Dangerous Deceit by Romy Gemmell is a gentle, romantic read. Set during the Napoleonic war in rural England, we follow the life of Lydia and Elizabeth. Both in love, though Lydia doesn’t want to admit it as she’s tomboyish. This book puts me in mind of Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen. Two girls, so different yet closest of friends. Elizabeth is in love with Lydia’s brother. Lydia gets knocked off her horse by her brother’s friend who turns out to be more important than she thought at first. It’s an intriguing plot with disguises a-plenty and undercover agents round every corner. This is available on e.books, but you know me, I must have a real book. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this period romantic drama.
Snuff by Terry Pratchett. This is one of the funniest books I’ve read. There are so many lines that want to make you laugh out loud, but they’re too funny for that. If you began laughing you’d never stop. I may have mentioned it before, but it’s worth another mention. It’s quite deep, so not one to pick up and put down. You need to concentrate, (well I do anyway) to keep up with the pace of it. Inspector Vimes, Police Inspector Vimes, who’s also Detective Inspector, and he was a blackboard monitor long ago; One of the lines tells us that, all of those three, then for a minute I wondered who all three characters were, but it was just the one, with all of his titles. He reminded himself of all his titles to give himself confidence. His wife, Sybil likes music, of the classical variety. He hears a goblin girl playing the harp one day while he’s out. He knows his wife will like it, then he thinks, that’s classy music, the kind where nobody’s going to shout ‘have a banana’ half way through. I liked that bit, maybe because when we were young, our family would go to Uncle and Auntie’s most Sundays for tea. (how sweet) Then Uncle would get the record player out, and after the grown-ups had drunk plenty of home-made wine, that record……”Lets all go down the strand…HAVE A BANANA….” would be sung extra loud. Us kids would escape to the other room to watch Starsky and Hutch.
A conspiracy of Friends by Alexander McCall Smith. Again this is utterly funny in an unassuming way. Different characters from corduroy Mansions come together in this book which is highly entertaining. We meet unscrupulous members of parliament. The book begins with his mother wondering how it could be that she doesn’t like her son…..He asked her to bring the wine for one of his partys….lots of it…When she realised he was using her, she turned up with none at all. When he asked where the wine was, she said, “Oh they can have water, surely.” The book centres around a little dog named Freddie de la Hay. Well worth reading.
This little fairy lives in Blackpool Pleasure Beach.
Susan Jones - Writer 
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