Tag: What Moves The Dead

Top Ten Tuesday: New-to-Me Authors I Discovered in 2023

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Is it my imagination or are the days starting to stretch out a little bit again? It's still pitch dark on my morning runs but I don't feel that I am both driving to and home from work in the darkness! And this week's theme is a lovely one, a celebration of the books I have read in 2023 - which already seems a very long time ago and we have not yet finished January! - from authors I have not come across before. We all have those familiar favourite authors, don't we? Those writers who we just know we will feel welcome and comfortable and familiar with, even in a new book - and that is a wonderful thing! And alongside that, it is a joy to uncover a new author whom we might also fall in love with, possibly with a weighty backlist to enjoy, potentially with a future of more books to come. It is also a feature that I track on my reading spreadsheet - I am such a geek! - so I can easily share my full list of books by new-to-me authors, of which there were 22.

Top Ten Tuesday: Favourite Books of 2023

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Birnam Wood is on the move... Five years ago, Mira Bunting founded a guerrilla gardening group: Birnam Wood. An undeclared, unregulated, sometimes-criminal, sometimes-philanthropic gathering of friends, this activist collective plants crops wherever no one will notice, on the sides of roads, in forgotten parks, and neglected backyards. For years, the group has struggled to break even. Then Mira stumbles on an answer, a way to finally set the group up for the long term: a landslide has closed the Korowai Pass, cutting off the town of Thorndike. Natural disaster has created an opportunity, a sizable farm seemingly abandoned. But Mira is not the only one interested in Thorndike. Robert Lemoine, the enigmatic American billionaire, has snatched it up to build his end-times bunker - or so he tells Mira when he catches her on the property. Intrigued by Mira, Birnam Wood, and their entrepreneurial spirit, he suggests they work this land. But can they trust him? And, as their ideals and ideologies are tested, can they trust each other?

Top Ten Tuesday: Hallowe’en Freebie

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It is in fact Hallowe'en today! And I do love Hallowe'en! There is something delicious about giving into the spookier elements of life, reminding ourselves that there are more things in Heaven and on Earth than are dreamed of in our philosophies (to misquote Shakespeare). A time when it is ok to acknowledge and to revel in some of our primal and atavistic fears - whether that be werewolves, witches or vampires. And alongside the date, as the clocks fell back an hour last weekend, and the nights are drawing in, the weather turning unsettled and stormy and the river beside which our house sits swells and threatens to break its banks again, we are really in autumn - that season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. This week's TTT theme is a Hallowe'en Freebie and I have certainly been casting my net around for chilling books to read - it seems a long time since I read a really chilling ghost story so I am genuinely looking forward to perusing your recommendations.

Top Ten Tuesday: Most Recent Additions to My Book Collection

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Merry Christmas to you all! I do hope everyone had a lovely Christmas this week, with plenty of time with families, plenty of peace and goodwill, and not too much over indulgence. In the Book Lovers' home Christmases are quiet and wonderful times...