Harnessing Peacocks by Mary Wesley

Hebe sits in the darkness and listens to her hypocritical grandparents and her older siblings discuss how her unexpected pregnancy must be terminated to avoid the shame it will bring. Determined to raise her child, she flees into the night with only her mother's jewellery to support her.

Twelve years later she is living happily alone in Cornwall, whilst her son attends an expensive private school. Hebe has harnessed her two great talents - cooking and making love - to make a living for herself, but when the separate strands of her life become intangled the even tenor of her days is threatened, and her world changes forever.

Even though it was written in 2007 it very much reminded me on English romances from the 60's and 70's, sad and depressing.

6/10

The Concubine's Child by Carol Jones

In 1930s Malaya a sixteen-year-old girl, dreaming of marriage to her sweetheart, is sold as a concubine to a rich old man desperate for an heir. Trapped, and bullied by his spiteful wife, Yu Lan plans to escape with her baby son, despite knowing that they will pursue her to the ends of the earth.

Four generations later, her great-grandson, Nick, will return to Malaysia, looking for the truth behind the facade of a house cursed by the unhappy past. Nothing can prepare him for what he will find.

The setting was so true to our visit of Malaysia. It brought it back to life. A sad but realistic story.

7/10

Grunt by Mary Roach

Grunt tackles the science behind some of a soldier's most challenging adversaries-panic, exhaustion, heat, noise-and introduces us to the scientists who seek to conquer them. Mary Roach dodges hostile fire with the U.S. Marine Corps Paintball Team as part of a study on hearing loss and survivability in combat. She visits the fashion design studio of U.S. Army Natick Labs and learns why a zipper is a problem for a sniper. She visits a repurposed movie studio where amputee actors help prepare Marine Corps medics for the shock and gore of combat wounds. At Camp Lemmonier, Djibouti, in east Africa, we learn how diarrhea can be a threat to national security. Roach samples caffeinated meat, sniffs an archival sample of a World War II stink bomb, and stays up all night with the crew tending the missiles on the nuclear submarine USS Tennessee. She answers questions not found in any other book on the military: Why is DARPA interested in ducks? How is a wedding gown like a bomb suit? Why are shrimp more dangerous to sailors than sharks? Take a tour of duty with Roach, and you'll never see our nation's defenders in the same way again.

Some LOL moments, some interesting bits and some bits I skimmed. I have enjoyed other books by this author more than I did this one.

7/10

Landing by Emma Donoghue

A delightful, old-fashioned love story with a uniquely twenty-first-century twist, Landing is a romantic comedy that explores the pleasures and sorrows of long-distance relationships--the kind millions of us now maintain mostly by plane, phone, and Internet. 

Síle is a stylish citizen of the new Dublin, a veteran flight attendant who's traveled the world. Jude is a twenty-five-year-old archivist, stubbornly attached to the tiny town of Ireland, Ontario, in which she was born and raised. On her first plane trip, Jude's and Síle's worlds touch and snag at Heathrow Airport. In the course of the next year, their lives, and those of their friends and families, will be drawn into a new, shaky orbit.

A trans-Atlantic lesbian love story.

A nice, easy read that I enjoyed. I didn't like the friends of either main character. It was a solid 7 until the end, and then it became an 8.

A Spot Of Bother by Mark Haddon

At fifty-seven, George is settling down to a comfortable retirement, building a shed in his garden, reading historical novels, listening to a bit of light jazz. Then Katie, his tempestuous daughter, announces that she is getting remarried, to Ray. 

The family is not pleased, as her brother Jamie observes, Ray has 'strangler's hands'. Katie can't decide if she loves Ray, or loves the way he cares for her son Jacob, and her mother Jean is a bit put out by the way the wedding planning gets in the way of her affair with one of her husband's former colleagues. And the tidy and pleasant life Jamie has created crumbles when he fails to invite his lover, Tony, to the dreaded nuptials.

Unnoticed in the uproar, George discovers a sinister lesion on his hip, and quietly begins to lose his mind.

Annoying characters, really annoying.

Cloud Of Sparrows by Takashi Matsuoka

Emily Gibson has come to Japan as a missionary, to start a new life. In America her beauty drove men wild. In Japan she possessed no beauty at all.

Matthew Stark speaks like a missionary but wears a pistol like a gunslinger. Emily has come to Japan to bury her past, Start has come to kill his.

It is 1861 and after over two centuries of isolation Japan has been forced to open its doors. A whole way of life is about to die.

Lord Genji of the Akaoka Clan knows this. Blessed with his family's power of prophecy he has foreseen that his and Japan's fate lie in the hands of outsiders. But this knowledge is dangerous to many powerful men, and deadly for Genji. As intrigue mounts and the city of Edo and the Shogun's palace are threatened by foreign ships, Genji plans his escape to his ancestral home, Cloud of Sparrows.

With him travel Emily and Stark, and Heiko, his beautiful geisha and a deadly spy. However, the road is long and there are many places along the way for a samurai to attack and for Genji to die.

Beautiful story about two Americans and an amazing cast of Japanese warriors whose lives are intertwined in 19th century Japan. Lots of political intrigue, violence, cultural references, gorgeous settings and descriptions.

8/10

The Girl Who Was Taken by Charlie Donlea

Megan McDonald is a high school senior when she disappears from the small town of Emerson Bay. Miraculously, after two weeks held captive, she escapes from a bunker hidden deep in the woods.

Now, one year on, Megan is a national celebrity thanks to her bestselling book, Missing. It's an inspiring story - except for one inconvenient detail.

There was a second girl who was taken. Her classmate Nicole Cutty.

Livia Cutty is a forensic pathologist. Every time a Jane Doe arrives at the morgue she wonders if it's her missing sister. However it's the body of a young man, an apparent suicide, who finally offers the first clue to Nicole's fate. So Livia reaches out to Megan for help.

But Megan knows more than she's revealed. Flashes of memory are coming together - and they are pointing to something darker and more monstrous than anything her chilling memoir describes.

Chilling read, clever plot with lots of red herrings. Lots of flashbacks too. My favourite bits were the forensic pathologists story.

7/10