The heir to Martina Cole’s crown with a story of murder, the underworld, violence and treachery. It’s 1983 and Stephanie Crouch’s life is dull. She is desperate to escape the run-down, pokey council house she shares with her overbearing family, but at fourteen years old she has nowhere to go.

The Demon King still lives, stronger than ever, devouring souls in search of immortality. Against him stands the scholar Taron, a newly-minted warrior of Lemuria, and Willow, a woman of unearthly loveliness, born of mist…Taron must pass through the waterfall of molten gold that shields the secret portal to his beloved land. His brilliant mind and the speaking sword called CrystalFire are his weapons against evil

After several unsuccessful and hair-raising efforts to bag a Tiger on the battlefields of Tunisia, Doug and his team put their lives on the line in a terrifying, close-hand shoot-out with the five-man crew of a Tiger, capturing the tank intact. The morale boost to the Allies was such that both Churchill and King George VI flew to Tunis to examine the Tiger first hand.

BEST NOVEL: Gone by Mo Hayder (Grove/Atlantic – Atlantic Monthly Press)

Nominees: The Ranger by Ace Atkins (Penguin Group USA – G.P. Putnam’s Sons); The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino (Minotaur Books); 1222 by Anne Holt (Simon & Schuster – Scribner); Field Gray by Philip Kerr (Penguin Group USA – G.P. Putnam’s Sons – Marion Wood Books)

The collusion was extraordinary, as was the criminality. The authors show how senior figures in the police turned a blind eye even when confronted with compelling information about possible criminality high up in the Murdoch empire. Police chiefs even went in to bat for the Murdochs against the Guardian, to “lobby [the paper] to drop its hostile coverage”, they write.

Ice Palace was a fantastic story, and undoubtedly the book with the most beautiful, chilling descriptions I have ever read. It told an incredibly moving tale and I found it very hard to put down, I think I am definitely going to try other books by Robert Swindells. I can’t seem to find any negative points about it and I would recommend this book to anyone (who loves reading!) over eight years old.

In other words, the publisher took the money it was originally paying to small fish and paid it to the big fish—with the small fish’s permission. But there are yahoos in the agenting business who make the slimy used car salesmen from 1970s films look like action heroes. But, as I said, that’s a future post

Over the years, I’ve returned to the same book — and its companions Twenty Years After, and Viscount de Bragelone — every winter, when the snow first fell. I re-read the adventures of the four charming rogues, again and again, by my cozy fireside. But I knew I’d never encounter them in any other writing.

  I found an entire page of links for the Harry Potter fanatics. Have a look at some of these   Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire Book Review Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire Movie Review Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire Trivia Quiz Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire [...]

These include the techniques actually used to improve memory and to memorize vast chunks of information, a user-friendly explanation of the physiology and neurology of memory, the history of mnemonics beginning with the Greek Poet Simonedes of Ceos the difference between remembering words and remembering images, profiles of those who have exploited memory techniques for personal gain and those who haven’t,