A ripping yarn about the theft of the Mona Lisa.
It is a roller coaster ride around Paris, with Tom Kirk, a reformed art theif needing to steal the Mona Lisa in order to prevent another, and far more ruthless, thief from getting his hands on it, and to save the life of an ex-girlfriend.
It is very fast paced, with rich detail, both of the locations and characters.
An excellent book, and I will be looking out for other James Twining books in the future.

Synopsis
The most audacious heist in history is about to commence, and Tom Kirk is right in the middle of it! Whilst investigating the theft of a stolen Da Vinci, reformed art thief Tom Kirk is confronted with the horrifying sight of a cat nailed to the wall where the painting once stood. He recognises the sign as a greeting from his old enemy Milo, and then finds out that a long time friend in Seville has been murdered. Meanwhile, in New York, FBI agent Jennifer Browne has been asked to investigate a possible art fraud. The trail leads to an Iranian art dealer who denies all knowledge, but when a lawyer who he had dealings with is murdered, Jennifer knows she has stumbled across something very sinister. Are the reappearance of Milo, the murder of Tom’s friend and the stolen Da Vinci connected? Are Tom and Jennifer’s paths destined to cross again as they descend into a maelstrom of deadly betrayal?”

James Twining around the Web:

• http://lerififi.blogspot.com
• http://readerscornerreviews.blogspot.com
• http://civilian-reader.blogspot.com
• http://aboutsbooks.blogspot.com
• http://heavydnilbett.blogspot.com

This is 1984 for the blogging, myspace, Oprah generation, sharing their hideously pointless and boring lives with the world 24/7. It’s like big brother meets big blogger. This would be a very funny book (it is) if it did not cut so close to the bone. In our politically correct world , that’s infested with CCTV and T.V. reality after T.V. reality shows, this novels reads like a future prediction of 10 years from now. I just loved the idea of a law being passed that meant that everybody was a celebrity.

Synopsis
As Trafford Sewell struggles to work through the usual crowds of commuters, he is confronted by the intimidating figure of his Parish Confessor. Why has Trafford not been streaming his every moment of sexual intimacy onto the community website like everybody else? Does he think he’s different or special in some way? Better than his fellow man and woman? Does he have something to hide?Imagine a world where everyone knows everything about everybody. Where what a person ‘feels’ and ‘truly believes’ is protected under the law, while what is rational, even provable is condemned as heresy. A world where to question ignorance and intolerance is to commit a Crime against Faith. Ben Elton’s dark, savagely comic novel imagines a post-apocalyptic society where religious intolerance combines with a confessional sex obsessed, self-centric culture to create a world where nakedness is modesty, ignorance is wisdom and privacy is a dangerous perversion. It offers a chilling vision of what’s to come? Or something rather closer to what we call reality?”

Bloggers on Ben Elton:

• http://thebutterroom.com
  
• http://johnsoanes.blogspot.com
• http://award-tour.blogspot.com
• http://www.pacifichighlander.postkiwi.com
• http://flann4.wordpress.com
• http://macneall.com
• http://greasy.com
• http://www.illiterarty.com

Sir David Frost talks to comedian and novelist Ben Elton about his latest novel ‘Blind Faith’ and how intellect is being sidelined in favour of faith and feelings.

A novel of epic proportions spanning the years 1327 to 1361. I have not read a Ken Follett novel for a long time and this was a real pleasure to read. It has everything you could want. It follows the lives of several people, from birth to death in some cases, and interweaves them into a rich tapestry. This book is packed full of love, death, destruction, and all the ingredients of medieval times. At 1111 pages (U.K. hardback edition), it is not a slim read but well worth it.

Review
“The peasants are revolting. Some, anyway. Others—the good-hearted varlets, churls and nickpurses of Follett’s latest—are just fine.

In a departure from his usual taut, economical procedurals (Whiteout, 2004, etc.), Follett revisits the Middle Ages in what amounts to a sort of sequel to The Pillars of the Earth (1989). The story is leisurely but never slow, turning in the shadow of the great provincial cathedral in the backwater of Kingsbridge, the fraught construction of which was the ostensible subject of the first novel. Now, in the 1330s, the cathedral is a going concern, populated by the same folks who figured in its making: intriguing clerics, sometimes clueless nobles and salt-of-the-earth types. One of the last is a resourceful young girl—and Follett’s women are always resourceful, more so than the menfolk—who liberates the overflowing purse of one of those nobles. Her father has already lost a hand for thievery, but that’s an insufficient deterrent in a time of hunger, and a time when the lords “were frequently away: at war, in Parliament, fighting lawsuits, or just attending on their earl or king.” Thus the need for watchful if greedy bailiffs and tough sheriffs, who make Gwenda’s grown-up life challenging. Follett has a nice eye for the sometimes silly clash of the classes and the aspirations of the small to become large, as with one aspiring prior who “had only a vague idea of what he would do with such power, but he felt strongly that he belonged in some elevated position in life.” Alas, woe meets some of those who strive, a fact that touches off a neat little mystery at the beginning of the book, one that plays its way out across the years and implicates dozens of characters.

Ken Follett around the Web:

• http://thebookbook.blogspot.com
• http://agirlwalksintoabookstore.blogspot.com
• http://www.leserglede.com
• http://capetownnews.co.za
• http://lurav.typepad.com
• http://cool-mycollections.blogspot.com
• http://quiet-places.spaces.live.com
• http://www.hobbystash.com

This is a very reflective novel.I have not read other others in the series but for me this story stands alone.For me it shows the past is best left in the past and a return to former pastures is always doomed to some kind of failure.

Book Description
The last ordeal of Nathan Zuckerman, the indomitable literary adventurer of Roth’s nine Zuckerman books, like Rip Van Winkle returning to his hometown to find that all has changed, Nathan Zuckerman comes back to New York, the city he left eleven years before. Alone on his New England mountain, Zuckerman has been nothing but a writer: no voices, no media, no terrorist threats, no women, no news, no tasks other than his work and the enduring of old age.

Walking the streets like a revenant, he quickly makes three connections that explode his carefully protected solitude. One is with a young couple with whom, in a rash moment, he offers to swap homes. They will flee post-9/11 Manhattan for his country refuge, and he will return to city life. But from the time he meets them, Zuckerman also wants to swap his solitude for the erotic challenge of the young woman, Jamie, whose allure draws him back to all that he thought he had left behind: intimacy, the vibrant play of heart and body.

The second connection is with a figure from Zuckerman’s youth, Amy Bellette, companion and muse to Zuckerman’s first literary hero, E. I. Lonoff. The once irresistible Amy is now an old woman depleted by illness, guarding the memory of that grandly austere American writer who showed Nathan the solitary path to a writing vocation.

The third connection is with Lonoff’s would-be biographer, a young literary hound who will do and say nearly anything to get to Lonoff’s “great secret.” Suddenly involved, as he never wanted or intended to be involved again, with love, mourning, desire, and animosity, Zuckerman plays out an interior drama of vivid and poignant possibilities.

Haunted by Roth’s earlier work The Ghost Writer, Exit Ghost is an amazing leap into yet another phase in this great writer’s insatiable commitment to fiction.

Bloggers on Philip Roth:

• http://www.acommonreader.org.uk
• http://rossgale.blogspot.com
• http://chinmayeem.blogspot.com
• http://martinspalette.blogspot.com
• http://readaroundtheworld-sallyb.blogspot.com
• http://chimeraobscura.com
• http://thebookbook.blogspot.com

A classic McNab novel and I must say one of his best to date. Nick Stone is in full hero mode when he tracks down and rescues the T.V. presenter he was protecting in Basra, Iraq, before Nick Stone got shot and put out of action. The action then moves to Kabul, Afghanistan and the heroin and sex slave trades, before finishing up in Ireland with a showdown with the mastermind behind the importation of heroin from Afghanistan, who also happens to be a senior officer of MI5. Gripping action and very believable and well written.

Product Description
The breathtaking new thriller from the author of Bravo Two Zero.

Body guarding a TV crew on the streets of war-torn Basra, ex-deniable operator Nick Stone’s life is saved by a reporter’s swift action as a roadside bomb explodes. When the man later vanishes, Stone is asked to find him. The trail leads from Iraq to Bermuda, London and Kabul, the dark and brutal city where governments, terrorism and big business inexorably collide. Caught in the crossfire, his nightmare is only just beginning, for the hunter has suddenly become the hunted.

Andy McNab around the Web:

• http://greymansland.com
• http://eurocrime.blogspot.com