How to Age Disgracefully

An adventurous, madcap novel about a group of rebellious British pensioners who must fight to keep their community center ‘hangout’ open.

 

In How to Age Disgracefully, Clare Pooley delivers another off-beat comedy--with a hopeful message--that brings together a cast of quirky, raucous British pensioners whose lively antics will charm readers.

 

The story is set amidst a London-Metro community center in need of revitalization—literally and figuratively. A roof collapse kills the headmistress. Lydia, a 53-year-old wife and mother--and a once in-demand food stylist who is suffering a mid-life crisis--has been hired as the facility’s new Senior Citizens’ Social Club. However, a ceiling collapse kills one of their members during the first meeting. In addition to stepping up to establish the club, Lydia and the group also take on “Maggie Thatcher,” the “ugly-looking,” now orphaned dog of the deceased woman.

 

The small club is comprised of septuagenarians who are vastly different in backgrounds and temperaments who are in search of adventure. The group includes a former businesswoman-turned-loner with secrets; an aging actor with kleptomaniac tendencies, who’s tired of playing grumpy old men and dead bodies; a retired paparazzo; a hardcore knitting addict; and woman who is ‘pushy,’ in every sense of the word, including how she navigates her walker. Lydia learns that managing the health and safety of this less-than-sedate group--on a cash-strapped budget--is no easy task. And when the town threatens to bulldoze their hangout, the group rebels in hilarious ways—complete with help from kids at the nursery school, housed in the same facility.

 

Readers are in for great fun, traveling along with Pooley’s (The Authenticity Project, Iona Iverson’s Rules for Commuting) assembly of madcap characters who refuse to succumb to age—or play by the rules

 

How to Age Disgracefully by Clare Pooley

Pamela Dorman Books/Penguin, $29.00 hardcover, 352 pages, 9780593831496

Publishing Date: June 11, 2024 

To order this book on INDIEBOUND/Bookshop.Org, link HERE

 

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review as originally published on Shelf Awareness (July 5, 2024), link HERE 

The Accidental Medium

A struggling British actress starts seeing ghosts who enlist her crime-solving help in a clever, comic paranormal mystery series.

In The Accidental Medium, British author Tracy Whitwell launches the first in a hilariously clever, paranormal cozy mystery series.

Readers will be rapt by the free-wheeling narrative voice of Tania--aka Tanz--a struggling, 38-year-old, British actress waiting for her next big breakthrough role. Neurotic and self-deprecating, Tanz is going through a rough patch. She’s grieving the loss of an unrequited love--a 32-year-old male friend who died in a freak car accident--whose ghost keeps appearing in her dreams. Tanz has also become a “borderline alcoholic,” indulging in “buckets of Merlot,” and she’s “addicted to old-school horror films and magazines about murders.” Such behaviors were only exacerbated when “the complete bastard” she used to love moved out, leaving her to pay the rent on her own.

 

When Tanz is forced to take an interim job booking tarot card readings at a local, new age shop, the “Mystery Pot,” she fears she’s been plunged into a world of “nutters.” But when more ghosts suddenly start appearing, enlightening Tanz to make predictions about other peoples’ futures, she reluctantly starts utilizing her suddenly acquired medium-clairvoyant skills. Things take a dramatic turn when she’s visited by a murder victim who enlists her help in identifying her killer and bringing the perpetrator to justice.

 

The sharp-tongued, street-smart ingenuity of Whitwell’s (Love Button) lovable heroine--along with tight plotting and a cast of off-beat characters--makes for a wildly fun, bright as lightning start to a crafty new series.

 

The Accidental Medium (The Accidental Medium, Book One) by Tracy Whitwell

MacMillan/Pan Publishing, $18,99 paperback, 9781529087529, 304 pages

Publishing Date: April 9, 2024

To order this book on INDIEBOUND/Bookshop.Org, link HERE

 

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review as originally published on Shelf Awareness (May 10, 2024), link HERE 

Iona Iverson's Rules for Commuting

An uplifting, immensely entertaining novel about how strangers on a commuter train becomes unlikely friends via a shared near-death experience. 

In the world today, many people tend to live anonymously, in their own personal microcosms. However, in Iona Iverson’s Rules for Commuting, British author Clare Pooley brings people together--strangers--in such a fun, spirited way that it’s bound to spark readers to expand their worldview.

 

This endearing novel, told from the points of view of an ensemble cast of vividly drawn characters, starts on a London commuter train. At the center of it all is Iona Iverson, a vibrantly quirky, 57-year-old magazine advice therapist--an observant creature of habit with job security issues--who leaves Bea, her significant other, and sets off to work with her beloved French bulldog, Lulu. Every day, Iona and Lulu sit in the same carriage--usually in the “seventh aisle,” seat “number three”--as the train traverses ten stops over 36 minutes from Hampton Court to Waterloo Station. In her mind, Iona assigns clever pet names to the seasoned commuters with whom she daily co-exists, but never speaks to. This includes “Impossibly-Pretty-Bookworm” and “Mr.-Too-Good-to-beTrue.” The other passengers, likewise, do the same—Iona is referred to by one as “Rainbow Lady” and another as “Crazy Dog Woman.”

 

One fateful day, a man who doesn’t normally ride the 8:06 a.m. train--whom Iona bills as a “Smart-But-Sexist-Manspreader,” who talks too loudly on his mobile phone and refers to his wife as “the ball and chain”--boards Iona’s carriage. He dresses exquisitely but has his look “ruined” because he displays an “extraordinary sense of entitlement which only really comes with being white, male, heterosexual and excessively solvent.” When he starts choking on a grape from his fruit salad, the normal, everyday order of the commute is upended. A medically capable oncology nurse, Sanjay--who has the hots for the “Impossibly-Pretty-Bookworm” but lacks romantic confidence--performs the Heimlich maneuver on the “Manspreader.” Sanjay’s heroic, life-saving act serves as a catalyst that suddenly transforms the travelers from strangers into friends. Over the course of the story, the soul-filled truth of each person connected to the near-death experience is revealed. The stereotyping of appearances can be very deceiving.

 

As in her previous novel, The Authenticity Project, Pooley’s grasp on the constraints and longings of the human condition proves immensely entertaining. Readers will be charmed by this uplifting, hopeful story rife with tender insights. Traveling with Iona Iverson is a literary journey well worth taking.

 

Iona Iverson’s Rules for Commuting: A Novel by Clare Pooley

Pamela Dorman Books (Penguin Books), $27.00 hardcover, 352 pages, 9781984878649

Publishing Date: June 7, 2022

To order this book on INDIEBOUND link HERE

 

NOTE: To read this review as published on Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade (April 14, 2022 ), link HERE

 

NOTE: To read a condensed version of this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (June 6, 2022), link HERE

 

Out of Her Depth

A gripping romantic thriller about an idyllic summer of young love and friendship in Italy that surprisingly turned deadly.

 

Florence, Italy and the hills of Tuscany serve as the backdrop for Out of Her Depth, a menacing psychological thriller from Lizzy Barber.

 

The novel is told via the intimate, first-person narrative voice of Rachel, a Brit. At 21-years-old, Rachel travels to Italy for the summer, working as a maid in a quaint Villa in Florence. Hoping to brush up on her Italian-language skills before setting off to Cambridge in the fall, working class Rachel falls in with—and falls under the spell of—a wealthy gal, Diana, who is shrewd and manipulative…especially when it comes to Sebastian, the rich and very handsome godson of the Villa's owner, and Valentina, a new recruit to the hotel staff.  A fun, exciting summer filled with budding friendships--lust and love--suddenly shifts into dark power-plays, resentments and jealousies.

 

The story then cuts to twenty years later: Rachel, now 41-years-old, is a teacher at an exclusive, private school in England who remains traumatized and haunted by secrets from that one life-changing Italian holiday. Readers learn that the foursome never again saw each other, and Sebastian has spent 20 years in prison for a murder that played out that fateful, tragic summer. What exactly happened? What went wrong?

 

Barber (A Girl Named Anna) suspensefully rolls out details of a surprising friends-to-enemies story that probes themes of guilt and shame, secrets and regrets. Barber’s skillful storytelling elevates a traditional beach read into a stunningly deep page-turner.

Out of Her Depth: A Novel by Lizzy Barber

Mira Books (Original Edition), $16.99 paperback, 9780778386445, 400 pages

Publication Date: July 12, 2022

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

The Locked Room

A police investigation during the Covid-19 pandemic--a quest to solve a series of stymying suicides--unearths the past and puts a noted forensic archaeologist and her 11-year-old daughter in grave danger.

Dr. Ruth Galloway is a (fictional) forensic archaeologist--a smart, captivating British heroine created by author Elly Griffiths--who always finds herself embroiled in murder and mystery.

Over the course of 13 novels, this bright, British amateur sleuth and college professor has dealt with discoveries such as child remains (The Crossing Places), unidentified corpses from WWII (The House at Sea’s End) and secret underground tunnels (The Chalk Pit) ... among other life and death dilemmas. She’s traveled to Italy (The Dark Angel) and despite being an avowed atheist, she’s even dealt with aspects of religion (The Woman in Blue). Readers have grown along with Ruth Galloway, seeing her through life changes and challenges that have included romance, motherhood, grief and loss. It’s most fitting, then, that Griffiths has set her latest Ruth Galloway mystery, The Locked Room, (the 14th in the series) during the early days of the Coronavirus pandemic. 

 

Just as Covid-19 is about to turn the entire world upside-down, Ruth and her 11-year-old daughter, Kate, are suddenly forced into lockdown at Ruth’s old childhood home, a cottage in Norfolk, where Ruth had been trying to tie up unresolved fragments from her late mother’s life. Forced into isolation, mother and daughter are befriended (at a safe distance) by a seemingly kind, nurse neighbor, Zoe, a frontline worker. In the midst of them all sheltering in place, Ruth’s on-again, off-again love interest, DCI Harry Nelson (and his team) enlists Ruth’s help in trying to solve clues from a decades-long investigation of stymying suicides by local women. Amidst the investigation--and limitations imposed by the lockdown--clues from the past, including prior ties to an old pandemic and spooky folklore, weave their way into dark danger that ultimately puts Ruth, Kate--and Zoe, a woman who might not be all she appears to be--deep into hot water.

 

A cast of recurrent, familiar characters and their dramatic personal dilemmas--along with chillingly authentic details of pandemics, past and present--add to the suspense of Griffiths' well-conceived, brilliantly executed cozy that delivers a shocking plot twist.

 

The Locked Room: A Ruth Galloway Mystery Series (Book 14) by Elly Griffiths

Mariner Books, $18.99 paperback, 9780358671398, 384 pages

Publication Date: June 28, 2022

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

 

When We Were Young

A moving, life-affirming story about two male friends who reunite and unravel old secrets and resentments while taking a long hike.

British novelist Richard Roper has the uncanny ability to embroil quirky characters in heart-wrenching situations, rendering their predicaments into immensely appealing fiction. In How Not to Die Alone (retitled and reissued as Something to Live For), a grief-stricken man grappled with his sad lot in life. In Roper's second novel, When We Were Young, he again mines the theme of how breaking the shackles of the past can lead to transcendence. 

As teenagers, Theo and Joel--would-be writers--were best friends until a life-changing accident drove a wedge between them. Now, estranged for more than 10 years, the two men lead separate lives. Hard-driving Joel, from a sordid family background, is a successful TV writer who harbors secrets. Floundering, lovesick and bitter Theo is barely scraping by, living in a backyard shed at his parents' house. Things take a turn when Joel crashes Theo's 30th birthday party, hoping to reconnect with his long-lost friend and to convince him to make good on a promise made in their youth: to hike all 184 miles of the Thames Path, from Gloucestershire to south east London. As the two set out on the long, arduous journey, they wind through episodic memories of the past--what united and divided them. What will it take for them to bury the hatchet and make peace? 

Roper delivers an enormously moving and surprising story about the rarely documented bond of male friendship, focusing on the lengths some must travel in order truly to forgive and sacrifice for another. 

When We Were Young: A Novel by Richard Roper

G. P. Putnam’s Sons, $26.00 Hardcover, 9780525539919, 352 pages

Publication Date: July 20, 2021

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

 

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (July 27, 2021), link HERE

The Windsor Knot

In a witty, clever mystery, Queen Elizabeth II secretly unravels details of a possible murder at Windsor Castle.

Queen Elizabeth II... a super-sleuth? In the vivid imagination of British author SJ Bennett (aka YA author Sophia Bennett), Her Royal Majesty becomes swept up in a possible murder investigation at Windsor Castle. This clever fictional premise humorously plays out with grand appeal.

The first in a proposed series, The Windsor Knot commences in April 2016, as 89-year-old Queen Elizabeth II takes in "an almost perfect spring day" in the bucolic countryside on the grounds of Windsor Castle. The night before, Prince Charles had gathered a who's who of high-profile overnight guests to "curry favor with some rich Russians for one of his pet projects." At the soiree, a performer--a good-looking Russian pianist in his early 20s--"played Rachmaninoff like a dream" and even danced with the Queen. The next morning, however, the young musician is found dead in his bedroom. At first, it appears that he died in his sleep. But at breakfast, banter among the guests sheds new light. There's talk that ladies' underwear and lipstick were found near the man's nude corpse, "strung up like a Tory MP" near his bedside. Foul play? Suicide?

While professional detectives work the case, Queen Elizabeth enlists the help of her loyal private secretary, Rozie Oshodi, who assists as the tenacious, resolute Queen secretly investigates the murder on her own. Bennett portrays the perceptive, resourceful Queen with great wit and affection, and a well-drawn supporting cast further enlivens a fast-moving, spirited and suspenseful plot.

 

The Windsor Knot: A Novel (Her Majesty the Queen Investigates; Book One) by SJ Bennett

William Morrow, $27.99 Hardcover, 288 pp, 97800630500006

Publication Date: March 9, 2021

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (March 12, 2021), link HERE

To read the longer form of this review as published on Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade (March 5, 2021), link HERE

 

This Time Next Year

A lively rom-com about two Brits--born on the same day, in the same hospital--who meet after 30 years and are forced to reconsider their lives and shared history.

Sophie Cousens's first novel, This Time Next Year, is a clever, offbeat romantic comedy about two young Brits whose lives play out in vastly different ways.

Minnie Cooper--whose mother, Connie, had the audacity to name her daughter after the car--always had a challenging life. On the day of Minnie's birth, New Year's 1990, her mother had her heart set on naming her Quinn. However, when Connie's roommate in the maternity ward, Tara Hamilton, gave birth a minute before Connie, Tara stole the name, bestowing "Quinn" upon her own baby, a son. Connie is forced to go with her second choice--a watershed moment in the lives of the two newborns and their emotionally wounded mothers.

Minnie grows up taunted by peers and comes to believe nothing good ever happens on New Year's. This self-fulfilling prophecy, further propagated by her mother, plays out in extraordinary ways on New Year's 2020, which also happens to be Minnie's 30th birthday. When Minnie's beau drags her to a party thrown by one of his coworkers, Minnie loses her coat, gets vomited upon and then is locked in a bathroom overnight. Ugh! On New Year's Day, Minnie is finally freed from the loo by none other than Quinn Hamilton. The Quinn--born on the same day, a minute before Minnie, at the same hospital 30 years before. 

Cousens's colorful, quirky cast becomes embroiled in big, memorable scenes that capture and unravel the histories of both Minnie and Quinn. Rom-com readers will revel in Cousens's wry, lively story, which probes themes of self-discovery, acceptance and forgiveness, and the abiding nature of friendship.

This Time Next Year: A Novel by Sophie Cousens

Putnam, $16.00 Paperback, 9780593191200, 352 pages

Publication Date: December 1, 2020

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

 

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (December 8, 2020), link HERE

  

The Authenticity Project

This is a fun, clever, very modern story offering a poignant message of hope!

A notebook created for the purpose of confessing intimate, personal truth turns British strangers into friends as they form an unlikely bond of trust.

Online, everyone's lives look happy and perfect, which makes Clare Pooley's (The Sober Diaries) charmed novel, The Authenticity Project, a fresh, welcome and necessary change of pace.

Monica is a single, 37-year-old Brit who gave up her corporate law to open a London café. She discovers a simple exercise book left behind in her coffee shop, with three words etched on the cover: "The Authenticity Project." The first page reads: "Everyone lies about their lives. What would happen if you shared the truth instead...? Not on the internet, but with those real people around you?"

Intrigued, Monica learns the book was initiated by 79-year-old Julian Jessop, who committed his truth to its pages. Julian expresses the deep-seated loneliness he's experienced for five years, since the loss of his wife, Mary, whom he appreciated only once she was gone. Julian created the Authenticity Project to purge his own feelings and deliberately left the book with his story behind, hoping that whoever read his entry would be inspired to share their own story in its pages and then leave the book for others to do the same.

Monica searches for Julian online and discovers he is a famous portrait painter. In the meantime, she leaves the notebook, with her entry added, in a local wine bar. It lands with a cocaine addict, Hazard, who takes it with him as he sobers up on a remote island in the South China Sea. What ensues is a clever story of how the notebook travels from person to person, six strangers who ultimately discover each other and form bonds of commonality, friendship and love.

The Authenticity Project: A Novel by Clare Pooley

Pamela Dorman Books, $26.00 Hardcover, 9781984878618, 368 pages

Publication Date: February 4, 2020

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review as published via Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (February 7, 2020), link HERE

To read the longer form of this review as published on Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade (January 7, 2020), link HERE