney in the London Tube and feels it may be time to go home.

All three men are attached to Dawes Point. And what they all see - is something or someone falling from the sky. Is it part of their belief in what is real and what isn’t or is it that all three men have a bond with each other through time.

The body in the clouds is a wonderful story, a little bit of history, a little bit of a love story - with a surprising twist at the end.

http://www.ashleyhay.com.au/

The City

by Armin Greder

Allen and Unwin. Australian, Picture Book. Hardcover RRP $29.99

Reviewer – Sandy Fussell

I found The City a difficult book to review because reviews need words and when I closed the cover I found myself speechless and wordless.


This is the story of a mother and child. The world is a scary place and it is human nature to protect our young ones. But where do we draw the line? To learn they must be exposed to the mortal dangers and all so they can grow through experience.

The City has many dark images and words that match perfectly. My favourite is a double page of crows with the simple words: “One moonless night she died.” Another dark double page spread shows a wolf’s face preceded by another beautifully simple string of words: “One day the night suppressed him.” The child-man finally confronts his future alone.

This is a powerful picture book that defies any further categorisation. It is a story to be read to primary children; read by secondary students it will promote discussion of text, art and then. It is also a story for adults and as a parent I found a message in it just for me.

Utopian Man

by Lisa Lang

Allen and Unwin. Australian, History. Paperback RRP $23.99

Utopian Man is the story of the real life eccentric entrepreneur Edward Cole told with a dash of Lang’s imagination.

Edward Cole was a man of vision. A vision that every man, woman and child could come to a place to relax and read – where trees would grow, bands played, Chinese tea served and animals romped. This vision was realised in the late 1800’s in the heart of Melbourne, where Edward William Cole created Cole’s Book Arcade.

This man was so forward thinking that he advertised for a wife in the newspaper and ended up marrying Eliza eight weeks later. This marriage was a good, faithful and happy one with five children being brought into the world. Eliza and Edward were married until death separated them.

Cole’s vision flourished but then a series of events nearly led to his downfall – the death of his youngest, the recession, his fraternising with Chinese and blacks, séances, opium dens, corruption within parliament and amongst his friends. Cole survived but only just.

Utopian Man may be an imaginary tale but Lisa Lang has brought the 1800’s to life. I looked up more on Edward William Cole after reading this book and found that he was a fascinating man and Utopian Man is a fascinating story. Corruption, lust, drugs – it has it all!

The Happiest Refugee

by Anh Do

Allen and Unwin. Australian, Autobiographical. Paperback rrp $32.99

Guest Reviewer – Ian Brown

You may have seen Anh Do on television. He’s a popular guest doing stand-up comedy on programs such as The Footy Show, Rove and Matty Johns Show.

Do arrived in Australia via Malaysia on a boat when he was just a young kid. It was 1980, only a few years after the Vietnam War and Anh Do’s extended family had pooled all their money to buy a boat and make the dangerous open sea voyage to Australia.

After an amazing and tragic journey, they were lucky to still be alive when they arrived in Sydney with nothing. Here the family found a life of struggle. In addition to the hard work and hard living conditions, his father leaves the family when Do was 13. The photos in the book show a strong sense of family. Although mother and children had to work hard, they always seemed happy and the departure of Do’s father, made Do more determined to ensure his family would survive.

After finishing university, Do was sitting in the final interview for a high powered job, when he asked the interviewer how many hours a week did he work. That same night he was at a comedy club and asked a comedian the same question. The answers guided Do into choosing a life which has seen our lives enriched with laughter and made Do a very happy and successful man.

Told with wit and humour, this heart-warming story is a classic tale of ‘boy makes good’. Anh Doh is someone who begins with nothing but dreams, and succeeds beyond the wildest of those.

http://www.anhdo.com.au/

Blood Feud

by Alyxandra Harvey

Allen and Unwin. Fantasy, Romance, Crime, Young Adult. Paperback rrp $14.99

Isabeau St Croix was born to aristocracy in France at the wrong time. At the age of sixteen, she watches both parents beheaded and is forced to hide her true identity. After a year living on the streets of Paris she finds her way to safety, the home of her uncle in London.

Now eighteen, Isabeau has her whole life ahead of her until she meets Lord Greyhaven. One bite and she is left to be buried for 200 years until the Hounds release her from her comatose existence in a London cemetery.

Isabeau is a Hound too, not quite as mad as the Hel-Blar (uncontrollable and crazy vampires). Vampires believe the Hounds are not civilised and live like dogs. But when Isabeau and Logan Drake (son of the reigning Queen of the Vampires) meet, their lives are destined to be intertwined. Isabeau has already saved Solange, Logan’s only sister, from Montmartre, a rogue vampire who wants to kill the Queen and join with Solange to become ruler of the Vampires.

Can these two factions of vampires, unite and beat Montmarte and his army of Hel-Blar? Will Isabeau confront her killer Greyhaven?

The French Revolution and modern day vampire feuds. For fans of the Drake Chronicles you will not be disappointed in this sequel to My Love Lies Bleeding. This is one book that I couldn’t put down until the end.

The Reading Stack reviewed the first book in the Drake Chronicles, My Love Lies Bleeding in February 2010. Out for Blood is the third and final book and will be available November 2010.

http://www.alyxandraharvey.com/
http://www.thedrakechronicles.com/

Beautiful Malice

by Rebecca James

Allen and Unwin. Australian, Mystery, Young Adult. Paperback rrp $24.99


Two years ago Katherine, or Katie as she was known then, was a popular, outgoing girl with a gorgeous boyfriend and a family and lifestyle she adored. Then she changed her name, moved interstate, and attended the largest school so she would not be noticed.

She has a secret she doesn’t want anyone to know about. Yet Katherine is only seventeen years old. What is she running away from and why does she want to shrink into the shadows?

The most beautiful, popular and wealthy female in her year, Alice, singles Katherine out to be her friend. With Alice’s friendship Katherine changes, the weight of the previous few years lifts as she becomes the girl she once was. But then Alice finds out the truth about Katherine and Katherine starts to see the real girl behind the façade that Alice displays to the public.

Both girls have a secret. Katherine’s is shared amongst friends and family and helps her cope. When Alice’s secret is finally revealed Katherine understands too late. Tragedy continues to haunt Katherine. Friendship can kill.

Beautiful Malice is a book that sucked me in and held me tight on its psychotic grip until the last page was turned. I returned to reality with an audible gasp and a spinning head. Brilliant!

http://rebeccasjames.blogspot.com/

Reviewed by Barbara Brown

The boy/friend

Girlfriend fiction 19

by R M Corbet

Allen and Unwin. Australian, Young Adult, Romance. Paperback rrp $14.99


Two teenagers living in the same street their whole life. Boy and girl. Best friends. One a punk rocker named after Louis Armstrong, the other, smart and intelligent and transferring to an all-girl school after winning a scholarship. What happens when both kids see each other as more than just friends?

Maude and Lou have been friends since childhood. They have their own secret spot down by the river, they built their own tree house together but now they are older and their lives are diverging in different directions. Neither can see the friendship as it was.

Eventually Lou makes the brave move of asking Maude to the movies.

‘Tonight?’
‘You got a problem with that?’
‘No. Except that it’s Friday and …’
‘And what?’
‘It sounds like you’re asking me out.’
‘I am asking you out.’
‘It sounds like you’re asking me out on a date.’
‘It’s not a date. It’s a movie.’

And so the friendship starts to unravel. Jealousy, dances, a new band, a few hairy bikies, another boy or two, another girl or two, a lot of junk – how will these two ever get together now!

A light hearted look at best mates growing up and discovering what it really is that makes their friendship work so well.

My Life and other Catastrophes (Issue 5), What Supergirl Did Next, Something More, Little Bird and Fifteen Love (also by R M Corbet), A Letter from Luisa, Thirteen Pearls are Girlfriend Fiction Series titles previously reviewed in the Reading Stack.



http://www.allenandunwin.com/girlfriendfiction/

Reviewed by Barbara Brown

Book of Lost Threads

by Tess Evans

Allen and Unwin. Australian, Adult Fiction. Paperback rrp $27.99

Before twenty-something Moss turns up on Finn’s doorstep in search of her heritage, the only information she has is his name and that he is a brilliant mathematician. What she doesn’t expect to find is a man who gives her a sense of hope and understanding about her two mothers, two very different women who each wanted her to grow a certain way.

Finn has hidden from everyone in the small village of Opportunity in the middle of Victoria. His demons haunt him daily and he has nowhere to turn. He has run out of options and must face the deep rooted thoughts of his past.

Two other souls in Opportunity, Mrs Pargetter and her nephew Sandy are the only other people that Finn communicates with. Mrs Pargetter, his neighbour, is an elderly widow with hints of an unbearable sadness. Sandy is the joke of the town. As the only living relative of the man who created Opportunity, he is planning to put his beloved town on the tourist map with a Great Galah sculpture in honour of his dead father.

These people, each with their own ghost hanging over them, need to find a way to confront their problems and get on with their lives. Can four broken people use their united strengths to save the town of Opportunity while saving themselves.

Book of Lost Threads is a story of ordinary people. A story of family and a sense of where you belong. Sometimes funny, occasionally sad but always a wonderful journey of hope, forgiveness and courage.

The Fool’s Girl

by Celia Rees

Allen and Unwin. Young Adult, History, Mystery. Paperback rrp $16.99

The year is 1601 and playwright William Shakespeare is finding fame at the Globe Theatre in London. He discovers a talented street performer with a very unusual assistant. Violetta is from Illyria and has come to England to seek something that is rightfully hers. She is accompanied by her faithful servant Feste, who is both a Fool and a gifted actor.

Violetta and Feste have escaped slavery and with Will’s help hope to see their beloved country again. But Venice and other countries want the popular trading port of Illyria as their own. The self-appointed Duke of Illyria is a tyrant who will do nothing to stop Violetta, the true heir, from returning to her country. He has ensured others will assist in not only her demise but that of anyone who aids her journey.

Violetta would rather die than not take the country’s sacred relic back with her. With dark tales of deception and intricate subplots, the reader never knows who to trust. And Violetta is finding that her trust may not be aimed at the right person.

The Fool’s Girl is loosely based on Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and explores what happens after the play’s final curtain has been dropped. Rees has seamlessly morphed a much–loved historical play into a dramatic story that transports the reader to a time of pirates, the plague, sorcery, beheadings, treachery and more.

http://www.celiarees.com/

The Named

Book 1 of Guardians of Time

by Marianne Curley

Allen and Unwin. Young Adult, Fantasy. Paperback rrp $16.99

There are many things Ethan has seen in his seventeen years that he wishes he hadn’t. Starting with when he was four years of age and witnessed his sister’s death (or was it murder?). Since then Ethan has struggled to be a normal child - growing up with a mother who won’t leave the house and a father who seems distant and distracted. At night he has to contend with the darkness of his dreams, desperate to avoid the message they seem intent on sending.

But Ethan is also Named. A chosen person who can travel back in time to set things right after the Goddess of Chaos and her Order have played around with history. Ethan has other special skills as well but as he grows older he finds it increasingly hard to keep these skills to himself.

When Ethan learns that his ex-best friend, Matt’s, younger sister, Isabel, is also Named and he is her teacher, life becomes increasingly complicated. How can he train Isabel without letting Matt understand the truth of who Ethan and Isabel truly are?

When more Named show their true identities, Ethan must make decisions that could cost him his life.

The Named is the first book in a trilogy but stands alone as a complete and entertaining read. The Dark and The Key are the other two books in the series.

http://www.mariannecurley.com/

Instructions

by Neil Gaiman, Illustrated by Charles Vess

Allen and Unwin. Picture Book. Hardcover rrp $24.99

The cover of this wonderful children’s book will delight children and adults alike. There is immediately a sense of magic and mysterious beings.

Open the book and turn the pages, the illustrations continue to tug and tease. Neil Gaiman’s words cajole to entice you further within. The instructions may seem archaic at first but look harder and you will find answers to life’s mysteries and riddles.

“Do not be jealous of your sister:

know that diamonds and roses

are as uncomfortable when they tumble from

        one’s lips as toads and frogs:

colder, too, and sharper, and they cut.”

Charles Vess’ illustrations are straight out of the Brothers Grimm. The wonderful visuals led me all over the place and Gaiman’s words showed me where to look deeper. Brilliant and stunning, Instructions will be a book that children will treasure for many years. Adults will find themselves reminiscing about the great stories of their own childhood.

Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book was reviewed in Issue 14 of The Reading Stack.

http://www.neilgaiman.com/
http://www.greenmanpress.com/